Sunday School | Jesus Raises the Dead

Welcome back. We're in a long-form series, macro kind of theology, and we're almost at the end of our Christology section. Right now we've been looking at the final piece of the work of Christ—his ultimate return. He's going to return to the earth to raise the dead and restore all things. We're going to talk about his resurrection today. But first, as often happens, we have a little bit of a mess to clean up from last week.

We were talking about his return, and I got a fantastic email that was so interesting that I wanted to share it with you guys and then talk about it. It reminds me that while I'm always happy to get an email after class about something we can discuss, you might—I don't know—perhaps at some point want to have a private conversation instead of a public one. I am always down for a public conversation. If there's something I'm talking about that you don't understand or you're curious about, I feel like this class lives on tangents. It's most fun and most engaging when you guys are given some direction for where we want to go. So I'm happy to answer this email that I got, but I would've also loved to talk about it live with you guys last week. Never be afraid to ask me a question, and if I don't know, I'll tell you that I don't know.

Here was the question. It was about last week's class: "We've read 1 Thessalonians 4:15-16 several times in class lately, and I'm intrigued by Paul's knowledge of how the coming of the Lord will play out, specifically that the dead will rise first. Are these details coming directly from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, from visions that he experienced or when he went to heaven, or from his extensive knowledge and understanding of Old Testament writings, or is it all of the above?"

So the question is: sometimes Paul is explaining things and you're like, that's not specialized knowledge, it's just wisdom, right? Or sometimes he'll explain an Old Testament passage, and he's just a competent exegete of the Old Testament scriptures. But sometimes it's like he's got knowledge that would not be intuitive—knowledge that perhaps is not derivative of information. Where does that come from? How did Paul know all the stuff that he's explaining in 1 Thessalonians 4?

Exploring the sources of Paul's knowledge

I asked the class: what do you guys think? Do you want to take a stab at 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17? How does he know?

Gil suggested: "I would assume that maybe there's something in the Old Testament."

Okay, so Gil likes the theory that maybe it's Old Testament. And maybe it is, but if that is the case, then we should be able to source it, right? Does the Old Testament say that when Jesus returns, the dead in Christ are going to rise first? No. Does the Old Testament say that there'll be a resurrection from the dead? Yes. Daniel 12:1-2 is probably the clearest passage, but Paul goes beyond the limits of Daniel 12.

Robin pointed out: "There's a period of time after Paul's conversion and after he's gone to Jerusalem where he goes away with the Lord for like, I think it's like three years."

Actually, fourteen years. And he's directly trained by Christ. So Robin's pointing out that Paul describes an extended period of time before his ministry really began in earnest—he went away and had this private training time. So maybe he learned something not from the Old Testament, but direct private revelation from Jesus. That's also a good theory.

Another person said: "Well, I mean, he says that he got this by a word from the Lord."

Okay, this is a really important clue. So let me read that out loud. Verse 15:

"We declare to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive or left until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep." — 1 Thessalonians 4:15

This is really important. What do you think that means?

"My understanding of that is that it is just kind of a divine revelation to Paul. That is a word from the Lord—that God gave him that understanding, divine."

Yes, okay. This is absolutely one of the possibilities. Let me kind of broaden that into three things that might be the right answer. Here's how it looks in the NIV version of verse 15:

"According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive who are left to the coming of the Lord will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep." — 1 Thessalonians 4:15 (NIV)

No question—Paul is citing the Lord. How does Paul know this? Jesus said so. That's his answer. But within that, I think there are probably three possible sub-expressions of that. It might mean that he's quoting the Gospels.

He might be saying, "Hey, this is in Matthew, dummy." Right? That's the Lord's own word—the red letters of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Okay, it could be that.

Number two, it could be exactly what DFP is saying, which is a private revelation. And Paul absolutely has private direct revelation.

And there's a third category that might not be familiar to you. You might not realize that this is such a thing, but it probably is. There was, in addition to our written Gospels, an almost certainly verbal, audible, oral tradition of things that Jesus taught before they wrote it down.

Okay, so just imagine it's AD 33. Jesus is dead. He's raised from the dead. The New Testament isn't going to begin to be written for like 20 years, okay? And in that whole window of time, when it says in Acts 2:42 that the people devoted themselves to—remember the four things they devoted themselves to?

