Scripture: Isaiah 25:6-9; John 3:16; Romans 6:23; 1 Peter 1:3-5; Romans 6:5; Philippians 1:20-26; 2 Corinthians 4:1-2; 2 Corinthians 4:7-9; Luke 23:43; John 20:24-28 Series: 2022
Closing sermon in a series on the Apostles’ Creed, treating the final clause ‘I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.’ Pruitt argues that the early church and creeds emphasized bodily resurrection rather than the popular cultural notion of disembodied souls going to heaven. Drawing on Isaiah 25’s physical feast imagery plus Romans, Philippians, and 2 Corinthians, he insists bodies matter, salvation cleanses body and soul, grace is not works-righteousness, and the new creation has already begun and is offered now.
Illustrations: coffee-shop-evangelist, creeds-omit-heaven, elysium-olympus-pagan-afterlife, wedding-at-cana-wine, party-that-never-gets-old, group-chats-vs-hugs, special-forces-faith-tests, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, treasure-in-clay-pots, thomas-resurrection-scars, bee-creek-discernment
February 5
I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.
“On this mountain, the LORD of heavenly forces will prepare for all peoples a rich feast, a feast of choice wines, of select foods rich in flavor, of choice wines well refined. He will swallow up on this mountain the veil that is veiling all peoples, the shroud enshrouding all nations. He will swallow up death forever. The LORD God will wipe tears from every face; he will remove his people’s disgrace from off the whole earth, for the LORD has spoken. They will say on that day, “Look! This is our God, for whom we have waited— and he has saved us! This is the LORD, for whom we have waited; let’s be glad and rejoice in his salvation!”” -Isaiah 25:6-9 CEB
When I was in high school, i was studying at a coffee shop, and a man came over to my table and asked me; “if I died right then, where I would go.” I said, “I hope!I would go to heaven.” We ended up having a nice conversation about God and church and life. I don’t usually like that confrontational form of evangelism, but the question is valid in its own way, even if the method is not.
What happens after you die? My hope is to be with God through the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ. Heaven is a short hand for that. Christians all over the world believe in heaven, but the language of heaven was surprisingly limited in the early church.
The apostles creed talks about heaven in two places. At the very beginning, when God creates everything. And in the middle, when Jesus ascends to heaven. Heaven is not mentioned at the end of the story. This is not a mistake. The same goes for the two other early creeds, the Nicene and Athanasian. They don’t mention heaven as a place you go to when you die. It is just not there.
The near total focus of the early church was on bodily resurrection. It wasn’t on spirits ascending to heaven after they die. It was that this flesh will be healed and made whole and holy for all eternity. Heaven as the resting place of those who die, to early Christians, would sound like Elyssium or Olympus or another pagan cosmological afterlife location.
Yet over the last 1700 years, the primary Christian vision of life after death is not one that comes from the Bible but from cultural imagination.
What do we do with this? The Bible talks about heaven, but heaven is not the important thing or the dogmatic thing. What does it mean to believe in the resurrection of the body.
Series Intro
My friends, we are finishing our series on the apostles creed, that historic doctrinal statement of the faith. We are going to look at how the creed encapsulate scripture and offers it to us in a way that shows us what has been revealed from God about who God is, how the world is, why we are in need, how Jesus saves us, and what we should do about it.
Today, I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen.
The Bible talks about eternal life on a number of occasions. We have great passages like John 3:16: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life.” Or Romans 6:23 - The wages that sin pays are death, but God’s gift is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
1 Peter 1 says “You have been born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. You have a pure and enduring inheritance that cannot perish—an inheritance that is presently kept safe in heaven for you.” Jesus is in heaven, but it says nothing of where we go. Peter continues, “Through his faithfulness, you are guarded by God’s power so that you can receive the salvation he is ready to reveal in the last time.”
Jesus also tells the thief on the cross, today I will see you in paradise. The language of paradise is material in the bible. It is the language of the Garden of Eden. It is not the language of an ethereal place with clouds.
The history of why contemporary christians speak more of going to heaven than bodily resurrection is a long story with an excessive number of tangents from which I don’t believe I could ever return. My hope is not to tell this story, nor paint a picture of an either/or, that is, either going to heaven or bodily resurrection.
My hope is to point out that the Bible and the early church had a certain emphasis on the bodily nature of eternal life that has a deep impact on how we treat our bodies and our world. And how we treat other people.
Isaiah 25
The Bible talks about resurrection and eternal life in a number of places and it gives us a number of images. These images are almost universally physical. Isaiah 25 is my favorite version of this.
On this mountain, the LORD of heavenly forces will prepare for all peoples a rich feast, a feast of choice wines, of select foods rich in flavor, of choice wines well refined.”
So we have wine in the resurrection. I don’t know how Teetotalers read this passage, but it is there. Choice wine. Jesus’s miracle at the wedding of Cana is not just about a wedding but about this, about the good wine we will have eternally with God. By turning water into wine, Jesus was pointing to the life of abundance that awaits us.
The new creation is a party that doesn’t get old. That’s the image I hold onto. Imagine the best party you’ve ever been to, but it doesn’t get old. You don’t get tired. You don’t get bloated. Conversation is never boring. The music is always fresh.
