In the 19th century, there was a trend of fear of being buried alive, mistaken for being dead. An entire industry of “safety coffins” with bells and other mechanisms to avoid burying someone alive sprang up. This story is a window into our relationship with death.
What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to be dead? Plato believed that it was a return to the pre-incarnate collective mind. Others believed in soul-sleep, annihilation or reincarnation. The two things all these views have in common is that your personhood is lost once your body dies, and that your body and soul are separate things.
Orthodox Christianity, though, teaches that God created humans to live forever in bodies. Unfortunately, much of these other concepts have crept into Christianity. We think more about “going to heaven” than we do about the resurrection of the dead. We think about a spiritual heaven, but usually with the implication of bodily things (taste, touch, emotions, etc.).
These sorts of confusions crept in early and helped lead to a number of early heresies about the nature of Christ’s relationship with God, including Adoptionism and Docetism. The latter in particular rejects the idea that Christ died and rose again. In this passage, Paul makes clear that Christ was in fact a man made of flesh and bone and DNA, a counterpart of Adam, who lived and died just like Adam, but who rose again to break Adam’s curse.
The Word became flesh, it did not just put on a layer of flesh. Christ then died, and did not just put on a dumb-show of death, and then truly raised.
The logical Corinthians believed this, but struggled with the notion that people themselves would physically resurrect. They were tempted by a philosophy that said their spirit would raise, not their bodies. But if a physical resurrection is illogical, then so is Christ’s physical resurrection. And if that didn’t happen, then we see all in trouble. All the apostles who saw Him were lying. If Christ didn’t rise, we have no proof that Christ’s sacrifice was accepted, and we are all still in our sins.
But that’s not what’s happening, Paul says. Christ’s resurrection, in fact, is the beginning of story, the “first fruits” of a much greater harvest, the remaking of creation into a new heaven and new earth, where we will live in resurrected bodies. Death and Satan will be destroyed, and everyone will acknowledge Christ as Lord.
The vision God has for our future is not that we can be free from our bodies and free from this corrupted earth, but that we will live forever in better bodies and a better earth.
What does this mean for us? It means we should treat our bodies well, because we are our bodies. They are not simply shells, but they are us. The female body (and male, for that matter) is not shameful. How we treat our bodies matters, and we can sin against our bodies. Who we are starts right now, both physically and spiritually. How we treat other people’s bodies also matters, so the work done to heal, rebuild, maintain and preserve bodies and health is a vital thing. The church, too often, has taken a gnostic view of the body, prioritizing the spiritual only and neglecting physical needs.
All this brings up lots of other questions, many of which we and Paul will address next week.
– Sermon Notes, Brent Rood, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA
1 Corinthians 15:12-28
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