The Nature of the Resurrection

by Pastor J. Lowell Harrup

Luke, our third grade grandson recently took home a paper from school in Virginia that explained the difference between a physical change and a chemical change. Physical change, as a rule, can be reversed; chemical change, as a rule, cannot. If water freezes (physical change), it can also thaw. If, however, an atomic bomb explodes, the reaction cannot be reversed. It is an extreme chemical change with great exothermic energy. If one could theoretically find the pieces and reconstruct the bomb, the atoms have changed, both essentially and relationally. The energy has been neither created nor destroyed but it has been changed. It cannot be reversed.

There are examples of reversal of death in scripture, the best-known being that of Lazarus recorded in John 11. These are not really “resurrections” as much as divine resuscitations. While the process of death was reversed, the person was still subject to death and would die again. The resurrection of Christ was seismically different. It is both the example and prototype of our resurrection.

What is so different about the resurrection of Christ and that of Lazarus who was still subject to death? Paul explains the nature of the resurrection in 1 Cor. 15:42 ff., “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It (the body) is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; 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… The first man, Adam, became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit… Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.” (NASU)

Resurrection is neither a process of death nor its reversal. It is an event of its own, taking the elements touched by death, even produced by it, and involving them in another process with other elements. It is energized by the Holy Spirit, the source of all energy, and a new product is the result. What was once perishable, without honor, weak and subject to decay becomes imperishable, glorious, powerful and spiritual. It loses the stamp of earth and carries the stamp of heaven, irreversibly. That is more than physical change!

Just as amazing is this “resurrection” power does not begin to work only when we die; it is at work today. In Eph 1:18ff, Paul said, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe… in accordance with the working of the strength of His might 20 which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name…." That power works in our behalf!

The plan of redemption is never limited to restoration to the original state. Our destiny is not the Garden of Eden with its forbidden fruit and tempting serpent. It is a new heavens and new earth where righteousness dwells. It is a city, that “comes down from God out of heaven,” the new Jerusalem. God’s plan, His power and His process is irreversible.