Called to Be Human: Why Jesus still has a body and we will have a new one at his return
It is easy to equate being human with being mortal. All we have known is embodied living that is prone to dying. As we get older we find our “true selves” wishing our bodies would cooperate more, but they don’t. Sooner or later our bodies will give out and die. And that seems normal. That’s what human bodies are supposed to do in our fallen world. But what about us? What happens to us when we die?
The Human Condition
There are different ways people have answered that question. For some, humans are no more and no less than the collection of physical cells that makeup their bodies. Until science delivers on some mechanism that can defeat physical death people will just die out when their bodies die.
Other people say that human identity is tied to an immaterial soul that lives on after the physical body dies. Versions of this idea in the past considered the entire material world to be a cheap copy of the true reality of things in the spiritual realm. These people likened the human physical body to a prison cell and the human soul to its prisoner. Death was not necessarily a bad thing, because it allowed a sweet release from a diminished form of life. For they thought embodied human living was a deficient form of human living.
In between these two extremes are several other positions, including many understandings within the Christian faith. The reason there is no single Christian version of what it means to be human is because the heart of the Christian faith is a story about humanity’s fall and God’s redemption of it. Because of humanity’s fall every human is affected by sin’s penalty, death. Death comes in many forms, including disease, deformity, violence, rape, and so on. When all we know and see is fallen humanity, it feels like an oxymoron to say “fallen human” and just say “human” instead. To be “human,” in this sense, is to be mortal, sinful, and in need of salvation.
The Human Savior
When we see God’s plan for redeeming fallen humanity, though, we quickly have to change our mind about what it means to be human. For God himself in the person of the Son took on our human nature in order to redeem it. He defeated sin, death, and the Devil by himself dying and being raised again to new life. And make no mistake; he was raised to a new kind of human life, embodied and all. To be sure, his embodied life after his resurrection is different than the embodied life he lived before his death. Sometimes he was not recognized, while other times he was (Luke 24:16 and 36). Even though he could still eat and drink, he was able to appear in locked rooms without opening the door (Luke 24:42-43 and John 20:19). His appearance after he ascended also seems to have changed some, when he appears to Stephen and Paul in Acts and later to John in Revelation (Acts 7:56; 22:6-9; Rev 5). He is forever living as our high priest (Heb 7:23-28). His resurrection is still the firstfruit of our future resurrections, which means that our resurrections will correspond to his (1 Cor 15:23). As Paul says in the present tense after Jesus rose again, “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). He is all this and more because he is still human, an embodied human, and being an embodied human is a glorious thing. When Paul describes what God has done in Christ he concludes with glorified humans (Rom 8:30).
The Human Hope
Paul’s comment makes more sense when it is placed within the context of God’s greater story of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. When we focus on what precedes our fall and what will happen after our redemption, a rather clear picture of what it means to be human emerges. When God created humans each human being had a body. No human had an unembodied beginning; the Genesis accounts even have God forming bodies first before breathing life into his new creations (Gen 2:7, 21-22). Humanity, bodies and all, has the unique status of being made in God’s own image and likeness (Gen 1:26-27). Likewise, when Jesus reveals to John what God’s kingdom will look like in eternity it is described as a physical city with physical streets, gates, rivers, and trees (Rev 21:9-22:5). It will be like the Garden of Eden was, only better. Likewise the humans God has redeemed will be like Adam and Eve were in the garden, only better. Our future hope is an embodied future hope, for God’s good creation will not be destroyed, but rather it will be refined.
The Human Future
Until the future resurrection day comes, Scripture reveals that there is such a thing as a deficient state of humanity. Theologians call it an “intermediate state” between death today and resurrection in the future. In the intermediate state human souls live deficiently without bodies. These souls are conscious and even recognizable as ghostly figures or spirits (e.g. 1 Sam 28:11-19; Acts 12:15; Rev 20:4). There is life after death, and, as N. T. Wright likes to say, resurrection is “life after life after death.” And resurrection, not just the intermediate state, is our Christian hope.
I cannot say for sure what our future resurrection will be like. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul calls Christ a life-giving Spirit. Paul then likens our earthly body to a seed planted and our resurrected body to a plant springing up. He refers to our life now as earthly and our resurrected life as heavenly. He says our bodies now are natural while our future bodies will be spiritual. He even says perishable flesh and blood cannot enter God’s kingdom, so the resurrection will be something imperishable. This language has led some to think that Paul believed in a non-physical resurrection, but throughout the New Testament Paul overwhelmingly uses the word “spiritual” to refer to God’s Holy Spirit. The embodied Jesus distributes the Spirit and our future bodies will be animated by God’s Spirit to the point at which there will no longer be an ugly difference between what we desire and what we worship.
Paul’s description of the resurrection may reasonably lead readers to think in terms of differences rather than continuity between our embodied life now and our future resurrection. However, Paul no where denies that Jesus rose from the dead bodily and that he remains embodied as the firstfruits of our bodily resurrection. Given Paul’s Jewish background, the firstfruits feast celebrated the first of the harvest in hopes of more abundance of that same harvest to follow. Had Paul thought our resurrection would be non-physical, it would make little sense for him to refer to Jesus’ bodily resurrection as the “firstfruit” for our own.
Jesus became fully human when he was conceived and remains fully human even today, and that is a glorious thing! Michael Jinkins says the Christian life is a call to be fully human, just like Jesus. Ancient Christians had a saying: what Jesus is by nature he shares with us by grace. We have much to lament in this fallen world, including how short we fall from our full potential as God’s image-bearers, but do not let that lament overshadow the good news of salvation, which ends with a new creation, including new bodies. It can be a little daunting to think of living forever, maybe even scary, but God promises it will be good. I know he’s right!
