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The Afterlife, #1: "Looking Forward to Our New Bodies" Luke 24:36-43

by Clancy Nixon

March 30, 2008

Church of the Holy Spirit

Ashburn, Virginia

www.HolySpiritAnglican.org

The title of my message today is "Looking Forward to Our New Bodies." It's the

first in a series I'm calling "The Afterlife." I've been studying our Resurrection and

Heaven all week, and I'm thrilled at what I'm learning about what God has promised for

us after we die, and I can't wait to share it with you in the coming weeks. I've always

looked forward to Heaven, but I've discovered that many Christians are not looking

forward to it! John Eldredge wrote that most "Christians have the idea that eternity is an

unending church service, an never-ending sing-along in the sky, one great hymn after

another, forever and ever, amen. And our heart sinks. Forever and ever? That's it?

That's the good news? And then we sigh and feel guilty that we are not more `spiritual.'

We lose heart, and we turn once more to the present to find what life we can." (The

Journey of Desire) You may love singing praise to God or not, but heaven will be far

more than singing. I love worship in song, but there are many, many other ways to

worship than in a group meeting like this one. Being aware of the presence of God is a

form of worship; so is dance, study, service to others and even enjoying God's creation

can be a form of worship. In Heaven, we will eat at feasts with friends and family; we

will be learning new things for all eternity; we will have useful service as we rule with

Christ. Friends, if our resurrection and Heaven do not excite us with a longing for

eternity, it's not Heaven that is lacking; it's our view of resurrection and Heaven. We

hear plenty of sermons on how to get to Heaven, but very few on what it will be like

when we get there. [raise hand] How many of you have ever heard a fulsome teaching on

Heaven? Looks like about a quarter of you. Let's jump in to look at God's promise for

our resurrected bodies.

Job said, "In my flesh I will see God; ... I, and not another" (Job 19:26-27). The

risen Christ, in our gospel reading for today, said, "Look at my hands and feet. It is I

myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have."

The Christian creeds state, "I believe in the resurrection of the body." Even so, many

Christians tend to spiritualize the resurrection of the dead, effectively denying it. Two

thirds of Americans who believe in the resurrection of the dead, also believe that they

will not have bodies after the resurrection. Randy Alcorn says, "This is self-

contradictory. A non-physical resurrection is like a sunless sunrise. There is no such

thing! Resurrection means that we will have bodies. If we didn't have bodies, we would

not be resurrected!" (Heaven, p. 112) The misconception may be a timing problem,

because we don't get our new bodies immediately when we die. More on this in a

moment.

The hope of Easter is that because Christ is raised, so shall we be. Amen? Listen

to what the Bible teaches about our resurrection: "The Lord Jesus Christ ... will transform

our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body" (Philippians 3:20-21).

"Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we

know that when he appears we shall be like him..." (1 John 3:2). "When Jesus appears"

is called the Second Coming, the Parousia, at the last trumpet, at the end of this age,

when he shall return in power to judge the earth. Our hope is in the resurrection of our

bodies at the last day. Our bodies will be glorified like Christ's body was on the first

Easter. (1 Cor. 15) Unless the Lord returns, what will happen to us believers after we

die? What happens to believers after we die, but before the general resurrection at the

Parousia, before God restores Creation, before the New Heaven and the New Earth

promised at the end of the book of Revelation?

If you are a believer who dies before our Lord's return to judge the Earth, then

you will go to be with the Lord in Paradise. You remember the words that Jesus told the

thief on the cross at Luke 23:43 - "Today, you will be with me in Paradise." The word

"Paradise" is a Persian word, meaning a walled park or an enclosed garden. It was used to

describe the great walled gardens of the Persian king Cyprus' royal palaces. In the Greek

Old Testament, called the Septuagint, the same word is used to describe the Garden of

Eden. Paradise is not nature in the wild, but the beauty of nature under the orderly

dominion of man. Friends, when we die, we'll be in Paradise! It'll be like the Garden of

Eden, walking with God in the cool of the day, all our needs met. It'll be like retiring at

age 30 to explore Hawaii, with no flight delays between islands, and never getting age

spots from the sun! Remember, God did not destroy Eden it was removed to a realm

where humans can no longer gain access to it, not until we die. According to Revelation

2:7, the Tree of Life still is at the center of Paradise.