A party without bodies is not a party. Group chats are fun. They are not the same thing as celebrating. It is one thing to face time with a family member. It is another to hug them tightly.
There is never a point in the Bible when our bodies don’t matter. Our will matters. Our heart and spirit matter, but our bodies also matter.
Our Future with God
Our future with God is not just as disembodied spirits freed from the shackles of this world. Paul, in Romans 6, states clearly the way of salvation.
“Because if you confess with your mouth “Jesus is Lord” and in your heart you have faith that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” If you confess that Jesus is Lord, you are not saved from your body, your body and your soul and everything about you is cleansed. It all goes back to Easter and resurrection. As Paul says earlier in Romans: If we were united together in a death like his, we will also be united together in a resurrection like his.” - Romans 6:5.
To say, I believe in the resurrection of the body is to believe in Christ’s resurrection. It is to believe that Christ’s resurrection also points to the possibility of our own. To believe in life everlasting is not just to believe in something in the future but that that future has already begun and we can be a part of it.
To believe in the resurrection of the body is to believe in what the Bible says about our future. A Christian’s hope is not simply consolation for the pain of this world. As if the brokenness and sin of this world is simply a testing ground to see who is good enough or not to make it to the next level. Sometimes faith is presented in a way similar to Special forces training.
The life of faith is not simply a series of qualifying tests to see if we have what it takes for our heavenly reward. Humans have an amazing ability to sneak in works-righteousness by any means necessary. Grace is such a radical thing.
“Okay, you have accepted God’s forgiveness, but what have you done for me lately?” This is not how God looks at us.
But even more radical is the notion that our future with God is not just in the future. Our life and our bodies can already begin to be healed and redeemed. And we need our bodies. We are not ourselves without our bodies. They are not simply prisons in which our real self is trapped. There are other religions that believe that. Not Christians of the Bible.
The Tension of Bodies
Alas, we are stuck in this tension because our bodies show the fallenness and brokenness of this world. It seems to be simpler to forsake our bodies and this world.
In Philippians, Paul articulates this tension:
It is my expectation and hope that I won’t be put to shame in anything. Rather, I hope with daring courage that Christ’s greatness will be seen in my body, now as always, whether I live or die. Because for me, living serves Christ and dying is even better. If I continue to live in this world, I get results from my work. But I don’t know what I prefer. I’m torn between the two because I want to leave this life and be with Christ, which is far better. However, it’s more important for me to stay in this world for your sake. I’m sure of this: I will stay alive and remain with all of you to help your progress and the joy of your faith, and to increase your pride in Christ Jesus through my presence when I visit you again.1
Notice he is talking about his body in this: “I hope with daring courage that Christ’s greatness will be seen in my body.”
As well, we are in this world for the sake of others. Our bodies, our spirits, our minds, they are not made for ourselves and our own benefit. God saves us for a purpose. In baptism, we die in Christ’s death in order to rise in Christ’s life.
That life of a party that does not go old. That life of praise and love where our hope is found in Christ and not ourselves. In Christ’s word, and not our own preferences or experiences.
in 2 corinthians 4 Paul lays this out for us plainly.
This is why we don’t get discouraged, given that we received this ministry in the same way that we received God’s mercy. Instead, we reject secrecy and shameful actions. We don’t use deception, and we don’t tamper with God’s word. Instead, we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God by the public announcement of the truth…
But we have this treasure in clay pots so that the awesome power belongs to God and doesn’t come from us. We are experiencing all kinds of trouble, but we aren’t crushed. We are confused, but we aren’t depressed. We are harassed, but we aren’t abandoned. We are knocked down, but we aren’t knocked out.
Our bodies are clay pots that will crumble and yet be remade. They are dust. They will return to the dust, but they will be remade in a glorious way.
To say “I believe in the resurrection of the body,” is to believe not only in the resurrection of Jesus, but your own resurrection. Christ is making all things new, including you and your body and our neighbors and their bodies.
God will save you and heal you to share in praise and love eternally, the treasure of Divine love we will renew and remake the dust of which we were made. This is our hope.
Conclusion
The creed begins with the beginning of everything and God’s power there. The creed ends with our ultimate hope, not in ourselves, but in Christ’s resurrection that points to our own future.
And that future of life abundant is offered now. The light that shines in the darkness is shining still. It is shining here. In the midst of the discernment conversations at Bee Creek,
I believe in the resurrection of my body. This body of mine will be made new. These broken joints. These sin stained hands. These eyes and skin and hair. Because I believe in the resurrection of Christ’s body. He rose from the dead in flesh and sinew and bone.
Our history is also on our bodies. Our scars will not be erased, as Thomas saw in the upper room after the resurrection. The past was not erased or forgotten or moved on from. The past was healed.
I believe in the resurrection of this body. God is doing great things here
Life after death is more than a continuation of the status quo. It is our broken bodies being remade and resurrected. This is offered to you. Take a step onto the resurrection path Christ has blazed for you. Let go of preconceptions of your body and the future. Hold fast to God’s promise of love overcoming fear.
Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, may your resurrection inspire our hope in new life here and now. May our faith be in your transformation and not in our own. May our life be in your image and not our own. Help us to live boldly into your new creation and abundant life this day. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Footnotes
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Phil 1:20-26 ↩