The Resurrection Series #16

Paul’s Last Stand

The last works of Paul, 2 Corinthians and Romans, are monoliths in themselves. But we shall do our best to be concise in acknowledging the relevant material. 2 Corinthians takes time to really mention the resurrection of Jesus. There is a section in the third chapter which vaguely describes the theological merit of Christ’s resurrection taking place in the lives of believers who rely on the living God. This passage lacks any direct reference to a resurrection, but Paul’s implication seems clear that Christ lives spiritually in the hearts of those who are devoted to a living God (2:14-3:6). This is not conclusive, of course, but it does reaffirm the narrative that Christ’s lives in us, because God raised him from the dead. The distinction here being that the resurrection is evidenced by our conformity, or transformation, to the New Life of Jesus.

Following this periscope Paul reflects more on the importance of the spiritual dimension in which Christ exists. At no point does he reflect on the physical nature of Christ’s resurrected body. For Paul, Jesus is Spirit. “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (3:18). So Paul spends the beginning chapters of 2 Corinthians not correcting the misgivings of 1 Cor. 15, but rather reinforcing the spiritual and theological importance of the resurrection as it relates to man’s relationship with the living God. Our Lord (Jesus Christ) is Spirit. Paul says it. Why don’t we believe it?

This passage also shed’s some light on the concept of transformation in Paul’s eschatology. It is often argued that for Paul our corpses are transformed into glorified bodies. Thus, physical regeneration revives our corpse and then the revived corpse is glorified in some sense to be angelic or spiritual… divine in some way. But the destination of our transformation is to be Spirit, like Christ. So Paul never assumes that Jesus is some combination of a physically regenerated corpse in a glorified body. For Paul, Jesus is always Spirit. Which makes the argument ad hoc, unless you fall back to the Gospels where Christ’s physical regeneration is made explicit, but this only becomes a leaky bucket, because we are now trying to fix one fallacy with other fallacious arguments. The Gospels have no reliable historical evidence to suggest that the physical regeneration of Jesus’ body actually happened.

But, we are not left hopeless. I still believe that there is warrant to believe in a physically manifested resurrection that does not rely on physical regeneration. This still falls under the category of a spiritual resurrection, because what is being transformed is our spirits, and not our bodies. Our spirits are being given new bodies, not bodies restored from their corpse like state and then sprinkled with some fairy dust to make them better. So if the idea of “transformation” is persuasive enough to consider that the resurrection must exist on some corporeal plane then we can still hold to such a concept without the need to suggest physical regeneration as a method of delivery.

Paul later says, “we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence” (4:14). Paul is here again, re-emphasizing the point that through our commitment to a Christ-like model in our own life we can reveal the resurrection to others. Paul speaks of presenting the Corinthian Church to Christ in the after-life, because he is suffering and willing to die for them, like Christ suffered and died for us. Thus, Paul is in a sense, claiming that as we suffer and commit our lives to each other we show ourselves worthy of presenting those we suffer for to Christ himself. So Christ becomes manifest in our self-sacrifice to others, in a metaphysical sense that is reconciled in the after-life. Paul concludes this thought by saying, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, and what is unseen is eternal” (18). So the end, or perfection, in Paul’s thinking is always the spiritual and unseen realm. Even if the resurrection comes with a physical body, for Paul the thing to talk about the thing to fix ourselves on is the spiritual.

Paul again, makes it clear that what he is referring to is not a restored physical existence in the after-life. In the very next chapter Paul emphasizes time after time that our bodies and physical nature will be destroyed, “swallowed up”. For Paul, corporeality is death, to be given a physical body means eventual decay, disorder, and ultimately death. The only hope we have for eternal life is to be given a new life in the spirit. For Paul, the spirits we possess in our bodies currently are only deposits. Thus, there is nothing intrinsic about our spirits to our specific bodies (5:1-10).

Paul says, “And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (5:15). This precedes Paul’s ultimate image of the resurrection. He says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (17-20). This idea of reconciliation is what is really driving home Paul’s message of new creation. For Paul, our acts of reconciliation with the world, which is what Paul described earlier when he said how he suffered and almost died for others, are what serve as a conduit to the atoning acts of Jesus Christ, when he died and suffered for us all. So for Paul the fact that Jesus is raised from the dead and the fact that we ought to carry each others burdens are one and the same fact. The New Creation is reconciliation, point blank. Paul does not imagine some supernatural realm where we get a free pass from the responsibility we have in the here and now. Paul’s vision of God’s heavenly existence is us reconciling the world to God through the carrying of each other’s burdens to the point of death if we have to. In this, Christ’s life is made manifest in our own and his risen-ness is affirmed.

