And for a season, your soul will be in heaven while your body is in the grave. Like a seed is placed in the ground, so your body will be placed in a tomb. And unless Christ comes first, your body will be buried. Has cancer corrupted your system? There is no cancer in heaven.Īre your thoughts disjointed? Your memory failing? Your new body will have a new mind.ĭoes this body seem closer to death than ever before? It should. Is your heart weak? It will be strong in heaven. Believe it.Īre your joints arthritic? They won't be in heaven. Does that change the view you have of it? I hope so. Your body will be different, but you won't have a different body. What is now crooked will be straightened. Your body, in some form, will last forever. What difference should this make in the way you live? God is going to renew your body and make it like his. In heaven's accounting, only one wound is worthy to be remembered. Peter tells us that "by his wounds you have been healed" (1 Pet. Will we keep ours? On this issue, we have only opinions, but my opinion is that we won't. Jesus, at least for forty days, kept his. Will these remain on our bodies? That is a very good question. Will we still bear the scars from the pain of life? The marks of war. (We may need nametags.) Will we be walking through walls? Chances are we'll be doing much more. Will we look so different that we aren't instantly recognized? Perhaps. What do we know about our resurrected bodies? They will be unlike any we have ever imagined. So what do we know about the resurrected body of Jesus? It was unlike any the world had ever seen. Though he invited Thomas to touch his body, he passed through a closed door to be in Thomas's presence. So different that Mary Magdalene, his disciples on the sea, and his disciples on the path to Emmaus did not recognize him. Mark tells us that Jesus "appeared in another form" (Mark 16:12 RSV). (Luke 24:13-35 John 20:10-18 John 21:12-14.)Īt the same time, this body was not a clone of his earthly body. Real enough to walk on the road to Emmaus, real enough to appear in the form of a gardener, real enough to eat breakfast with the disciples at Galilee. A body that maintained a substantial connection with the body he originally had. Jesus didn't come as a mist or a wind or a ghostly specter. On the contrary, he had a body-a touchable, visible body. The resurrected Christ was not in a disembodied, purely spiritual state. After his resurrection, Jesus spent forty days in the presence of people. Would you like a sneak preview of your new body? We have one by looking at the resurrected body of our Lord. Just as God can make an oak out of a kernel or a tulip out of a bulb, he makes a "new" body out of the old one. You will not receive a different body you will receive a renewed body. "He will take these dying bodies of ours and change them into glorious bodies like his own" (Phil. What'all this talk about a new body? Do we change bodies? Is the new one different than this one? Will I recognize anyone? Will anyone recognize me?