“But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, 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. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man. I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?””
In our passage today, we are told that at the end of this age, God is going to bring all of us back to life who put their faith in Jesus Christ. When Christ returns, the dead in Christ will rise from the grave. Jesus accomplished life after death for us by dying on the cross for our sins and then defeating death by rising from the grave. All of us were born as sinners. All of us have rebelled against God and have disobeyed him. Apart from Jesus, we are enemies of God. The end result of being enemies of God is death. Physical death and then spiritual death which is eternal separation from God in hell. God does not desire that anyone go to hell. His desire is that all are saved. But we must choose to accept his forgiveness through Christ’s death on the cross. We must receive him by believing in Him and confessing Him as Lord and Savior through prayer. God does not make it hard to have life after death. He invites everyone to put their faith in Him. For those who believe, death is not the end. It’s just the beginning. When we die, our spirits leave our bodies and we are immediately in heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ. When Christ returns, our bodies that have died will come back to life and our spirits will be reunited with perfect resurrected bodies down here on earth. We will rule with Christ for eternity over the renewed earth.