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and to prayer. — Acts 2:42

Do you remember that phrase? When it says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, do you know what the apostles were teaching? What Jesus taught, okay?

So before it got written down and codified in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, there was the apostles' teaching. We're having this conversation with Jesus, we're walking on the road, and he said, "Behold, whatever the flowers or the birds or the farmer who sowed his seed." They're telling the stories that Jesus told. So there was this verbal tradition, and some of it—but not all of it—got written down. And it shouldn't be shocking to you that Jesus said a whole bunch of things that weren't written down, right?

John even makes that explicit. He's like, "Listen, man, we don't have time to write down everything that he said and did, okay?"

So it could be that Paul is referring to something that got codified in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. And if so, what would have been Paul's favorite gospel? Do you know? Not Matthew. Not John. Two more. Luke. Why Luke? Do you know why Paul would love Luke? Because he loved Luke, because he knew Luke. Luke was with him for half of the book of Acts, right? He's traveling around. Luke is there—whenever the pronoun switched from "they" to "we," it's because Paul and Luke are friends. And so he would be very familiar with Luke's research and Luke's writings, which is why the only gospel that Paul directly cites is the gospel of Luke.

And look at First Timothy. In First Timothy 5:18, Paul says:

For the scripture says, "Do not muzzle the ox while it's treading out the grain." — 1 Timothy 5:18

There he's citing the Pentateuch, which is straight up Jewish scripture. But then he says—and this is fascinating:

For the scripture says, "Do not muzzle the ox while it's treading out the grain, and the worker deserves his wages." — 1 Timothy 5:18

The phrase "the worker deserves his wages" does not occur anywhere in the Old Testament—only in Luke. He's just taken his friend's writing—Luke, his buddy Luke—and equated it to the writings of Moses. Isn't that fascinating? He's citing Luke 10:7.

Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. — Luke 10:7

That's Jesus. He's saying, don't move around from house to house.

So there's one instance of Paul directly citing Luke's gospel and equating it to the writings of Moses. But then there's another place where he does this weird thing where he talks about something that the Lord said that has no clear antecedent. It's in First Corinthians. He does it a couple times.

Go to First Corinthians 7:10.

To the married I give this command—not I, but the Lord—a wife must not separate from her husband. — 1 Corinthians 7:10

He's saying the Lord, and by the way, whenever Paul says "the Lord," he's always talking about Jesus. He calls the Father "God," he calls Jesus "the Lord." This is very consistent. So he's saying that Jesus said this, and we're like, "I don't know exactly where he said that, right?"

And then later on in First Corinthians 9, he's going to say:

In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel. — 1 Corinthians 9

Curiously, that's very much like "You don't muzzle the ox while it's treading out the grain." It's interesting.

And then 1 Corinthians 11, he says this:

For what I received from the Lord, I also pass on to you. The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed, took bread. — 1 Corinthians 11

That language feels more constrained to direct revelation, right? For what I received from the Lord. So Paul has all of these things. He has a private conversation with Jesus that he's allowed to cite. He's got things that he's read in the Old Testament, he's got things he's read in the New Testament, and he would certainly have been familiar with the apostles' teaching. So how does Paul know this? I don't know, but it's something within that spectrum. One of these things. Does that make sense? Okay, Gil.

[Audience question about "we" in Acts and Luke's involvement]

Okay, so Gil is asking—I made this comment about the book of Acts that uses the word "we." Bear in mind, Acts is not written by Paul, it's written by Luke. And so Luke is sometimes going to say they went here and they did that, and Luke is going to sometimes say we went here and we did that, and you can trace it. Luke shows up and he travels this far and then he splits off, and then they keep going and he's describing it. So sometimes Luke narrates what they were doing, and sometimes he narrates what he was doing along with them. But then Paul alludes to Luke the man. Where does he do it? Second Timothy 4, I think, he talks about Luke. You could search for the word Luke. You might find the Gospel of Luke, but Paul is definitely his travel companion, for sure.

[Jesus as an itinerant preacher]

There were a couple of other hands that popped up. John?

Well, one of the things about everything Jesus didn't say ending up in one of the Synoptic Gospels is that Jesus is an itinerant preacher. He probably said the same thing on multiple occasions to multiple different audiences. He traveled from village to village.

