Let's Talk About Our Changing Bodies

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 15:51-52 ESV)

I’m writing this on my laptop as I lie on the couch. I’m tired and my hip hurts. Since a car accident 11 years ago I’ve had a wonky knee that causes problems with my hip joint. I have a few exercises I’m supposed to do every day for the rest of my life in order to keep my hip joint properly aligned. They work, mostly, but once in a while, I’ll do something to my knee—twist it, or land on it funny—and I’ll have hip pain again. So here I am, anticipating the day when I will be changed, when I am raised with an imperishable body without damageable knees and deteriorating joints. The Bible calls this final change that happens to all believers the revealing of the sons of God, the redemption of our bodies, our adoption as sons or our glorification. All creation, we’re told, is longing—groaning—for the day of the big body change. I know I am. I want my resurrection body!

Indestructible resurrection bodies—bodies that won’t hurt from illness or injury or overuse—are one of the benefits that come through Christ’s own resurrection to those who are in Him. Christ rose first—he’s the firstfruits—and when he comes again, those who belong to him will be raised just like he was.  So it’s appropriate, isn’t it, that it’s this week, the Easter week, that my hip is reminding me that my body is weak and perishable and that I really do need for it to be changed into new one, a better one, an incorruptible one?

When I was a young girl and I heard about our spiritual bodies, a term Paul uses for our resurrection bodies, I pictured them as other-wordly, wispy, ghostly things floating around in a strange misty glowing realm, which seemed, frankly, like a whole lot less and worse than we have right now. Why would I joyfully anticipate having a body like that? But as it often did, my childish imagination got it all wrong. When Paul says our new bodies will be spiritual, he  doesn’t mean that they are not material, but that they that will energized by the Holy Spirit. They will be these same physical bodies we have right now changed into indestructible physical bodies which always act as the Spirit leads, and that is truly much more and better than what we have in this life.

We know our resurrection bodies will be real, solid, physical ones because, first of all, they will be like Jesus’ body after he was raised. “We will,” we’re told, “be like him,” and he could be touched and handled. His  resurrection body is a material one; so, too, with ours. Besides, resurrection bodies are made for living in a whole new material creation—the new heavens and new earth. What good would wispy ghostly things be in a rock solidly real world?

Yes, we will raised with new imperishable physical bodies to live in a new, imperishable physical world. You might say we bring the universe with us into “the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” Of course, it’s not so much us bringing the universe as it is God changing the universe at the same moment, in the same “twinkling of an eye” that we are changed. Now there’s something I can anticipate with joy.

And this same changing moment, this same eye twinkle, is an experience we share not only with the universe, but with every other believer throughout history. We shall all, the dead and the living, be changed at once and together. Every other step in the process of salvation we experience individually. I was reborn in my own moment of rebirth, a different moment than yours. We are all being sanctified, but at different rates and through different life experiences. We all journey into death separately, too. Come to think of it, generations of believers had lived and died before I was even born. I have no shared life experiences with them, let alone shared salvation experiences. But this one work of God—this culmination of the salvation process—we will, all of us, experience together. There’ll be a whole lot of changing going on.

What difference does the knowledge of the hope of glorification make for a believer? I can tell you right now  from my couch that it helps us cope with sickness, suffering and pain. We know that one day, we will have real bodies free forever from those things, and that in the end, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” This present time with our perishing bodies is just an insignificant blip when compared to our future glorification.

What’s more, we can die knowing that there will be a time when the dead will be raised with bodies that will never die and the sting of death will be removed permanently. The hope of glorification helps us face our inevitable death.

Especially appropriate to the season, thinking about our glorification in Christ should also help us fulfill our Maundy Thursday mandate, Christ’s new commandment to all his followers. Common experiences, you see, unite people, and we have one great big glorious upcoming adventure to share with our fellow believers. How can this shared hope that we will participate together with them in glorification not cause us to love every one of our brethren a little more?

