1 Corinthians 15: Part 5 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. Welcome to Friday.

You know, each weekday morning this week, we’ve been going through 1 Corinthians chapter 15 in the Bible and looking at the resurrection of Jesus and what it means to us. And yesterday we saw this beautiful truth that Paul points out that Jesus, the fact he died and rose from the dead, gives us this assurance, death is not the end, right?

That this life, this earthly life, is not even the main event, it’s just the warm up that the real thing is our eternal life with God in, in the afterlife.

And that is because the resurrection of Jesus shows us death is not the end. There is life after that. Our spirits continue on, and that Jesus, being raised in a physical body, assures us that when Jesus returns, we also will be united with a resurrection body and live forever with the Lord.

Well, there’s some interesting questions that come to our mind. Paul brings it up in verse 35. He says, But someone will ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? What will that resurrection body be like if this body we have now is a fallen, broken body because of the sin that’s in the world that broke the world? What will our resurrection body be like?

He says, You foolish person. What you sow into the ground as a seed does not come to life unless it dies, and what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel perhaps of wheat or some other grain, but God gives it a body as He has chosen. And isn’t that right? You put this little seed in the ground. It’s such a poor representation of what it’s going to be. That’s the same with these physical bodies we have now. Nothing like the glory of our resurrection bodies.

A little bit later on, Paul says, so it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown, what we bury when a person dies, is perishable. What is raised is imperishable.

It is sown in dishonour. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

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Thus it is written – The first man Adam became a living being. The last Adam, referring to Jesus, the Father of this new humanity, of those who have trusted in Christ, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, Adam, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.

Just as we have borne the image of Adam, the man of dust, we shall also bear the image that is the likeness in our resurrection bodies of the man of heaven, Jesus. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, that is, Christ will return before everyone dies, but we shall all be changed whether you’ve died and been buried or whether you’re still alive when Christ returns. As a believer, we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed, for this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. And when the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

Oh death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

I’m John North.

To go deeper in your faith, visit AFCI.com.au.

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