Okay, yes, for the sake of everybody in the back—John's just pointing out that Jesus is an itinerant preacher and so he says the same thing over and over again. It's kind of like Ronald Reagan. It's easier to change your audience than your message. Jesus is saying the same thing in multiple places. Why is that relevant to what we're talking about?

Oh, it might be slightly different. Didn't get recorded? Yes. Some of the things that were recorded probably he said, maybe all of them.

So given the fact that Jesus is an itinerant—he's saying the same talk three different times or twelve different times—not only might they appear in different versions, maybe Matthew's recording the version that he gave in one place and Luke is recording the version that he gave in another place. It was the same talk. If you came to first service and second service, they're going to be different sermons. So it could be that. And then probably the stuff that tends to get recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke was the stuff that he said most often, that was most salient, that was most important. But there's plenty of things that he said that just didn't get recorded.

[God using weakness and lowliness]

Okay, Jerry?

I've got another spin on this. Paul considers himself the worst of the worst.

Yeah.

So it almost parallels with the sermon this morning because if God used him while he considered himself the worst of the worst of sinners, and that he could never do enough to turn that around, that's probably why God put him in the position that he did—just to prove that.

No question. And that's Paul's—so Jerry, if you weren't here for the first service, we're going to be looking at Philippians 2, where Jesus goes to the lowest place and is exalted to the highest place. God likes to work with us in our weakness, in our lowliness, in our powerlessness. And he chooses the guy that ends up being—I mean, maybe somebody has been a greater evangelist than Paul, maybe there's somebody better than Paul, but I don't know who it is. Paul is exceptional, and God chooses him from nothing. Paul describes in First Timothy that he is the chief of sinners. And God uses the lowest of the low to do the greatest good.

And then he's gonna tell the Corinthians, "Look at yourselves. Not many of you are wise. You're a bunch of dumb, unattractive, not very funny. God chose you, right?" If you're a Calvinist and you believe in election and you believe that God chose you and it makes you arrogant, you don't understand the basis of his choice. He likes the losers, that's the deal. Welcome to Christianity, right? And that's how the game works.

I just did this quick search. Luke gets referenced in Colossians 4, "our dear friend Luke, the doctor." Second Timothy 4, "only Luke is with me," and then Philemon, he calls Luke his fellow worker, so he gets a bunch of mentions.

Q&A: Oracles and Biblical References

Dan asks if the term "oracle" is just Old Testament. I think oracle probably just means a message, and it gets borrowed sometime from pagan language, I think. The messenger, yeah—I don't know about the word oracle, but it sounds like I'm just gonna be babbling nonsense.

Joe brings up: "I've got choosing the loser. I was thinking that sometimes we just don't know that we are the loser, and that the word says,

You think you're rich and have need of nothing, but I say you're rich and poor.

Rich and pitiful, poor blind and naked, yeah. That's right. 'Ask me and I will give you everything you need,' yeah. He likes losers, that's just the deal. So that's how it works.

Michael asks about two secondary pieces that may connect to the three options. Peter's reference to the Holy Spirit moving on men—was that only Old Testament, or could he have been referring to his fellow workers where we get the inspiration that got breathed? And then Paul, what about his reference to belief and the Corinthians, where he goes to the third heaven, sees visions, things unspeakable—was he given the thorn? Could he have given, he said he can't say all of it, but could he have gotten a portion of that, like a vision or something?

Absolutely. That would go back to that first category that Dan mentioned—there's direct revelation in some fashion. There's no question that Paul had some direct revelation where he could say, "Hey, this is how it works. Let me show this to you," or however it was. And that might have been some things that are meant for him to pass on to us. It seemed like there's also things that were spontaneous—we mentioned this a couple weeks ago—like when they're going into Philippi and they're setting up the sermon series. Somehow the Holy Spirit stopped them from going to Asia and instead redirected them to Macedonia, and we don't know the particulars of that. But there is direct revelation. He's familiar with the Gospels, or at least Luke's Gospel. He's familiar with the Old Testament writings. He's familiar with the oral tradition. So there's a lot that he could be drawing from when he tells us things that are surprising information to us.

