Longing For Our Resurrection Bodies
Longing for Our Resurrection Bodies
Excerpted from “Creation’s Groans and the Saints’ Sighs” Sermon #788, January 5, 1868
For anyone who has ever felt dragged down by illness or depression or just the general malaise that comes from having an imperfect body, this message offers hope about our resurrection bodies.
You, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. Colossians 1:21-23
Brothers and sisters, as soon as a man believes in Christ, he is no longer under the curse of the law. As to his spirit, sin has no more dominion over him, and the law has no further claims against him. His soul is transformed from death to life, but the body, this poor flesh and blood, does it not remain as before?
Not in one sense, for the members of our body, which were instruments of unrighteousness, become—by sanctification—the instruments of righteousness unto the glory of God, and the body which was once a workshop for Satan becomes a temple for the Holy Spirit, wherein he dwells. But we are all perfectly aware that the grace of God makes no change in the body in other respects. It is just as subject to sickness as before, pain’s intensity is felt quite as sharply through the heart of the saint as the sinner, and he who lives near to God is no more likely to enjoy bodily health than he who lives at a distance from him.
The greatest piety cannot preserve a man from growing old, and although in grace he may be “like a cedar . . . full of sap and green” (Psalm 92:12, 14), yet the body will have its gray hairs, and the strong man will be brought to totter. The body is still subject to the evils which Paul mentions when he says of it that it is subject to decay, to dishonor, to weakness, and is still a natural body.
Nor is this a small thing, for the body has a depressing effect upon the soul. A man may be full of faith and joy spiritually, but I will defy him under some forms of disease to feel as he would. The soul is like an eagle, to which the body acts as a chain, which prevents it from soaring.
Moreover, the appetites of the body have a natural attraction to that which is sinful. The natural desires of the human frame are not in themselves sinful, but through the degeneracy of our nature, they very readily lead us into sin, and through the corruption which is in us, even the natural desires of the body become a very great source of temptation.
The body is redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. It is redeemed by a price, but it has not as yet been redeemed by power. It still lingers in the realm of bondage and is not yet brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Now this is the cause of our groaning and mourning, for the soul is so married to the body that when it is itself delivered from condemnation, it sighs to think that its poor friend, the body, should still be under the yoke.
Will it ever be set free? Oh my beloved, do not ask the question. This is the Christian’s brightest hope. Many believers make a mistake when they long to die and long for Heaven. Those things may be desirable, but they are not the ultimate for the saints. The saints in Heaven are perfectly free from sin and, so far as they are capable of it, are perfectly happy. But a disembodied spirit never can be perfect until it is reunited to its body.
God made man not pure spirit but body and spirit, and the spirit alone will never be content until it sees its physical frame raised to its own condition of holiness and glory.
Think not that our longings here below are not shared in by the saints in Heaven. They do not groan so far as any pain can be, but they long with greater intensity than you and I for the “adoption . . . the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23).
People have said there is no faith in Heaven, and no hope. They know not what they say—in Heaven faith and hope have their fullest swing and their brightest sphere, for glorified saints believe in God’s promise and hope for the resurrection of the body.
The apostle Paul tells us that “apart from us they [those who died in faith] should not be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:40)—that is, until our bodies are raised, theirs cannot be raised; until we get our adoption day, neither can they get theirs.
The Spirit says come, and the bride says come—not the bride on Earth only, but the bride in Heaven says the same, bidding the happy day speed on when the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For it is true, beloved: the bodies that have turned into dust will rise again, the fabric which has been destroyed by the worm shall become a nobler being, and you and I, though the worm devour this body, shall in our flesh behold our God.
These eyes shall see him in that day, The God that died for me; And all my rising bones shall say, “Lord, who is like to you?”
Thus we are sighing that our entire self, in its trinity of spirit, soul, and body, may be set free from the last trace of the Fall. We long to put off corruption, weakness, and dishonor, and to wrap ourselves in incorruption, in immortality, in glory, in the spiritual body which the Lord Jesus Christ will bestow upon all his people.
When Spurgeon speaks about the challenges of disease and physical ailments, he knows what he is talking about. Not only did he suffer from gout, arthritis, and a liver disease, but three years before he preached this message his wife, Susannah, became a semi-invalid at age thirty-three. For the rest of her life she was seldom able to hear her husband preach.
Earlier in his ministry Spurgeon proved himself courageous in the face of disease. All London knew his reputation of visiting the sick during the dreaded cholera epidemic of the 1850s, at a time when that disease was untreatable and its cause was unknown.
