The Resurrection of the Body
While our children were playing together, my wife and I glanced at each other with a smile in our eyes, expressing with one look our joy in the fabulous, joyful individuals we had brought into the world. Without the love we showered on each other, the children would not exist. We had created wonderful new human beings, who now experienced the wonders of life on their own. Without us, these stimulating vibrant individuals would not be enjoying and enhancing the world.
Similarly, just as our children were totally depended on the love between my wife and me for their existence, so also all Christians are depended on Christ’s love for them; a love exhibited during his life and death on earth and on his Resurrection. Christ’s resurrection is the basis for belief in man’s own resurrection. As been said many times by many different people, “The Christian faith stands or falls with the truth of the testimony that Christ is risen from the dead.” The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation for the Christian belief in the resurrection of Christian bodies. All Christians are emphatically tied to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. As demonstrated in his twelve appearances after his resurrection, Jesus possessed a new, transformed body, unencumbered by time or space; a body type man will assume when man enters heaven, signifying a new relationship between God and man….a heavenly minded relationship.
Man was created by God with both a body and a soul, any resurrection of the body must include both the body and the soul in order to return man to the original state in which God created the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, prior to their Original Sin. The undivided unity of man – body and soul- is a fundamental statement of the fate of man. The salvation of man is viewed as possessing both the body and soul – unseparated man. The Resurrection of dead as expressed in the Apostles’ Creed speaks of the one creation “man’; the person. It is the Christ, as lover of all mankind, whose own resurrection sets the example for man’s resurrection. “All love wants eternity; and God’s love not only wants it but effects it and is it.” (Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, pg.350) The beginning of the resurrected life actually begins when we form a relationship with Christ on earth; a relationship that outlasts death. There is continuity with Christ from an earthly life through death and into heaven.
The issue confronting man is man’s willingness to form a loving, lasting relationship with Jesus Christ. Will man choose Jesus and the gift of an everlasting, loving life or will he choose only himself and face an eternal existence of sorrow and rejection? This is the fundamental decision facing each person. Choose well!
The subject of the Resurrection of Jesus is so critical to Christian beliefs that it is demands some review and study. There are numerous books and articles which discuss both the Resurrection of Jesus and man’s resurrection. Listed below is a small sample of these writings.
“The life of Christ” by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Kindle edition, Chapter 62
“Handbook of Christian Apologetics” by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Kindle edition, Chapter 8. The chapter examines in some detail the arguments for and against the Resurrection of Jesus and man’s resurrection.
“Jesus of Nazareth, From the Entrance to Jerusalem to the Resurrection”, by Pope Benedict XVI, published by Ignatius Press, Chapter Nine.
“Credo”, by Hans Urs Von Balthasar, published by Ignatius Press, Chapter XI.
“Introduction to Christianity”, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, published by Ignatius Press, Part Two, Section C, part 3.
“The Catechism of the Catholic Church”, Part One, Article Eleven, “I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body”