Friday, May 18, 2018
Philippians 3:20-21 Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body ...
WITH HIS ASCENSION JESUS SAYS: I AM THE LIFE
When the Apostle Paul spoke with the men of Athens (Acts 17:22ff), they listened to him respectfully until he spoke of the resurrection from the dead. That was too much! That the human body would be raised from death to live with God forever-- that was just not reasonable. So the Greeks of the first century believed, and so do most today. After all, isn't the most common view of the "hereafter" today the idea that people live on after death but without their bodies?
When some Christians in Corinth began "parroting" this idea that the human body as we know it couldn't possibly be raised to live forever, Paul was moved by the Spirit to write:
"But someone will ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?' You foolish person! What you plant does not come to life unless it dies. And what you plant is not the body that is to be ... But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body" (1 Corinthians 15:36ff).
Paul writes of this in Philippians 3:21, "The Lord Jesus Christ, will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body." Why is this change so necessary? It's not just about decay and corruption, about our aging/dying problem, is it? It's about the root cause of these troubles. It's about sin!
Sin and the death it brings has infected us humans inside and out, soul and body. It shuts us out of God's presence, body and soul, forever. Jesus came with the express purpose of undoing this terrible death. Does His Resurrection really mean that we humans, sinful but forgiven, can be raised from death to live, soul AND body, with God forever?
YES! On the Mount of Olives we are assured of this in a glorious and graphic way. Jesus' body-- glorified, yet as truly human as ever-- ascends into the presence of God the Father. Jesus' Ascension assures us, us body/soul creatures, of life with God forever. The same Jesus who died for us, ascends into heaven. Human bodies-- if changed as Christ was-- can and will live forever in the presence of God!
On Christ's Ascension I now build the hope of my ascension;
This hope alone has ever stilled all doubt and apprehension;
For where the Head is, there full well I know His members are to dwell
When Christ shall come and call them.
(The Lutheran Hymnal, 216:1)
