Life Anew

Grandma Karen was the best. Christmases, Easters, birthdays—our family always crammed into her small house, overflowing with food, card games, and presents that made our parents’ eyes roll. Cousin sleepovers were legendary: popcorn, treats, fun outings, rental movies, and late nights that ended by snuggling up for Bible stories before bed. Our family life orbited around Grandma Karen’s small house and huge heart. And then she got sick. There was a long stay at the hospital. And then, Thanksgiving, 2011, Grandma died. She was an energetic 68-year-old when death robbed us. She missed weddings, grandchildren, and countless gatherings. Death stole her future, and piece of our lives disappeared. Death makes you feel cheated, like life owed you more, and you can never get it back.

That’s the trap, isn’t it? To live like you have to squeeze every last drop out of this life because it’s all we get. To indulge in every comfort, chase every fleeting moment, hoard every experience—fearing that death will snatch it all away. That “sponge-squeezing” approach to life is similar to the mindset of some of the Corinthians. They believed in Jesus. They believed He rose from the dead. They believed that in their baptism, they had been joined to the resurrection of Jesus and that they had the new life He had won for them by His cross. What they did not believe was in the future, bodily resurrection. They believed instead that Jesus died and rose to give them the fullness of resurrection life in this life only, and only in a “spiritual” way. They were puffed up, arrogant in their new spiritual life; no sin could condemn them. And since the resurrection was only a present spiritual reality, not a future bodily promise, it meant the physical didn’t matter, and it also didn’t matter what activities they did with their bodies or what material vices they indulged in.

The Corinthians only had it half right. They were right that baptism gave them spiritual life from Jesus now, but it also promised them a resurrected, physical body in the future. “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead,” Paul tells them, “[He is] the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” If you deny the resurrection of your body, you deny Christ. If there’s no resurrection, no continuation of your life, then Christ died and rose for nothing.

Paul compares your current body and life to a seed: When you bury a seed, a new plant sprouts forth, something far more beautiful and complex than the original seed. It's still wheat from a wheat seed, or a sunflower from a sunflower seed – it’s the same plant – but it’s transformed, glorified. Our resurrected bodies will be like that – the same earthly bodies that were buried, but transformed, glorified, and freed from decay and death, perfectly suited for eternity. If you’re investing in this life as if it’s all you’ve got—all you’re seeing is the seed. The flower’s coming! God created a beautiful, vast, and complex array of bodies in this world: beetles to birds and alligators and dinosaurs and lions, tigers, and bears, human beings, and even the sun and stars and galaxies. If He can do all that, imagine what He can do when He raises your body from the dead! Martin Luther imagines that the resurrected body “will be so strong that with one finger it will be able to carry this church, with one toe it will be able to move a tower and play with a mountain as children play with a ball. And in the twinkling of an eye it will be able to leap to the clouds or traverse a hundred miles.” Whatever our resurrected bodies will be capable of, the spiritual life that you have now in Christ will blossom into physical, eternal life on the Last Day.

If we actually believe what we say when we say we believe “in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come”, then we that means we don’t have to squeeze out of life every ounce of pleasure and comfort and fulfilment and special moments. It’s not that this life doesn’t matter. Quite the opposite! We just embrace this life differently: our lives are so sacred that Jesus died and rose to make them eternal! So, we don’t squander this life; instead, we can do crazy things, sacred things, like what Jesus says: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you,” Who in this world would ever give up their only shot at life to do things like that? Well, only someone who believes this isn’t the only shot at life. When we believe in the future resurrection of the body, we have life anew now: we can afford to be generous, forgiving, and make sacrifices for the sake of the poor, and even for our enemies.

Unless Christ returns first, we will all die. Death is the “last enemy.” Jesus treats it as such. Christianity does not turn death into a good thing; it’s not a “doorway” to eternal life. Jesus doesn’t give death that dignity. Jesus is the doorway to eternal life, and He snatches you from the jaws of death. When your body dies, you still have a spiritual life and you will be in the presence of Christ. But when Christ returns, your death will be in every way undone, reversed, conquered and completely rendered void. Your same body will rise from the dirt in which it was planted and it will blossom into glorious resurrection life.

I watched as my Grandma Karen’s casket was closed and buried into her resting place. And I miss her. But you know what? She was baptized, and that means she has life anew in Jesus. Those who are in Christ never miss out on anything. Death cannot rob us of anything. God gives us some really wonderful things in this life. But nothing in this life can hold a candle to what we will experience in the life of the world to come. This life is just the seed and it will blossom into the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. In Christ, the best is yet to come. When I see Jesus returning from the clouds, I’m going to see Grandma Karen again.