Round the Sphere Again

Hymns of the season

Crown Him With Many Crowns
On the origins of this great hymn from Mark Roberts.

[T]he author of this hymn, Matthew Bridges, wrote six original stanzas in 1851. But then, in 1874, Godfrey Thring wrote another version of the hymn, with six new stanzas. Thring, it seems, was concerned that some of Bridges’ lyrics were too Catholic. In time, the versions were mingled, with different hymnals producing different hybrid versions.

Mark Roberts has also written a new verse for this hymn because “all of these verses miss what seems to me one of the most obvious and essential elements of a hymn that celebrates the many crowns of Christ.”

Behold the Lamb
From Getty Music, a free download of the the sheet music for The Communion Hymn. “We hope this is useful for your Holy week services of indeed any communion services.”

Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted
Hymn by Thomas Kelly, presented by Thomas G. Clay

Theological Term of the Week

Disclaimer: As those of you who read here regularly probably know, I’m a firm complementarian, not an egalitarian. In this post I’ve linked and quoted some things supporting egalitarianism even though I may disagree with the points made. The scripture quoted is scripture used by egalitarians to support egalitarianism. Of course, I don’t think it does or I’d wouldn’t be a complementarian, would I?

egalitarianism
The view that men and women are equal before God and “all the functions and roles in the church are open to men and women alike.”1

• From scripture:

  Then God said, “Let us make man  in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

  27 So God created man in his own image,
   in the image of God he created him;
  male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27 ESV)

  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28 ESV)

• From Christians for Biblical Equality, “Men, Women and Biblical Equality”. (This is a site promoting egalitarianism):

  The Bible teaches that, in the New Testament economy, women as well as men exercise the prophetic, priestly and royal functions (Acts 2:17-18, 21:9; 1 Cor 11:5; 1 Peter 2:9-10; Rev 1:6, 5:10). Therefore, the few isolated texts that appear to restrict the full redemptive freedom of women must not be interpreted simplistically and in contradiction to the rest of Scripture, but their interpretation must take into account their relation to the broader teaching of Scripture and their total context (1 Cor 11:2-16, 14:33-36; 1 Tim 2:9-15).

• From The Bible and Gender Equality by Rebecca Merrill Groothuis (supporting egalitarianism): 

  Evangelical egalitarianism, or biblical equality, refers to the biblically-based belief that gender, in and of itself, neither privileges nor curtails a believer’s gifting or calling to any ministry in the church or home. In particular, the exercise of spiritual authority, as biblically defined, is deemed as much a female believer’s privilege and responsibility as it is a male believer’s.

  Biblical equality does not mean women and men are identical or undifferentiated. Biblical egalitarians recognize average differences (both learned and intrinsic) between women and men, and affirm that God designed men and women to complement and benefit one another.

  Although it shares with feminism the belief that unjust treatment of women should be remediated, biblical equality is not grounded in feminist ideology, which is derived from cultural factors and philosophies. Rather, biblical equality is grounded simply and solely in the properly consistent interpretation of God’s written word. On this basis, biblical egalitarians (a) affirm that the gifts and callings of the Spirit are distributed without regard to gender, and that all believers in Christ stand on equal ground before God, and (b) repudiate the notion that the Bible grants to men spiritual authority and other religious privileges that it denies to women.

Learn more:

1. Rebecca Merrill Groothuis: The Basics of Biblical Equality: Belief and Practice (supporting egalitariansim)
2. N. T Wright: Women’s Service in the Church: The Biblical Basis (supporting egalitarianism)
3. Daniel Wallace: Women in Leadership - Part 1, Part 2 (supporting complementarian, but examining the complementarian/egalitarian debate.)

Related term:

• complementarianism

1Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem

Filed under Ecclesiology.

Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it.

I’m also interested in any suggestions you have for tweaking my definitions or for additional (or better) articles or sermons/lectures for linking. I’ll give you credit and a link back to your blog if I use your suggestion.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms organized in alphabetical order or by topic.