Raised in Glory

Among all the things that Christians are called to believe, perhaps none seems as far-fetched, to unbelievers, as the belief that a Christian's body---a body that has no signs of life, a body that is placed in the earth to degenerate, or that has been lost at sea, or consumed in flames, will one day rise again! Even some of the new Christians in the Church of Corinth had trouble believing it. But as Paul makes it clear in this section, "What you plant is not made alive unless it dies." The new oak tree will not spring forth until the acorn is detached and buried---cut off from its life-support system. As one Christian scholar put it, "Death, so far from being an obstacle to quickening, is its very prerequisite."

This message deals with the glorious truth of the resurrection that is awaiting every true believer---when our soul, already in glory, is reunited with its old friend, the body in which it once dwelt. But the new body will be glorious, powerful, incorruptible and spiritual. As the first body was patterned after that of the first man, Adam, our second body will be patterned after the "second man," Jesus Christ.