It’s Easter Sunday, and so I gave my family the traditional Easter greeting, “Christ is risen!” Instead of responding with the traditional “He is risen indeed”, Sophie absent-mindedly responded “You too”.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised that this faux pas was actually more appropriate than maybe even the traditional answer, which confirms that the second person also believes, but gives no fresh information.
Now it is, after all, because Christ was born in human flesh, lived a perfect life, died on behalf of sinners paying their price and then resurrecting on the third day that we ourselves have the hope of following Him. He is the first-fruits of the Resurrection, the body that dwells in eternity which God had in mind for humans, for His people, all along, can only be acquired this way, by faith and by our death in faith (or ascribed faith in the case of those who did not have the ability to accept the Gospel and would not have rejected it) in Jesus Christ.
Where He goes in this new body, remembered this morning, we go so that we will be where He is. And it is also written that “when we see Him, we shall be like Him”. We will already be in resurrection bodies when our eyes behold him coming to the earth. For those still living it will be as the twinkling of an eye, not two nights and a day in a stone tomb where no-one had yet been laid, as in the case of our Saviour.
It doesn’t matter what has happened to your atoms in the meantime. Maybe your organs, with or without your consent, have gone to save lives or have simply been fed to circus cats. They will be back in full force, perfectly healthy, in a body free from disease or imperfections capable of inhabiting eternity, capable of disregarding the very laws of physics that have constrained your life, senses and even most of your imagination until the time of your changing. If you were cremated and your ashes scattered to the winds and waves, or if you were carefully buried and your body consumed by worms, the worms by ducks and the ducks by various Yorkshiremen, it still doesn’t matter to God. Your resurrection body is part of the New Creation. The atoms He has in Mind for You are still exactly there, in the Mind of God, just as the current style atoms for Adam were prior to the Six-Day Creation. Your body will be returned to you recognisable and yet unrecognisable, as was Jesus when He appeared to them that knew Him best.
This is promised to those who trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for their salvation. He is risen, indeed. Will it be you, too?