The Human Condition
There are different ways people have answered that question. For some, humans are no more and no less than the collection of physical cells that makeup their bodies. Until science delivers on some mechanism that can defeat physical death people will just die out when their bodies die.
Other people say that human identity is tied to an immaterial soul that lives on after the physical body dies. Versions of this idea in the past considered the entire material world to be a cheap copy of the true reality of things in the spiritual realm. These people likened the human physical body to a prison cell and the human soul to its prisoner. Death was not necessarily a bad thing, because it allowed a sweet release from a diminished form of life. For they thought embodied human living was a deficient form of human living.
In between these two extremes are several other positions, including many understandings within the Christian faith. The reason there is no single Christian version of what it means to be human is because the heart of the Christian faith is a story about humanity’s fall and God’s redemption of it. Because of humanity’s fall every human is affected by sin’s penalty, death. Death comes in many forms, including disease, deformity, violence, rape, and so on. When all we know and see is fallen humanity, it feels like an oxymoron to say “fallen human” and just say “human” instead. To be “human,” in this sense, is to be mortal, sinful, and in need of salvation.
The Human Savior
When we see God’s plan for redeeming fallen humanity, though, we quickly have to change our mind about what it means to be human. For God himself in the person of the Son took on our human nature in order to redeem it. He defeated sin, death, and the Devil by himself dying and being raised again to new life. And make no mistake; he was raised to a new kind of human life, embodied and all. To be sure, his embodied life after his resurrection is different than the embodied life he lived before his death. Sometimes he was not recognized, while other times he was (Luke 24:16 and 36). Even though he could still eat and drink, he was able to appear in locked rooms without opening the door (Luke 24:42-43 and John 20:19). His appearance after he ascended also seems to have changed some, when he appears to Stephen and Paul in Acts and later to John in Revelation (Acts 7:56; 22:6-9; Rev 5). He is forever living as our high priest (Heb 7:23-28). His resurrection is still the firstfruit of our future resurrections, which means that our resurrections will correspond to his (1 Cor 15:23). As Paul says in the present tense after Jesus rose again, “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). He is all this and more because he is still human, an embodied human, and being an embodied human is a glorious thing. When Paul describes what God has done in Christ he concludes with glorified humans (Rom 8:30).
The Human Hope
Paul’s comment makes more sense when it is placed within the context of God’s greater story of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. When we focus on what precedes our fall and what will happen after our redemption, a rather clear picture of what it means to be human emerges. When God created humans each human being had a body. No human had an unembodied beginning; the Genesis accounts even have God forming bodies first before breathing life into his new creations (Gen 2:7, 21-22). Humanity, bodies and all, has the unique status of being made in God’s own image and likeness (Gen 1:26-27). Likewise, when Jesus reveals to John what God’s kingdom will look like in eternity it is described as a physical city with physical streets, gates, rivers, and trees (Rev 21:9-22:5). It will be like the Garden of Eden was, only better. Likewise the humans God has redeemed will be like Adam and Eve were in the garden, only better. Our future hope is an embodied future hope, for God’s good creation will not be destroyed, but rather it will be refined.
The Human Future
Until the future resurrection day comes, Scripture reveals that there is such a thing as a deficient state of humanity. Theologians call it an “intermediate state” between death today and resurrection in the future. In the intermediate state human souls live deficiently without bodies. These souls are conscious and even recognizable as ghostly figures or spirits (e.g. 1 Sam 28:11-19; Acts 12:15; Rev 20:4). There is life after death, and, as N. T. Wright likes to say, resurrection is “life after life after death.” And resurrection, not just the intermediate state, is our Christian hope.
I cannot say for sure what our future resurrection will be like. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul calls Christ a life-giving Spirit. Paul then likens our earthly body to a seed planted and our resurrected body to a plant springing up. He refers to our life now as earthly and our resurrected life as heavenly. He says our bodies now are natural while our future bodies will be spiritual. He even says perishable flesh and blood cannot enter God’s kingdom, so the resurrection will be something imperishable. This language has led some to think that Paul believed in a non-physical resurrection, but throughout the New Testament Paul overwhelmingly uses the word “spiritual” to refer to God’s Holy Spirit. The embodied Jesus distributes the Spirit and our future bodies will be animated by God’s Spirit to the point at which there will no longer be an ugly difference between what we desire and what we worship.
Paul’s description of the resurrection may reasonably lead readers to think in terms of differences rather than continuity between our embodied life now and our future resurrection. However, Paul no where denies that Jesus rose from the dead bodily and that he remains embodied as the firstfruits of our bodily resurrection. Given Paul’s Jewish background, the firstfruits feast celebrated the first of the harvest in hopes of more abundance of that same harvest to follow. Had Paul thought our resurrection would be non-physical, it would make little sense for him to refer to Jesus’ bodily resurrection as the “firstfruit” for our own.
Jesus became fully human when he was conceived and remains fully human even today, and that is a glorious thing! Michael Jinkins says the Christian life is a call to be fully human, just like Jesus. Ancient Christians had a saying: what Jesus is by nature he shares with us by grace. We have much to lament in this fallen world, including how short we fall from our full potential as God’s image-bearers, but do not let that lament overshadow the good news of salvation, which ends with a new creation, including new bodies. It can be a little daunting to think of living forever, maybe even scary, but God promises it will be good. I know he’s right!
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