1 Corinthians 15:35-49
35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39 Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40 There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41 The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.
42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”[f]; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we[g]bear the image of the heavenly man.
“Will I still have my tattoos in heaven?” I remember someone at church asking me. I had just told him that the promise of the Bible is not so much that we will die and go to Heaven to be with the angels on streets made of gold for eternity. It is that we will be resurrected and that there will be a new heaven and a new earth, where we will live and be in unity with each other and with God. Which raises the question, what will it be like when we are resurrected? In what ways will we be the same and in what ways will we be different?
Paul describes our current bodies as being like a seed. If you imagine a seed, it is small and dull. However, there is incredible life that is waiting to burst from it when it has been buried in the ground. The husk of the seed is left aside so that something new and beautiful can grow. This is how he sees us. We have bodies and yet, they are husks containing our spiritual centres. When we are resurrected, we will be spiritual and will be glorious in a different kind of way.
He says that we will imperishable, filled with glory and with power. We were born in the image of Adam but will be reborn in the image of Christ. All our flaws and brokenness will fall away and we will be made new.
How does this make you feel about eternity?