Resurrection

Okay, resurrection—so he's coming back, return. I think we've covered that thoroughly. I want to talk about resurrection. I mentioned this to you last week: What is the central passage in the New Testament about not Jesus' resurrection, but our resurrection? What's the most important passage to understand for that? Do you remember?

First Corinthians 6 to 15.

1 Corinthians 15—that's exactly what we're gonna look at today. We're gonna walk our way through this long and interesting chapter. He begins by talking about Jesus' resurrection, but he's really most interested in talking about yours. He spends way more time on that. This is probably the most thorough explanation of our resurrection, but it is by no means the only one.

You do have it in Daniel 12. Let me show you—we'll go to Daniel 12 for just a second. I think Daniel 12 is probably the earliest mention of this. Let's start in verse two:

Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, those who lead many to righteousness like stars forever and ever. — Daniel 12:2-3

This is it. One day, everyone who has ever lived is going to be raised from the dead. And when they are, there will be an incredibly binary outcome: some will live forever, and the others will be held in contempt forever. That's the fork. Paul's gonna refer to this multiple times throughout his letters.

He brings it up in Acts 23. Paul is kinda getting in a fight with the religious leaders, and it says:

Then Paul, knowing that some of the people were Sadducees and others were Pharisees, he called out in the Sanhedrin, "My brothers, I'm a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. I stand on trial because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead." — Acts 23:6

Again, he's talking about ours, not Jesus's. The Pharisees believed there would be a resurrection; the Sadducees did not. Paul's using that to cause division among them. Later on, verse eight:

The Sadducees say there's no resurrection, neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. — Acts 23:8

In Acts 24, Paul says:

I have the same hope in God as these men, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. — Acts 24:15

Jesus had talked about this in the Gospels in Luke 20:

Jesus said, "Those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage." — Luke 20

In 2 Timothy 2, some had said that the resurrection has already taken place, but it hadn't. In Philippians 3, which we'll see at the end of the summer:

I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead. — Philippians 3:10-11

So it's pervasive. It shows up in the Old Testament, it's Jesus, it's Paul—it shows up all over the place. But the place where it is primarily taught and explained is 1 Corinthians 15. So let's take a look at that. You ready?

The scary thing here is that as we go through 1 Corinthians 15, you might be more confused at the end of it than you are at the beginning. (congregation laughing) He starts the chapter talking about the resurrection of Christ, and we get this creedal kind of framing of it—that He was raised from the dead. They saw Him. We get this very creedal impression. You get the sense that Paul's not just writing this; he's reciting the way that this had begun to be framed in the early church—this statement of faith about His resurrection.

And then he says, in verse 12:

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? — 1 Corinthians 15:12

In a Christian context, everybody's gonna believe in the resurrection. At least they should. You with me? He's gonna argue from the fact of Jesus' resurrection to the future resurrection of you. Here's what he's saying: if Christ has been raised from the dead, well then how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? Which is to say, there are people in that community saying, "Ah, it's never gonna happen." He's saying, "What do you mean it's never gonna happen? It already did."

How can you argue—and I don't know if you ever considered this—but you have lived your entire life in a world in which a man has been raised from the dead. This right now is the end times. You've lived your whole life in the end times, because the marker of the final days is a resurrection. What Paul is saying is: welcome to the age of the resurrection. It started. Now we're just waiting for it to finish. But we are not waiting for resurrection to begin—it already began with Him. That's the case he's making.

So if it's preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, verse 12: how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there's no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But per your logic, he did not raise him. If in fact, the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, you are still in your sins. And then those who have fallen asleep in Christ, this is such an ominous statement. Those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life, we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

They're saying if you're right, that there will never be a resurrection, then there hasn't been one. And this whole thing is a charade. The whole Achilles heel of—you want to kill Christianity? Disprove the resurrection of Jesus. 'Cause without that, we have nothing. We are imbeciles. We believe fairy tales. And the whole thing is stupid beyond belief. That's what Paul is saying. It all hangs on this.

But Jesus' resurrection is not a fairy tale. It did happen and it is proof. It is evidence. It sets us for the ultimate trajectory that we will be raised from the dead. If he dies, maybe Jesus will come back and you'll be transformed. It'll be fine, okay? This is what he's doing. You with me? He's extremely interested in establishing that we will be raised from the dead.

