The word here translated “immortality” is “incorruption”; but it signifies in final terms the fact of immortality; for, as mortality is identified with corruption and is its consequent, so immortality, which is the opposite of mortality, is the consequence of incorruption and is inseparable from it.
This word “immortality” is greatly misunderstood, and almost always misapplied.
It is continually applied to the soul. It is a common thing to hear or read the expression, “immortal soul.”
The truth is, that phrase cannot be found in Holy Scripture. The terms are misleading—their conjunction is false. Applied to the soul, the word “immortal” is a misnomer. Throughout Scripture the original word and idea relate to the body—never otherwise. The word “mortal” is never used of the soul; you never read in Scripture the expression, “mortal soul.” You will find the words “mortal body.” A mortal body has for its opposite an “immortal body.” A mortal body is subject to corruption and death. An immortal body is incorruptible and not subject to death—an immortal body can never die.
The mortal body is the scandal of the race and the open label of sin. A mortal body puts us in the category of condemned criminals awaiting execution. The scandal is not only moral, but organic. To be filled with disease, with pestilence, with fever, and then die and the body turned back to its component parts—this is a scandal in construction; as much a scandal as when a house not properly built falls down; a dead body, whether of man or dog, is the most shameful blot on the face of the earth, and with the gaping mouth of the graveyard, justifies the estimate and the declaration of the living God, that death is an “enemy,” not a welcome thing like birth and life—but an enemy. Such a scandal is it, indeed, that when our Lord Jesus Christ came to the grave of Lazarus, he was himself moved with indignation; for the words, “groaning within himself,” miss the true force. The Greek verb used signifies that he was inwardly filled with indignation and a sense of outrage at the sight of the grave and the announcement that the body of Lazarus was already corrupt. Whatever groaning came from his lips and whatever tears fell from his eyes as he wept—these were his protests against death and the grave; for he recognized this dead body not only as due to the penalty of sin, but as the work of him “who had the power of death, that is, the devil.” (Hebrews 2:14.)
Even though the Christian as to soul and spirit be delivered from death; even though he does not go down to Hades, but at death is safely housed and at home with God in heaven—yet the fact that this body, which was not only the dwelling place of his soul, but the temple and shrine of the Holy Spirit, should become a banquet for worms, a thing of repulsive decay, a residuum of forgotten dust, is a scandal, even to the Christian, and gives emphasis to the shame of death.
The Son of God came into the world to remove this scandal.
He died and rose again, not only that he might have power and authority to give a new and spiritual life to men, a character befitting them for the high things of God, he died and rose again that he might have power and authority to give an immortal body to all who would receive from him this new and spiritual life.
He brought this immortality to light when he rose from the dead.
He brought it to light by rising from the dead in the body in which he had died.