Raised Imperishable

Raised Imperishable

Excerpted from “Justification and Glory”

Sermon #627, April 30, 1865

Some people fear that we’ll be absorbed into a sort of anonymous spiritual state in the afterlife. But nothing could be further from the truth. You will have the same soul and the same body for all eternity. You will be more you in Heaven than ever before.

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

1 Corinthians 15:50-52

Spurgeon • My body is the same body that it was ten years ago, but I am told, and I believe it, that there is not a particle of matter in my body now that was in it ten years ago. Yet its identity is not disturbed thereby. Protect the seed, as God doubtless will, and you have protected identity. And though when we rise it will not be as flesh and blood, for “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (1 Corinthians 15:50), yet it shall be the same body.

There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, and the glory is not the same, for there is the glory of the sun, the glory of the moon, and the glory of the stars. So I may have the same body—the same for identity, and yet as to its components, especially as to its qualities of weakness, mortality, and corruption, it may be as distinct and changed as light is distinct and changed from darkness.

Oh, my brothers and sisters, let this be an assured truth to us that we do not put the body into the grave to lose it. We put the body there as the chemist puts gold into the furnace; it shall come out the same as to its gold, but the dross shall be left behind. All that was precious in the fabric shall remain; that which was corruptible, defiled, sinful, shall have passed away.

According to our belief, the soul will then return to the body. There will be a joyful meeting. Soul and body often quarrel here, but they always hate to part, which proves how true is the marriage between them.

Will Christ reign? We shall reign with him. Will he judge the Earth? “Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?” (1 Corinthians 6:2). Will he be ruler over cities? He will make us ruler over many cities. All the splendor and triumph, the victory and shouting, we shall have a share in. And when the grand hallelujah shall go up from Earth and land and sea, and from the depths that are under the Earth, our tongues shall sing the tremendous chorus and our ears shall be partakers of the ever-blessed harmony.

Well, and what then? Then comes the end, when Jesus shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God the Father. Will the Earth be renovated and refitted as a New Heaven and a New Earth? Will that New Jerusalem that is to come down at the coming of Christ be the future abode of saints?

This much we know: that we shall be forever with the Lord. With Christ shall be the Heaven of believers forever, according to the Lord’s own prayer: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory” (John 17:24). Life in its fullest sense; life with emphasis; eternal life; nearness to God; closeness to the divine heart; a sense of his love shed abroad in all its fullness; likeness to Christ; fullness of communion with him; abundance of the Spirit of God; being filled with all the fullness of God. An excess of joy; a perpetual influx of delight; perfection of holiness; no stain nor thought of sin; perfect submission to the divine will; a delight and agreement in, and conformity to, that will; absorption, as it were, into God—the creature still the creature but filled with the Creator to the brim; serenity caused by a sense of safety; continuance of heavenly service; an intense satisfaction in serving God day and night; bliss in the society of perfect spirits and glorified angels; delight in the retrospect of the past, delight in the enjoyment of the present, and delight in the prospect of the future; something ever new and evermore the same; a delightful variety of satisfaction and a heavenly sameness of delight; clear knowledge; absence of all clouds; ripeness of understanding; excellence of judgment; and, above all, an intense vigor of heart and the whole of that heart set upon him whom our eyes shall see to be altogether lovely!

I have looked at the crests of a few of the waves as I see them breaking over the sea of immortality; I have tried to give you the names of a few of the peaks of the long alpine range of glory. But, ah! Where are my words, and where are my thoughts? “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Our only satisfaction in thinking of it is that “these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:10). May his Spirit dwell in you and give you foretastes of the rest which remains, foretastes of the eternal banquet where Christ will drink the new wine with us in his heavenly Father’s Kingdom.

Alcorn • Did you enjoy that 161-word sentence of Spurgeon’s, the one with all the semicolons? In it he beautifully articulates scores of wonderful things awaiting us in Heaven.

When Spurgeon says, “We do not put the body into the grave to lose it,” he is referring to the continuity of our personhood from this life to the next—the same soul and eventually the same body, for all eternity.

What makes you you? It’s not only your body but also your memory, personality traits, gifts, passions, preferences, and interests. In the final resurrection, I believe all these facets will be restored and amplified, untarnished by sin and the Curse. You will be you in Heaven. Who else would you be? If Bob, a man on Earth, is no longer Bob—with his unique identity, history, and memory—when he gets to Heaven, then, in fact, Bob did not go to Heaven. The resurrected Jesus did not become someone else; he remained who he was before his resurrection: “It is I myself” (Luke 24:39).

Jesus said to his disciples, “I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29, NIV, emphasis added). Think of it—in the world to come, the same Jesus will drink the same kind of wine with the same disciples.

If we weren’t ourselves in the afterlife, then we couldn’t be held accountable for what we did in this life. The Judgment would be meaningless. If Barbara is no longer Barbara, she can’t be rewarded or held accountable for anything Barbara did. She’d have to say, “But that wasn’t who I am now.” The doctrines of judgment and eternal rewards depend on our retaining our distinct identities from this life to the next.

Bruce Milne writes, “We can banish all fear of being absorbed into the ‘All’ which Buddhism holds before us, or reincarnated in some other life form as in the post-mortem prospect of Hinduism. . . . The self with which we were endowed by the Creator in his gift of life to us, the self whose worth was secured forever in the self-substitution of God for us on the cross, that self will endure into eternity. Death cannot destroy us.”^a

Some of us read, “You may participate in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4, NIV) and imagine that we will lose our personal identities, but that’s a page out of Eastern religions, not the Bible. This verse is actually saying not that we’ll be indistinguishable from God but that we’re covered with Christ’s righteousness. We’ll participate in God’s holiness yet fully retain our God-crafted individuality.

Our personal histories and identities will endure from one Earth to the next. “‘As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,’ declares the LORD, ‘so will your name and descendants endure’” (Isaiah 66:22, NIV).

^a Milne, The Message of Heaven and Hell, 194.