First Fruits

And then having done that, here's what he's gonna say. We'll keep going. Verse 20:

But look, Christ has been raised from the dead. Calm down, everything's fine. He really did, actually. He was raised from the dead and he was the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

Now, do you remember what that image means? We've talked about that in here. What is the notion of first fruits in this context? Sample of ice cream, baby. Do you remember this?

— Everyone will do the same as the first fruit.

That's right. Whatever is true about some weird flavor that probably shouldn't have been made in the first place—like blue cow ice cream, right? They make strange things. Like goat cheese and oregano or something, whatever they're doing. You get a spoonful of that and it promises if you like the spoonful, you're gonna like the cone because whatever's true of the sample will be true of the whole scoop. He's saying Jesus is the sample. He's the first fruits. He's the one spoonful of the thing. And whatever's true of him will be true of you. That's the claim.

— But the first fruits are also the best. The firstfruits are the one, the blemish-free lamb with the whole thing, so even though it's true, the first part is the model.

Right, Jesus is the standard. He's the perfection of all things. That's absolutely right. But what Paul is going after is the aspect of the first fruitiness that is the guaranteed ultimate resultiness. That is it. If he was raised, you will be raised. That's the deal. But it is true, of course, that he is the supreme example, okay?

Adam and Christ

So then he says this. Verse 21:

For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man.

Who does death come through? Adam, right? So as it says in Romans 5, the same thing: as in Adam, all die, so in Christ, all we are made alive, right? But each in his own turn: Christ, the first fruits, and then when he comes, those who belong to him.

So far so good. Now, that takes us through verse 23. Then he goes on—I'm gonna skip this next chunk because we've already looked at it in the past—about what else is gonna happen when he comes. It's not so much about resurrection; it's just about all the things about him giving up the kingdom and the Father giving it back. We did that a little while ago. So skip down.

The Nature of Our Resurrection

Now is where Paul's explanation, I think, becomes more complicated. Go down to verse 35. Keep up here—we're all gonna be raised. He was raised. What he's gonna talk about is our resurrection, and by our, I mean the resurrection of the redeemed. First Corinthians 15 is not describing what will happen to the lost. It's describing what will happen to those who are hidden in him. Everyone will be raised. But remember in Daniel 12, it's very binary: some to everlasting life, some to everlasting shame. Some are gonna live forever, some are just gonna be held in contempt forever. This First Corinthians 15 is ignoring the dark part of that story and just talking about the good part. Okay, so here's what happens in the good part. Verse 35:

But someone may ask, "Well, how are the dead raised? And with what kind of body will they come?"

I think that's a pretty good question.

Paul thinks it's a dumb question. Paul says, "How foolish." What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what that must mean is that the question is not really a genuine "help me understand how this works," but more like, "I don't believe you, right?" I think he's responding to it negatively because the question itself is said not in faith and curiosity, but in mockery and scorn.

And he says, "No, no, no, hang on. You know this. You've already known this. What you sow doesn't come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you don't plant the body of what will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he determined, and to each kind of seed, he gives its own body."

What he's saying is this: if you want to grow watermelons, what do you plant? Watermelon seeds. You don't plant watermelons, right? You plant watermelon seeds. And in order to flip it, if you put a watermelon seed in the ground, wouldn't you be very disappointed if what came up out of the ground was a giant watermelon seed? This is what he's saying. The seed doesn't just make a seed; it makes something else. Now, of course, it's gonna contain seeds, but he's like, if you're gonna plant your body, if you plant your body, you shouldn't expect to just get back the same thing you put in the ground. Any more than planting a watermelon seed should make you think you're gonna get a watermelon seed. Watermelon seeds turn into watermelons.

Watermelon looks a lot different than the seed. Right, yes. And this body, when we plant it, is gonna come back different than you put it in. That's what he's saying. Does this make sense?

He's gonna say elsewhere that Jesus will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body. So let's just pause. What do we know about Jesus' post-resurrection body? Let's start with, how is it like our bodies?

Can eat. It can eat. Why do you think that? Because he ate fish. At least it can eat fish, maybe nothing else, but it can eat fish, right? He ate. Can eat was an interesting choice of words. It's not clear if it needs to eat. How could it need anything? But it can eat. Does it need to eat? I'm clear, okay?