So when believers die in this age, but before the resurrection at the return of

Christ, our souls or spirits will go to Paradise. Our bodies go to the ground or to the

crematorium, awaiting the resurrection at the last day, when our spirits and bodies will be

reunited as a new glorified body. This time period is called the "intermediate state," when

the souls of the dead abide in Paradise, also called the present heaven. While it may be

hard to imagine what it is like for our spirits to wait for our bodies to be restored, Paul

says to die now is "better by far" than this life. It's Paradise; it's a state of conscious

awareness and bliss think of Lazarus being comforted at Abraham's bosom. It may be

that we have some sort of intermediate physical form as we await the final resurrection.

After all, Lazarus was recognizable to the rich man in some kind of body. Moses and

Elijah at the Mount of Transfiguration were recognizable in some kind of bodily form.

The white-robed martyrs (in Revelation 6:9-11 who are told by God to wait longer for the

final number of martyrs to be killed on earth) suggest the possibility of some sort of

physical form, since disembodied spirits presumably don't wear clothes. (Alcorn, p. 66)

After the final judgment, the Scripture says God will restore creation, so believers

will live in a new Heaven and a new Earth, which will be joined together. We'll consider

more about what the New Heaven will be like later in this series. For today, we'll look at

our resurrection bodies.

Paul is clear in 1 Corinthians 15 that the resurrection will overcome the curse on

creation from Adam's sin. Our present bodies are perishable, corrupted, and weak. But at

the last trumpet, the perishable will put on the imperishable, and death will be swallowed

up in victory. Death, disease, and the deterioration of aging are the products of the Fall.

Because there was no death before the Fall, presumably Adam and Eve's original bodies

were either indestructible - like Superman; or self-repairing - like who? The X-man,

Wolverine. (Alcorn, p. 123) I love the parts in the X-man movies where Wolverine gets

wounded, and you see his wound close up, perfectly healed, in about five seconds. Now is

Heaven is starting to look more cool?

Our new bodies will be beautiful, more glorious than Adam and Eve, says Alcorn

(p. 289-290) "The most beautiful person you've ever seen is still under the curse, and a

shadow of the beauty that once characterized humanity. If you were to see Adam or Eve

as they were in Eden, they would likely take your breath away. " If Adam and Eve before

the Fall were somehow to get a look at you and me now, they'd likely be shocked at how

degenerate, how pale and weak and twisted, we appear to them. We won't all look alike,

like the commercial from Levi's where everyone goes onto a machine and comes out

looking like the same models from GQ and Vogue. Alcorn thinks that naturally thin

people will still look thin, and the naturally thick will still look thick, the tall will still be

tall, and the short will be short. But all these sizes will be healthy and appealing,

untouched by the Curse, and we'll all be perfectly happy with the form God designed for

us. Some people consider this topic of the nature of our resurrected bodies to be

unspiritual, but not St. Augustine of Hippo. In The City of God, he says "The body shall

be of that size which it either had attained or should have attained in the flower of its

youth." We won't be insecure about our bodies, nor will we be arrogant about them. We

won't have to try to look beautiful we will be beautiful.

Charles de Gaulle was a famous French WWII soldier, later President of France.

Charles and Evonne de Gaulle were the parents of a severely mentally handicapped child

named Anne. She was a treasure and a great concern to them both. No matter how bad

things were in France, Charles and Evonne would always make time together with their

daughter. After they had put her to bed, Evonne would often ask, "Charles, why couldn't

she have been like the others?" Anne died at age 20. The family held a private graveside

service. After the priest had pronounced the benediction, everyone began to leave,

everyone except Evonne. Charles went back to her and said, "Come, Evonne. Did you not

hear the blessing of the priest? Now she is like all the others."

This is the promise and the power of the resurrection: No matter how lame, or

wounded, or painful your life is now, if you know Jesus - then one day, you will receive a

new, powerful and beautiful body -and mind- that are free from sickness. You will be so

healthy-looking and healthy-feeling that you may just shine like Jesus did at the

transfiguration, or Moses did when coming down from the mountain. You'll have time to

learn anything you want, and your memory will be so good you'll remember it all. (Oh -

Did I already cover that?)

I imagine that you'll have all of eternity to learn how to shoot a basketball like

Stephen Curry, sing like Andrea Bocelli or Darlene Zschech, or just fish by the sea for

the sheer pleasure of it all. (You'll also be able to pronounce, and spell, "Zschech," no

problem!) You'll be in a physical place, in a physical body that will be recognizably you,

but without all your physical limitations, so you can sing like Bocelli or Zschech and

shoot hoops like Curry. You'll be with Jesus. This is the Christian hope. This Easter

season, let's look forward to our new bodies. Amen?