Spurgeon also mentions illness as having “a depressing effect upon the soul.” He says, “A man may be full of faith and joy spiritually, but I will defy him under some forms of disease to feel as he would.” Spurgeon knew about this effect firsthand, as he also suffered from chronic depression. He writes, “Depression comes over me whenever the Lord is preparing a larger blessing for my ministry; the cloud is black before it breaks, and overshadows before it yields its deluge of mercy. Depression has now become to me as a prophet in rough clothing, a John the Baptist, heralding the nearer coming of my Lord’s richer benison [blessing].” a
Spurgeon asks in this sermon, “Will [the soul] ever be set free? Oh my beloved, do not ask the question. This is the Christian’s brightest hope.” Being with Christ in Heaven is wonderful, but it is not the Christian’s ultimate hope. He says, “The saints in Heaven are perfectly free from sin and, so far as they are capable of it, are perfectly happy. But a disembodied spirit never can be perfect until it is reunited to its body.”
Of Americans who believe in a resurrection of the dead, two-thirds believe they will not have bodies after the Resurrection.b But this is self-contradictory. A nonphysical resurrection is like a sunless sunrise. There’s no such thing. Resurrection by its very definition means that we will have bodies. If we didn’t have bodies, we wouldn’t be resurrected! R. A. Torrey, an American evangelist and pastor from the early 1900s, writes, “We will not be disembodied spirits in the world to come, but redeemed spirits, in redeemed bodies, in a redeemed universe.”c If we don’t get the resurrection of the body right, we’ll get nothing else right concerning our eternal future.
Our bodies don’t merely house the real us—they are as much a part of who we are as our spirits. When God sent Jesus to die, it was for our bodies as well as our spirits. He came to redeem not just the breath of life (our spirits) but also the dust of the ground (our bodies). When we die, it isn’t that our real selves go to the present Heaven and our fake selves go to the grave. Rather, part of us goes to the grave to await our bodily resurrection and part goes to the present Heaven, where we’ll await Christ’s return to Earth, our bodily resurrection, the final judgment, and the creation of the new heavens and the New Earth. If we fail to grasp this truth, we will fail to understand the biblical doctrine of Heaven.
Theologian Anthony Hoekema says it well: “Resurrected bodies are not intended just to float in space, or to flit from cloud to cloud. They call for a new earth on which to live and to work, glorifying God. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body, in fact, makes no sense whatever apart from the doctrine of the new earth.”d
We will never be all God intended for us to be until body and spirit are again joined in resurrection.
The empty tomb is the ultimate proof that Christ’s resurrection body was the same body that died on the cross. If resurrection means the creation of a new body, Christ’s original body would have remained in the tomb. When Jesus said to his disciples after his resurrection, “It is I myself” (Luke 24:39), he was emphasizing to them that he was the same person—in spirit and body—who had gone to the cross. His disciples saw the marks of his crucifixion, unmistakable evidence that this was the same body.
At age twenty-one, Spurgeon wrote a catechism for the families of his church to serve as “a great safeguard against the increasing errors of the times.”e He drew heavily from the Westminster catechisms, written two hundred years earlier. In its historic crystallization of orthodox doctrine, the Westminster Larger Catechism (1647) states, “The self-same bodies of the dead which were laid in the grave, being then again united to their souls forever, shall be raised up by the power of Christ.” The Westminster Confession says, “All the dead shall be raised up, with the self-same bodies, and none other.” “Self-same bodies” affirms the doctrine of continuity through resurrection.
The only bodies we’ve ever known are weak and diseased remnants of the original bodies God made for humans. But the bodies we’ll have on the New Earth, in our resurrection, will be even more glorious than those of Adam and Eve.
Inside your body, even if it is failing, is the blueprint for your resurrection body. You may not be satisfied with your current body or mind—but you’ll be thrilled with your resurrection upgrades. With them you’ll be better able to serve and glorify God and enjoy the eternity of wonders he has prepared for you.
a Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1954), 160.
b Time (March 31, 1997): 55, quoted in Paul Marshall with Lela Gilbert, Heaven Is Not My Home: Learning to Live in God’s Creation (Nashville: Word, 1998), 234.
c R. A. Torrey, Heaven or Hell (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1985), 68.
d Anthony A. Hoekema, “Heaven: Not Just an Eternal Day Off,” Christianity Today (June 6, 2003), http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/122/54.0.html.
e See http://www.spurgeon.org/catechis.htm for the complete text of Spurgeon’s “A Puritan Catechism.”
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