What else do we know about his body? It can be touched. It can be touched, so it's physical. Now he's gonna talk in a minute—we'll get to this—about spiritual. And we have a tendency to think spiritual means non-material. That is not the sense in which Paul uses it. Jesus is a spiritual person, but you can touch him. He's real; he's made out of molecules, right? Very good.

It has wounds, okay? So that's maybe surprising, right? You might expect—you might hope that whatever scars your body has borne in this world will be like, no more in the world to come. Maybe. But his didn't. His body maintained the scars. The marks of what he endured in this world were still visible in the world to come as his body was raised.

A couple more. We'll go to Chris, and then come back to Gil. Chris?

Real quick, I was reading through that, and I've had the Chronicles of Narnia in my head—the last book of Narnia. Where previously in verses 50 to 54, really, where it starts talking about, it makes me think of the rapture because he says:

"Listen, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep; we will all be changed. In a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, the trumpet will sound and we will be raised imperishable."

So it makes me think with the previous verses back in the 30-something that he talks about how not all people are the same and what's different, which makes sense. We're talking about a new plant—a seed becomes a watermelon. It's totally different than the seed you plant. It brings me back to Paul's other verse of the potter has the right to make of the clay what he chooses. And I guess previously, a little bit in the back of my brain not solidifying, I was like, does that mean at the rapture where I'm just gonna grow wings or something like that, like angel wings or something like that? And what kind of change would you say he's talking about?

Okay, there's a lot in there, Chris. Let me say, you weren't here the last couple of weeks. I'm not gonna do it for the third week in a row. The rapture's not real, but Jesus is coming back. And when he comes back, we are gonna be changed.

And what I think you can pull out of that passage—the most significant thing he's gonna say there—is that we'll be raised. What's his word? What's the adjective? We'll be raised imperishable. What does that mean? You're not gonna die. This is dying. You've been dying. You guys are decaying right now, okay? You've been dying since you were about 22, right?

You know this got better and better, and that is just, collagen has been breaking down since you were 22, okay? That won't be true. People sometimes ask the question, like, what do you think our body will be like? Are we gonna be like 25-year-olds? We're gonna be like 70-year-olds? Like, if I can even have a body forever, what's that gonna be like? And here's what I don't know, but here's what I think it's gonna be like.

I think you'll be like a 70-year-old, and then a 90-year-old, and then a 1,000-year-old, and then a 10,000-year-old, but it's not dying. What you think about age is that age is to break, and it's obvious, because you're breaking, right? Every one of you is dying. But imagine if, you know how like you were more glorious at 25 than you were at 15? What if you were more glorious still at 35, and at 45, and at 1,005? The trajectory is only better, only wiser, only more humble, only more thoughtful, only stronger, and not bolder, and weaker, and blinder, and whatever else you're dying. But that's only because you're dying. You think that way because you are, but you will be imperishable. It will be better, and better, and better, not worse, and worse, and worse, and worse. Imperishable is what he's saying there.

Okay, a bunch of hands, Harry.

— They'll be recognized.

— Yes, they recognized him. However, it took a minute, right? Luke 24, they're like, "Ah, sad, Jesus is dead," and they're walking with him, and he was hidden from their eyes. So on the one hand, recognize—they did see him—but different enough, different. Don't miss that. Different enough that it wasn't super obvious at first blush. Fascinating, right? India?

— Didn't Jesus, like, imaginatively, like, transform, like, where he was?

— Apparently. So he enters a locked room, right? They're behind a locked door because they're scared, and then Jesus is there, right? So he's got scars, he's physical, he can eat. They recognize him, but it takes a minute. He can pass through walls, right? So what's his body like? Different, and yet similar?

Gil?

— Going back to, he said, recognizable. I'm wondering how much of them struggle to recognize, and wasn't really more about his new body, but more, like, the actual spirit was veiling him for a different time.

— Yeah, was he kept? Did they keep him from—was he hiding, was he disguised, in some regard?

— Not that he was, like, his body was different to where they weren't sure of it, but more, like, the spirit was like...

It could be. Gil's just pointing out, like, did they not recognize him because he looked different, or of course, one factor is that they weren't expecting to see him, right? So they didn't. Okay, let me go a couple more things. I'm almost out of time.

