Question
Why is it important that the future resurrection of our bodies will be a physical resurrection?
Answer
The human being, is a physical body with a soul. And we will not be complete without that. One thing I like to say as a pastor — in fact, I said this just the other day with a dear friend of mine who died and his family — you will see this body again. Satan will not win one inch of this person. Christ has redeemed the whole. And the soul will go to heaven, the body will go to the grave, but when the final trumpet sounds the Lord will return and the body will be raised in glory. What was sown in weakness will be raised in power. And my father, who I cannot see anymore, I cannot hear his voice, but he died in Christ, and I will look into those eyes again, I will hear that voice, that manner of speech in a glorified way that will bless me. We are bodily creatures. I would not be saved if my body was lost, or if my body was ravaged by disease eternally or corrupted by sin. No, no, no. We will be glorified in body and in soul. The other reason is that God will have his victory. There's not one square inch of the entire cosmos that Satan has overrun and marred and vandalized by sin that will stay that way. In the end of the ages, everything that God made and designed will fulfill the end for which he designed it. And we are destined to live in a glorified cosmos in glorified bodies with the Lord Jesus Christ. When Jesus returns, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, and so Christ will have victory over all that God has made, and our enemy will have nothing but the dust that God has made him to eat.
Dr. Richard Phillips is Senior Minister of Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, S.C. and Chairman of the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology.