New You

Saint Paul pointed toward the continuity and discontinuity between seed and plant. Obviously, the potentiality of the oak is in the acorn, but the oak tree that rises from the acorn looks different from the acorn. Remember, that might hint, too, at why after Christ's resurrection, his disciples kept on not recognizing him even as the wounds revealed his body to be the exact same one that was nailed to the tree. And that led St. Paul to talk about differences in bodies and so in glory because, at the general resurrection, we won't all be the same; we will all be raised, true, but each will be given his or her own glory commensurate with the faithful use God's good gifts to us in this age.

He who is seated on the throne that is, the one who has all authority in heaven and on earth, our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who makes all things new. That's not the same thing as making new things and included in that all things is you. This is the fundamental truth about the resurrection. Jesus does not craft a new you; he makes the real you, the old you new. You are truly raised in your body, but in such a way that sin no longer inheres.

It's all beyond our puny minds' ability to figure it out. But we rest assured, He who created and sustained all things by His powerful word will have no difficulty at all in accomplishing this. And with the same old you suddenly made new, there also will be the whole family of the redeemed made new, and the place in which we are to live with Jesus forever made new.

-Pr. Will Weedon

Resurrection Of The Body

 "I believe in... the resurrection of the body..."

What does it mean that a person is saved? Often people think of that purely as my soul being saved. Someday I will go to heaven and float around with the angels on the clouds or something like that. The whole thing is sort of ethereal, disconnected from physical reality, and the body ceases to matter. But the way the Bible speaks about salvation is we are saved holistically, which means we are saved not just spiritually but as whole people, our bodies, and our spirits, which make up a living soul.

One way to think of humanity is as we stand in a unique place. On the one hand, in creation, we have creatures that are purely physical, animal, or plant; they are just a body, and there is no spirit involved. On the other hand, we have purely spiritual creatures: angels and demons. Mankind stands in between in a unique place. We are what Saint Augustine calls embodied spirits.

Chrysostom, writing at the end of the fourth century, concurs, "Thus when you hear that God breathed into Adams face the breath of life, understand that just as He brought forth bodiless powers, i.e., angels, so also He was pleased that the body of man created out of dust should have a rational soul who could make use of the bodily members." Therefore, we dare not separate body and spirit, for we have to begin to think of ourselves holistically as living souls with both body and spirit.

-Pr. David Kind