John 5:28, 29—“all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth”; Phil. 3:21—“who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation”; 1 Thess. 4:16, 17—“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first”; 1 Cor. 15:44—“it is sown a natural [marg.: ‘psychical’] body; it is raised a spiritual body”; 2 Tim. 2:17, 18—“Hymenæus and Philetus; men who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already, and overthrow the faith of some”; Acts 24:15—“Having hope toward God ... that there shall be a resurrection both of the just and the unjust.”
In 1 Cor. 15:44, the word ψυχικόν, translated “natural” or “psychical,” is derived from the Greek word ψυχή, soul, just as the word πνευματικόν, translated “spiritual,” is derived from the Greek word πνεῦμα, spirit. And as Paul could not mean to say that this earthly body is composed of soul, neither does he say that the resurrection body is composed of spirit. In other words, these adjectives “psychical” and “spiritual” do not define the material of the respective bodies, but describe those bodies in their relations and adaptations, in their powers and uses. The present body is adapted and designed for the use of the soul; the resurrection body will be adapted and designed for the use of the spirit.
2 Tim. 2:18—“saying that the resurrection is past already” = undue contempt for the body came to regard the resurrection as a purely spiritual thing (Ellicott). Dr. A. J. Gordon said that the “spiritual body” means “the body spiritualized.” E. H. Johnson: “The phrase ‘spiritual body’ describes not so much the nature of the body itself, as its relations to the spirit.” Savage, Life after Death, 80—“Resurrection does not mean the raising up of the body, and it does not mean the mere rising of the soul in the moment of death, but a rising again from the prison house of the dead, after going down at the moment of death.” D. R. Goodwin, Journ. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:84—“The spiritual body is body, and not spirit, and therefore must come under the definition of body. If it were to be mere spirit, then every man in the future state would have two spirits—the spirit that he has here and another spirit received at the resurrection.”
(b) That the redemption of Christ is declared to include the body as well as the soul (Rom. 8:23; 1 Cor. 6:13-20). The indwelling of the Holy Spirit has put such honor upon the frail mortal tenement which he has made his temple, that God would not permit even this wholly to perish (Rom. 8:11—διὰ τὸ ἐνοικοῦν αὐτοῦ πνεῦμα ἐν ὑμῖν, i. e., because of his indwelling Spirit, God will raise up the mortal body). It is this belief which forms the basis of Christian care for the dead (Phil. 3:21; cf. Mat. 22:32).
Rom. 8:23—“waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body”; 1 Cor. 6:13-20—“Meats for the belly and the belly for meats: but God shall bring to nought both it and them. But the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body: and God both raised the Lord, and will raise up us through his power.... But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.... Or know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God?... glorify God therefore in your body”; Rom. 8:11—“But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you”—here the Revised Version follows Tisch., 8th ed., and Westcott and Hort's reading of διὰ τοῦ ἐνοικοῦντος αὐτοῦ πνεύματος. Tregelles, Tisch., 7th ed., and Meyer, have διὰ τὸ ἐνοικοῦν αὐτοῦ πνεῦμα, and this reading we regard as, on the whole, the best supported. Phil. 3:21—“shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation.”
Dr. R. D. Hitchcock, in South Church Lectures, 338, says that “there is no Scripture declaration of the resurrection of the flesh, nor even of the resurrection of the body.”While this is literally true, it conveys a false idea. The passages just cited foretell a quickening of our mortal bodies, a raising of them up, a changing of them into the likeness of Christ's body. Dorner, Eschatology: “The New Testament is not contented with a bodiless immortality. It is opposed to a naked spiritualism, and accords completely with a deeper philosophy which discerns in the body, not merely the sheath or garment of the soul, but a side of the person belonging to his full idea, his mirror and organ, of the greatest importance for his activity and history.”
Christ's proof of the resurrection in Mat. 22:32—“God is not the God of the dead, but of the living”—has for its basis this very assumption that soul and body belong normally together, and that, since they are temporally separated in the case of the saints who live with God, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob shall rise again. The idealistic philosophy of thirty years ago led to a contempt of the body; the recent materialism has done at least this service, that it has reasserted the claims of the body to be a proper part of man.
(c) That the nature of Christ's resurrection, as literal and physical, determines the nature of the resurrection in the case of believers (Luke 24:36; John 20:27). As, in the case of Christ, the same body that was laid in the tomb was raised again, although possessed of new and surprising powers, so the Scriptures intimate, not simply that the saints shall have bodies, but that these bodies shall be in some proper sense an outgrowth or transformation of the very bodies that slept in the dust (Dan. 12:2; 1 Cor. 15:53, 54). The denial of the resurrection of the body, in the case of believers, leads naturally to a denial of the reality of Christ's resurrection (1 Cor. 15:13).
Luke 24:39—“See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me having”; John 20:27—“Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing”; Dan. 12:2—“And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt”; 1 Cor. 15:53, 54—“For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this corruption shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory”; 13—“But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ been raised.”
Sadducean materialism and Gnostic dualism, which last held matter to be evil, both denied the resurrection. Paul shows that to deny it is to deny that Christ rose; since, if it were impossible in the case of his followers, it must have been impossible in his own case. As believers, we are vitally connected with him; and his resurrection could not have taken place without drawing in its train the resurrection of all of us. Having denied that Christ rose, where is the proof that he is not still under the bond and curse of death? Surely then our preaching is vain. Paul's epistle to the Corinthians was written before the Gospels; and is therefore, as Hanna says, the earliest written account of the resurrection. Christ's transfiguration was a prophecy of his resurrection.