Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:3-5).

In our study, we are exploring these biblical truths that were powerfully proclaimed by the apostle Peter and lived out by the early church.

The gospel of the Kingdom that Jesus preached was, at its very core, good news about how the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was fulfilling his promises. What made the Good News so compelling, convicting, and powerful was the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead by his Spirit.

At the time of the crucifixion, the apostles did not understand what was happening. They saw Jesus as a regrettable, helpless martyr to an evil system, both religiously and politically. Only in the light of the resurrection was he understood to be the Passover Lamb, the one who delivers from captivity to sin and Satan in order to usher us into the presence of the Living God. The Son has reconciled us to our Father, who, in turn, gives us the ministry of reconciliation.

Jesus’ resurrection from the dead made sense of his crucifixion.

It is important to remember that the concept of resurrection was unique to the Pharisaic movement within Second Temple Judaism. Yet even though early Christianity was deeply rooted in Jewish thinking and theology, it had some distinctive differences. There is both continuity and discontinuity with their frame of reference.

The early Christian view of resurrection, represented in the New Testament, differs from the classic Jewish view in at least three ways.

1) Though resurrection is an important doctrine, it is more or less on the perimeter of faith within the Jewish frame of reference and is not mentioned much. But in the early church, resurrection had a new priority. It moved from the perimeter of faith to a place of preeminence and was at the very core of their proclamation.

2) The difference was that resurrection in the Jewish frame of reference referred to a single event that would occur in the future. The early church came to understand that the first fruits of the final resurrection occurred when Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead.

The witness to this is remarkably consistent from one apostle to another. Views are coherent regarding what I call “two stages” of resurrection. The New Testament writers all say essentially the same thing. In Jesus, the resurrection occurred in the present (stage one) and will be consummated at the end (stage two).

3) This difference between the early Christian and the Jewish point of view regarding resurrection means much more than just a transition from death to eternal life. The power of eternal life enters into and transforms our present circumstances.

Yeshua’s victory over death has powerful implications for our present and future lives.

Turn with me, please, to 1 Corinthians 15.

There were those in the church who prided themselves on being “spiritual people.” Paul addresses their excesses in the preceding chapters. Now, he takes up another problem. They are denying a final, physical resurrection of the dead (stage two) by effectively turning it into a metaphor for their spirituality. Paul is correcting the error and putting in place a proper view.

Resurrection can be used in some sense as a metaphor for the newness of life in Christ, but it must be based upon a physical reality. Paul explains:

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power (42-43).

We all suffer from the weakness of our perishable flesh. But praise God, notice the change that will characterize the end (stage two). We will be raised to an imperishable life, gloriously and powerfully. This is not a transition from one life to another; it is a total transformation!

It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit (44-45).

This passage has been severely misused for centuries because of our Greco-Roman orientation. Chances are you have unknowingly inherited a Hellenistic dualism that views the material world as evil and the immaterial world as good. The result is a reading of this text that says, in effect, we have a material body now (which is evil) that, at the resurrection, will transition to an immaterial, spiritual body (which is good).

Are you familiar with this way of thinking? That is not what Paul is teaching. With knowledge of his Hebraic background, the distinction becomes quite clear. Both now and then, we will have a body (Greek, soma). Paul is making the point scripturally by using Adam, who became, in his creation, a living soul by the breath of God. But in the last Adam, we will be animated by the life-giving Spirit.

Yes, Paul is contrasting our natural state now with its spiritual transformation. But no matter how that is understood, one thing is clear. Both bodies will be physical. In the biblical worldview, the material is not inherently evil. We are not waiting to be taken out of the world so it can be dispensed with while we dwell as spirits forever in some immaterial realm.

Heaven forbid!

What the Maker of Heaven and Earth has prepared for us is so much better than that. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him (1 Cor 2:9).

Paul is talking about the animation of our bodies, not their composition.

In the final resurrection, you will have a transformed physicality.

How did Paul come to that conclusion? The resurrected reality of our Lord Jesus: He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3). They could see, hear, and touch Jesus. He could even prepare and eat meals. He was physically present—but it was a different order of physicality.

With this orientation, what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 15 is very straightforward. Jesus’ resurrected body is our model.

So where does that leave us? Between his (stage one) and our final resurrection (stage two). Because the Father raised His Son from the dead, we have renewed confidence and a living hope for a glorious future—one in which those who are in Messiah will be raised like him.

It also gives us a renewed conviction that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in and through us today. To that end, Paul exhorts us to express the love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.