I have been thinking a lot lately about resurrection (Thank you, N. T. Wright). It is an idea that Christ-followers are familiar with, as it is the central tenet of our faith. But do we really understand it and have we fully grasped its implications?
For me, the new thinking about an ancient idea is that resurrection doesn’t happen when we die. To be sure, Scripture teaches and affirms that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. So something happens when we die. We go somewhere and in that place we are in the presence of God. I think this is what Jesus is referring to when he turns to the thief on the cross and says, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
Unfortunately, we have taken this reality, as great as it is, and made it the hope of the Christian. But Scripture teaches something even greater. 1 Corinthians 15:51-57 says this:
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Read this too many times to count. Never paid attention to what it really says. The dead will be raised imperishable. That is the ultimate hope of the Christ-follower. Not that your absence from the body will allow you to be present with the Lord, but that one day you will be raised from the dead bodily just like Jesus was on that first Easter morning.
There is life after death (absent from the body/present with the Lord), and that is awesome. But there is life after life after death (the dead will be raised imperishable), and that is even better.
Today, I am thankful that Jesus came as the baby in the manger to give his life on the cross so he could defeat death, hell and the grave when he was raised from the dead. Today, I am thankful for the resurrection!
