“THE hour cometh when all that are in the grave, shall hear His voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.”
So there is not merely continuance of our soul’s existence after death, but there shall some day also be a resurrection of the flesh. Being-man to the full demands an existence after soul and body both. And with respect to the latter we have the most positive promise, immediately from Christ Himself and mediately from Christ through His apostles: The resurrection of the flesh cometh. The grave shall not triumph.
And not only that our soul obtains back her organ for visible things; but all that fell asleep in Jesus shall receive their body back not as it was taken from them in death, but far richer, more beautiful, more glorious, in brief, it will be a body, as befits the soul of “the just made perfect.” So the holy apostle Paul bore witness to the church at Philippi: “Our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who shall change our humiliated body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself” (3, 20, 21).
Not as though the resurrection were alone for those that fell asleep in Jesus. “All that are in the graves” shall once hear the voice of Jesus, and shall come out from the graves. There is a resurrection unto life, but there is also a resurrection, O, terrible thought, a resurrection unto damnation.
Yet they, who die without having been incorporated in Christ, may here be excluded from our consideration. They have no part in it, when we meditate on the resurrection of the glorified body.
This shall only be the portion of those, who with or without their knowing it, fell asleep in Jesus. Of the aged, who justified by faith, had found peace with their God. But also of the newly budded flower, which died away in the cradle, without ever here below having stammered the “lovely name of Jesus.”
The mortal remains of all of us once become the prey of the grave; altogether indifferent whether that grave is dug for us in the bosom of the earth, or opens itself in the flame of fire that chars us, or discloses itself in the depth of the sea or in the maw of the lion.
Only they, who personally here on earth shall witness the return of Jesus, shall without descending into the grave go into eternity.
But however divergent our dying, and however different our grave may be, for all those who are incorporated in Jesus, the promise stands unshakably sure, that our Lord Jesus Christ shall one day work a miracle on their body. A miracle, to be brought about by the Divine energy, whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself. A miracle, consisting in this, that their humiliated body shall be fashioned like unto the glorious body, in which Christ Himself is seated at the right hand of the Father.
THIS mystery of the resurrection of the flesh has from the days of Augustin on little interested the church of Christ. Far from being denied, it has been confessed in all ages, confessed also in our Formulary of Unity; but it did not grip, it was not worked out, it could satisfy neither heart nor head. Our confession merely devotes to it these words: “The souls being joined and united with their proper bodies, in which they formerly lived” (Art. 37), but without referring with so much as a single word to the glorifying of the body. Answer 57 in the Heidelberg Catechism contains the slightly more illuminating words: “My body shall be reunited with my soul, and made like unto the glorious body of Christ,” and answer 45 “The resurrection of Christ is a sure pledge of our resurrection”; yet here also it consists of a simple declaration.
In this there lacks all proportion with Holy Scripture.
In Holy Scripture this mystery of the glorification of the body is elucidated more at length than even many another mystery. Especially the holy apostle Paul puts it in broad outlines in the foreground in his writing to the Church at Corinth, in that to the Church at Philippi and Thessalonica. In the Transfiguration on Tabor this miracle is exhibited to us. And in the appearance of Christ on the way to Damascus and on Patmos it is visualized to us.
It is indeed gain, that the church of this age more than the Church of the Reformation busied itself with this wondrous mystery, and it is a sign of the times, that in the measure in which the unbelieving world more daringly denied all continuance of existence after death as pious fabrication, believing Christendom has defended the more positively not only the indestructibility of the soul, but also the resurrection of the flesh.
Formerly one was actually content with the continued existence of half the man. At present faith demands, on the ground of Holy Scripture, the whole man again for eternity, after soul and body both.
EVEN so it remains a mystery.
Not the vision of the valley of the dead of Ezekiel 37, but only the apostolic revelation 1 Cor. 15, may direct our meditation on it.
Flesh and blood, i.e., earthly materials, of which our body here consisted, shall not inherit the Kingdom of God. But these materials are not really our body. Something which you learn from the fact, that from the cradle to the grave our body remains the same body, while the materials, from which flesh and blood are composed, constantly change. Every seven years this change is so perfectly completed, that in the body of the full-grown man there is no single drop of blood and no single fiber of flesh left, of what there was to him in the cradle.
Hence Resurrection “of the flesh” can not mean what is called “flesh and blood” elsewhere, but is the visible form of our human existence, in distinction from our spiritual existence of soul.
The plant here gives us the clearest image. When winter cold sets in, more than one plant dies above ground, so that only the bulb remains hidden in the earth, but when in springtime the sun shines cherishingly again, from that hidden bulb the same plant comes up again in new form. With every tulip, with every hyacinth, with all bulbous plants you can observe this. Also the caterpillar remains the same existence, when presently it loses its caterpillar form and comes out in the glorious form of the butterfly.
And that we have the right to observe these signs of nature, Paul himself shows by what he wrote to Corinth. He points to the grain that falls in the earth and dies, and which, after death, from God receives a new body but even so springing up from the grain-kernel. There are earthly bodies and there are heavenly bodies, and every one has its own beauty and its own glory.
SO there was a germ also in the seed of your body. From that germ here your body grew, by matter first from motherblood, then from mothermilk, and after that by appropriation of air, drink and food.
At dying all that had sprung from that germ, must wither, but the germ of your body remains. No one can find or indicate that germ of your body in your grave, but God preserves it. He keeps it, till the hour comes of Jesus’ return on the clouds. And when that hour is come, Jesus sanctifies and changes that germ of your body, and makes it spring up and bloom anew, even as the hyacinth bulb springs up and blooms anew when the death-sleep of winter is past. And so you obtain then a far more glorious bodily form, and in that glorious body-form soul and body are reunited.
Thus the same body, but different. Full blown from one body-germ, which in your conception you received from your God, but now from purer matter and in more glorious form. And he who reads what on Patmos St. John saw of the glorified body of Jesus, can form an idea for himself of the glorious form, in which this rising from the dead shall take place. For after the glorious body of Jesus your body also shall be fashioned.
In all this the mystery is not. All this is clearly revealed. Here nothing dark or mysterious is left.
But herein is the mystery, that of this germ of our body we can form no representation, not in the conception, and not while we are alive upon earth, and less yet after death, when all the rest is dissolved and decays, and that germ of the body alone remains and age on age is preserved by God till the coming again of Jesus.
That germ of the body does not belong to the spiritual, but to the visible things. But we lack the ability to observe it. Hence it does not hide in the soul which is with God, but must hide upon earth, yet so, that the mightiest microscope does not discover it.
Resurrection is no descension from heaven. Resurrection is from the earth, in order to enter upon a life in heaven. In the graves that wondrous word of Jesus shall work its effect. That germ of our body, from which the glorious body shall be built up, must therefore be found upon earth.
And on this rests our awed reverence for the acre of the dead. For the mortal remains of our dead is to us not merely the flesh and the blood which becomes the prey of worms and perishes, but much more, that wondrous germ of our body, from which at Jesus’ word of might, once that same body shall arise, but then in glorified form.
← 41. Who Shall Give Thee Thanks in the Grave · Contents · 43. Before the Judgment Seat of Christ, I →