This sums up Paul’s teaching on the resurrection in 2 Corinthians. The rest of the book deals with generosity, false apostles, and godly correction and accountability. Romans now becomes our focus. Romans is a great book in the New Testament. It is perhaps one of the only books which can be categorized as a theological enterprise. Paul puts on his best effort to make a case for Christ in the area of Rome where he is planning to visit. Thus, this is a letter sent ahead of Paul. All his other letters were sent to places he has been before. So Paul wants to make sure that he is making the best arguments he can make.

Paul says right in the beginning of his epistle, like all his epistles, “[Jesus] through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead. Jesus Christ our Lord” (1:4). Elsewhere, Paul says, “For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of the Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life” (5:10)! Paul continues from here to begin his treatise on the resurrection for the Romans. He says, “For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” (5:17). And then he says, “so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (21). And Paul concludes his resurrection argument by saying, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin – because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the live he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (6:4-11).

Grace. What a powerful word. Paul has one thing in mind when we writes about the resurrection. His central premise always arises, and that is how the resurrection is a demonstration of the power o grace. Grace is not simply a religious or spiritual idea. For Paul, grace is the energy and power of a New Life. Paul has little concern of where Jesus was buried, or how many people saw him after he rose. The only thing Paul cares about is that you understand the enormous need in our hearts to be radically transformed by grace.

All through Romans Paul’s message is grace. He says, “So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God” (7:4). Again, Paul makes the relationship between the fruit we bear for God and the resurrection equivalent propositions. The fruit we bear to God demonstrates that Christ was raised, and if Christ was raised then the Law is dead. “There is therefore now no condemnation” (8:1)! What beautiful words. For Paul these are the words which embody the Spirit of Life, and since we find this embodiment in Christ Jesus it must be concluded that Jesus raised from the dead (3). Nowhere do we see Paul change his message concerning the resurrection and how it relates to Jesus and the New Life we can have with God.

Now Paul does say that the Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead will give life to our mortal bodies (8:11). And if this is a reference to physical regeneration then it would be one of the first and only references Paul makes for it. However, it is unclear if this is even in reference to an after-life existence. All through Romans and the rest of the Pauline corpus the similitude between Christ’s resurrection and our Christian living were one and the same. For Paul, the New Life of Christ was a here and now reality. In fact, following from this very passage Paul is clearly emphasizing this exact point that in THIS life we are dead to sin. Paul is literally saying that we are all like zombies and the only we way we can even think of ourselves as humans is through Christ’s Life being poured into us through the Spirit. However, I do grant that there is a warranted eschatology here. The question is: does this verse require the physical regeneration of our corpse?

The eighth chapter of Romans contains more of Paul’s eschatological beliefs. The difficulty here is combining the various lines of thought that Paul is presenting here. In one sense his eschatology is very much immersed in the here and now. Christ’s resurrection is a current reality for us to explore and experience. But in another sense, Paul keeps an eschatology that future directional. The resurrection will be the end of human history and all creation will be redeemed. The verse 11 reference seems out of place from the rest of the chapter, in that it is embedded in a section that seems to relate more to our current inhabitation of the Spirit dwelling inside us. The rest of the chapter makes two important distinctions. “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Now only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait patiently” (8:21-25). In this periscope we will 1. be liberated from decay, 2. receive bodily redemption, and 3. it will be unseen.

What Paul implied in verse 11 is counter-balanced by his appeal to the “unseen” later found in the chapter. This indicates to me that the reference Paul was making in verse 11 was only an allusion and not a direct indication for future orientated eschatology. In the context of that verse, Paul was seamlessly speaking of our life in its current context. Thus, we have the potential for resurrection power to dwell inside our mortal bodies in the here and now, and in the here after our hope will be for the unseen. I see no reason to think that Paul had any intention of teaching that physical regeneration is a required belief for any form of Christian eschatology, and if this is not a required belief then we have to accept that the ramifications this has on the resurrection of Jesus Christ is also fully realized.