So one other thing that his body did—what else did Jesus do? What's the most surprising thing Jesus's body does after the resurrection?

— It flies up to the sky.

— It flies, okay? So maybe you can eat fish, maybe you'll have your scars, maybe you can fly or pass through locked doors. We don't have a lot of information. Here's how Paul's gonna say it.

What you sow, when you sow, you don't plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat, watermelons, something else. But God gives it a body as he's determined, and to each kind of seed, he gives its own body. And then he says this, all flesh is not the same. Men have one kind of flesh. Animals have another, birds have another, fish have another. And then he goes on to make this really intriguing statement. There are also heavenly bodies, and there are earthly bodies. But the splendor of the heavenly bodies is of one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another, the stars another, and stars differ from stars in splendor. — 1 Corinthians 15

What he's saying here is enormous variety to all of creation. I don't know why he doesn't talk about the fish, because the fish is the most creative thing God ever did. Amen. You ever look like under the water? It's like exceptional color and shape and strangeness. He's like, "What's it going to be like?" He's like, I think what Paul is saying is like, "I don't know, but it's going to be amazing, because God does all kinds of crazy things." There's enormous variety, and we should not be so fixated that this will be like that.

He says, so it will be with the resurrection of the dead.

This body that is imperishable, dead, in fact, will be raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor. It will be raised in glory. — 1 Corinthians 15

Does anybody think you're going to be at your best? No. In your nursing home? No. When you finally die? No. It's going to be embarrassing for all of us. We are not going to be at our best. We will be sown in dishonor. But he says, we will be raised in glory.

Sown in weakness, but raised in power. Sown in natural body, but raised a spiritual body. — 1 Corinthians 15

Don't hear that as material, non-material, okay? Natural and spiritual is not the same.

He says, if there is a natural body, there's also a spiritual body. The first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam—that's Jesus—a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that, the spiritual. Jesus had a physical body, both before and after his death. He's not saying it's material versus non-material. It's natural and spiritual.

Chris asked: Do you think when Jesus talks about the parable of talents or the parable of the sower—where you can be tenfold, sixfold, or hundredfold—do you think the variety depends on the way we live? Like, maybe if you're a hundredfold guy, you get flying powers in your direct function?

In a word, yes, I do think that. But I don't know for certain. Yes, I think there is something. Did I send out to you guys the Weight of Glory? It's C.S. Lewis's essay on this. You guys, it's so good, read it. Go check your email. There will be varying degrees of glory. It's all going to be way better than this. Way better. But I do think there's going to be all sorts of variety in what we experience. Whether it's the ability to fly or not fly, I don't know. I really don't know. But there's going to be varying levels.

Here's what he says:

The first man was of the dust of the earth. The second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so were those who are of the earth, like Adam. But as is the man from heaven, so all those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, Adam, so we shall bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

And Chris, this is what I think gives enormous hope—that whatever is true about life in the world to come, this body in the world to come: the most significant thing is that he is transforming us into his likeness. So while there may be some varying degrees of glory that reflect the degree to which we've cooperated with the Spirit, we're not earning that new body. It is a gift. As we are transforming, he is transforming us to be like him. That was the point all along. We were made to be image bearers. The image has been marred. The image will be restored. And he will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body.

Ultimately, all the stuff that we might gain, we put our crowns at his feet. It's not going to be about us. It's going to be about worshiping. So we're not like, "I'm going to be the bride"—that's not how that's going to work, right? It's all for him.

PJ said: I was thinking about application to my life. The idea that those who are raised from the dead will either be raised to everlasting life or everlasting contempt. And the difference between the two—life or contempt—is forgiveness and acceptance of forgiveness. So for me in my life, the antidote to contempt, whether contempt I feel toward others or contempt toward me, must also be forgiveness.

That's right. Yes, I think we can unpack that. If we have more time, we can unpack that more. But absolutely, we're all going to get infinitely better than we deserve. And we who have been shown grace are obligated to extend grace to others.

Specifically, toward residents who come to me with ridiculous comments and the contempt I feel?

Yes, yes, yes. I was a resident one. We who have been forgiven have enormous resources and motive to forgive others, to be sure.

All right, we're long. We've got to stop. We'll do it again next week.