Throughout our Jesus is Coming campaign, we have been writing about the Resurrection of the Dead. While this event is a blessed hope that lies in our future as children of God, it also looks back to the beginning of Creation. The fact is our God is covenantal, and the Resurrection Day is the culmination of God’s grand plan for the redemption of Earth and humankind. In this article, we will be taking a focused look at the New Body, also known as the Resurrected Body.
Adam’s Perfect Body
In Genesis 2, we read how God rested on the seventh day after spending 6 days in His creative work. Everything needed for a perfect world was created in just those six days (*interpretation of the exact period of time for us may vary; 2 Peter 3:8 states that a day for the Lord is as a thousand years for us). And soon after, we notice a significant thing – the mention of Man and that there was no man to till the soil.
Even after God had created Adam, Adam and his descendants were meant to have dominion over the Earth. Adam did not know the meaning of death and poverty, nor did he know any other lack. He did not have to toil and get stressed and tired and sick. God had already provided Adam everything to sustain him; he just had to pluck what he needed from the trees around him, and the food was unblemished and perfect. God created mankind to have complete union and fellowship with Him, and Adam did not have to worry about anything.
Why is all this important? Because it gives us a picture of God’s heart for us and of what we can expect when He brings His redemption work to completion. The Garden of Eden was created as a paradise for us and a place where we could have a perfect relationship with our Creator. We also see another thing; before the Fall, Adam had an incorruptible body that had never known weakness or disease. This is the kind of renewed body that Christians can look forward to on the Day of the Resurrection.
One day, there will be a new Eden, and we will have restored bodies, the kind Adam had in the original paradise.
The End of History and the Day of Christ
As the end of history draws near, the fight gets desperate for Satan and his forces. He knows what’s going to happen to him when Jesus comes again. He has been roaming for thousands of generations, trying to thwart the plans of God. Long ago, through his machinations, Satan brought the fall of Adam, and through him, humankind.
Satan later tried to tempt and destroy Jesus but failed in all his attempts. Jesus is our Second Adam. Where the First Adam failed and brought sin, sorrow, and suffering into the world, Jesus has come to redeem and restore us. Christ had already started the work 2000 years ago. He will bring the work to completion very soon.
Christ is the author and finisher of our faith. He is also our redeemer, and through Him, we have a new covenant of direct relationship with God as His children. During the Last Supper, Jesus said to drink and eat in remembrance of Him and this New Covenant that has been established between God and us until the day He comes again.
When God begins a work in us, He will bring it to fulfillment. Before Christ comes to render judgment on Satan, He will come back for us and gather us to be with Him again. On that day, God will redeem and restore us to the positions and bodies He originally designed and intended for us.
Everything will be made new, and our bodies which are currently frail and corruptible because of the fallen nature of this world will be a thing of the past.
Christ Jesus as the First Seed of the Resurrected Body
John 20 gives us a picture of the new body through the resurrection of Christ Jesus Himself. Christ Jesus was the first seed of the resurrected dead and the first to be resurrected with a new body. When Mary Magdalene came to the tomb on the early morning of the first day after Jesus was entombed, she saw Christ, not in His broken form but radiant.
Because we are the ‘sheep of Christ’s pasture’, we can recognise His voice (John 10:27). Mary had first come upon an empty tomb. At first, thinking that Jesus’s body had been stolen, she wept bitterly. The moment Jesus called to her (coming from behind her), her sadness turned to joy, and she recognised Him. Mary was so excited that she wanted to cling to Jesus. Later, after the encounter, she ran to spread the news of Christ Jesus’s resurrection to the disciples.
This is how it will be for us on the Day of Christ when we will meet Jesus and our departed loved ones again, not just as they were on Earth, but in glorious new bodies. Because Christ has been resurrected from the dead, those who follow Him will rise likewise. Imagine the joy on that day; words will not be adequate to describe it!
The Risen Christ and the Glorious New Body
In the days after His resurrection, Christ Jesus met with and encountered many people, among them some of the people who were closest to Him such as His disciples. In Matthew 28, we read of how the people gathered to worship the risen Messiah, though there were some who doubted because this was something so entirely out of the paradigm of what they were familiar with.
And then Jesus said something momentous; all authority has been given unto Him in Heaven and on earth, and that He has given the same authority to His disciples. Even more, Christ Jesus will be with His disciples until the end of time. As disciples and followers of Christ, we have the same authority and assurance through Him. Furthermore, on the Day of Christ, even our bodies will be the same glorious one as Christ Jesus’s. On the day, we will be like Christ, though not in His characteristics which will be uniquely His as the Son of God, but nevertheless in His appearance (1 John 3:2-3).
In Acts 2:31-32, Peter addressed the crowd and told them of the resurrection of the Lord. Christ has defeated death. His soul was not left in Hades (Hell) and His flesh has become incorruptible. There were many witnesses of Christ Jesus in His new body. This is among others testified by the experience the disciples had in their encounter with Him on the road to Emmaus. The disciples were invited to handle Jesus’s new body and to behold that there were flesh and bones, not as a spirit does, but as a true body (Luke 24:39).
Throughout all this, not one description of Christ in His new body spoke of the scars and torn and tortured form Christ Jesus had on the cross. Thomas, the ever-rationalist, couldn’t recognise the Jesus he had walked with for so long. Jesus’s new body was perfect, and it was likely upon later seeing this glorious body up close that helped gave Thomas the epiphany of the divinity and person of Christ.
There is also another significant fact here; Christ Jesus took just three days to defeat all the demonic forces in Hell. How is this possible? God and Christ are not confined to time as we are. Throughout the Bible, whenever ‘time’ is used in reference to God, it is always in the context of seasons. Earlier, Christ had turned water to wine in an instant, a process that would take an extensive period, possibly years of our time, to reach the quality that it had.
God and Christ Jesus are outside of time. The resurrected body will likewise be outside of time, not subject to the wear and tear and disease of the flawed bodies that we have now. When we rise and meet with Christ on that day, we will also pass beyond the boundary of time. Our fellowship with Christ and our loved ones will be good and eternal.
Our Coming Hope
We can look forward to this hope because we are Christ’s bride and children of God, adopted by God into His family through the new covenant Christ Jesus established between us and God in His sacrifice.
Long ago, just after the Creation, God had made humankind as He had originally intended. We were made perfect and our purpose was to have the kind of relationship with God that was so intimate it was like father and child. The new covenant through Christ is part of a deep, enduring, and sustained plan by God to return all of creation back to its original design. And in that plan, we have always been uppermost in God’s heart.
One day Christ Jesus will bring the plan to culmination and completion. And even the physical will be as they were in the Garden. As children of God, and in the spirit of love that Christ has entrusted us with (John 13:34), it is our responsibility and privilege to share this good news with all our close ones, be they our family or friends.
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