Summary
The Care of the Body—and Its Limits
Scripture honors the body. The psalmist praises God, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made" Psalm 139:14, and Paul reminds the Corinthians that "your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you… you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body" 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. Jesus likewise sends his disciples to "come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while" Mark 6:31. Caring for the body, eating well, working, resting—these are good and God-pleasing.
And yet the same Scripture is candid: this flesh and blood is not permanent. Death was no part of God's original design. In Eden our first parents were free to eat of the tree of life; only the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden. The fall introduced what God had warned against, and the aging, breaking down, and dying of the body remind us daily that we live east of Eden.
"Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit the Kingdom"
Among the many topics Paul takes up in 1 Corinthians—divisions, moral lapses, marriage, the Lord's Supper—he devotes chapter 15 to the resurrection: both its certainty and the objections raised against it. Skeptics asked, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" 1 Corinthians 15:35. Everyone knew what happened to a corpse in the ground; how then could there be a bodily resurrection?
Paul answers plainly: "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable" 1 Corinthians 15:50. Eternity cannot be entered in a body that dies. Something must change. The body that goes into the grave is not the body that the kingdom receives—not because the body is discarded, but because it must be transformed.
The Mystery: We Shall All Be Changed
"Listen, I will tell you a mystery" 1 Corinthians 15:51. A mystery in Paul's vocabulary is something disclosed only by divine revelation. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he tells the Church what flesh could never figure out on its own: "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet" 1 Corinthians 15:51-52.
When Christ returns, some believers will still be alive—but every person will be changed. For the believer, that change is the gift of a new and glorious body. For the unbeliever, the change ushers in an eternal dying. The trumpet that announces the Lord's return will not be a quiet, private signal; it will be loud, public, and unmistakable, like the trumpet that sounded at Sinai. The whole world will know that Jesus has come.
Body and Soul Reunited
For the Christian who dies before the Lord returns, the soul goes immediately to be with Christ in paradise, while the body rests—buried, cremated, it makes no difference to God. At the last trumpet, body and soul are reunited. "This perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality" 1 Corinthians 15:53. The body that is raised is genuinely our body—we will recognize one another in heaven—but reconstituted, restored, no longer subject to decay or death.
Paul says it again in Philippians: Christ "will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body" Philippians 3:21. Job confessed it from the ash heap: "I know that my Redeemer lives… and after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God" Job 19:25-26. Jesus himself promised, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live" John 11:25.
Born of the Cross and the Empty Tomb
None of this is wishful thinking or mere consolation. The new body is grounded in an event: Christ crucified for our sins, the wrath of God falling upon the Son, our sin laid on him and his righteousness credited to us, and the tomb empty on the third day. Because Jesus has overcome death, the world has been reconciled to God, and the resurrection of the body is no longer speculation but promise.
This is why the words of Scripture ring so clearly at the graveside, breaking the silence of grief with the certainty of God's final word. The body laid in the earth is not the end of the story. As the "New Body" teaching reminds the Church: this present life is temporary, but the best is yet to come.
Video citations
- "New Body" 5-16-21 — Would you open your Bibles, please? With me to first Corinthians, the 15th chapter, for our study today, first Corinthians, chapter 15. Jack the Lane, who is an interesting fellow. He is regarded as…