Chapter XIX
Patil felt in the depths of his soul that the life of the Christian as it subsists in faith now, can only subsist in hope of the future. Without this assumed vievj of the future the “whole Christian life appears in his eyes as endeavors xvithout an object the pursuit of a phantom the sport of a delusion. For the life of other men is directed to the higher or lower aims “which are to be attained /« intellectual purs uits, or in the gratification of the senses and which can be actually attained on earth. But the life of Christians with all its conflicts efforts and rettunciations refers to an object that has no truth, if it be not realized in the eternal life of the future. — Neander.
It is obvious that this present body, not in substance but in quaHties and capacity, will not be suited to the changed and higher conditions and employments of the heavenly life. It may not be so obvious, but must be equally true that the revelation on this point, if made to us in detail, could not be understood, and so we have the facts stated in an explicit but general way, that these bodies are to be changed. The great outlines only are given. It is said with force that these bodies in their present qualities will be entirely unsuited to the changed relations; that flesh and blood cannot inherit that happy state nor meet its high demands.
Speculations and theories, never satisfactory, are generally profitless in regard to these divine mysteries. The Bible is the only safe guide. We are not to seek after mysteries in God’s Word, or marvels, but to search out and know the truth as revealed by God in its teaching without error, fancy, human opinion, or philosophy. God’s truth is all we need to know. It is what we ought to want and earnestly and faithfully to seek.
God reveals to us two distinct facts about his purposes with our bodies: The first is the raising of our bodies from the grave. The body is his in its original creation: he made it fearfully and wonderfully. This body is sacred to God; sacred to God by creation. God created these bodies. Out of common dust they were made, but the dust was sanctified and made holy for God’s high purposes. The body is sacred to God, for it is his temple, as sacred and holier than any temple ever built to God: “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?” The body dedicated as a temple is devoted to God. The body holy to God as a tempje is holy. Our bodies are God’s work, God’s workmanship, God’s temple, God’s property. He owns these bodies; they are to glorify him and he will glorify them. The body is sacred to God because he clothed his Son in it. Jesus wore this body on earth, wears it now in heaven. The body shares in the work of the redemption by Jesus; its regeneration will come through its resurrection and glorious change. God sanctified and ennobled it by appearing in the body to patriarch and prophet. He gave it divine honor and clothed it with immortality when he clothed his Son in a body of flesh. He gave the body triumph when he raised it from the dead in the person of his Son. This body he has declared he will raise from the deadly ravages of the grave. The second great purpose God has in decree for the body is that it shall be so changed as to qualify it for and adapt it to all the highest enjoyments, employments, pursuits, and advantages of the heavenly life.
This change so marvelous may be likened to the regeneration of our souls. The substance is not changed, the identity and sameness not destroyed, but a wonderful transformation has taken place in the conditions, relations, appetencies of the soul. The man is the same, and yet a new man; old things are passed away, and behold, all things are become new. This change which comes over the body may be likened to that which comes over the earth when the deadness and coldness of winter give way to the life, beauty, and warmth of spring; it seems a different world, so changed from glory to glory, and yet it is the same, but we see what God can work. The same God who works such regenerating wonders in the soul, such natural wonders in the transforming spring — this same God shall awake these dead bodies from the sleep and wreck of the grave and regenerate them into glories far more abiding and sublime than these which mark the changing spring. Amen! So let it be!
We have no adequate idea of the change; imagination has scarcely a foundation on which to build, fancy must not be indulged. Our ordinary language and conceptions are tame and cannot rise to the height of this mysterious and thrilling fact. The Bible gives us the model and some outlines. The model is the glorious body of Christ. The model we have never seen. Its picture was shown to us on the Mount of Transfiguration, but we are blinded and stupefied by its glory. The outlines of this great change which is to come upon our bodies is given us in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians. We there learn that the change will make it a powerful body, not in the enlargement of size, but in the elements of force, endurance, energy. It will have neither inherent nor acquired tendency to decay; its vigor will be unimpaired, its energy never relaxed. Corruption will put on incorruption. Death will be swallowed up in life. Dimness, dishonor, shame will be changed to glory. The change will be from a natural, earthly body to a spiritual, heavenly one. The body, so the Bible teaches us, will come out of the grave changed into immortal strength, never to know weariness, weakness, tears, decay, death, ready for the different and higher uses of the heavenly life.
The change will not be by stages or progressions — no evolution in it — but in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, when the last trump shall sound. The change will be by the immediate power of God, distinct from the resurrection in fact and act, but scarcely in time. This is our faith: the resurrection of the body by the power of God. We live in this faith; we bury our dead by the light of this hope; shall fall asleep ourselves with this blissful hope as our winding sheet.