I was looking through my old book collection today and found a great book
called, “JESUS CHRIST IS ALIVE,” by Dr. Laurence W. Miller, written in 1949.
In the ongoing battle in some churches against the heresy of modalism,
that is, the teaching that Jesus Christ DOESN'T have a body in Heaven, the
following information will be very helpful to refute this false claim. On
pages 73-78, Dr. Miller states:
If the resurrection of Christ was a pledge to the disciples of their own eventual resurrection from the dead, then the resurrection of Christ is of equal significance to all believers. The fact of the bodily resurrection of Christ is the only proof of the reality of immortality and life beyond death for the believer. Christ's bodily resurrection does not merely proclaim the fact of immortality which has always been postulated of man's soul, but His bodily resurrection teaches immortality for the whole man in both body and soul. It must be emphatically stated here that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul alone is not a doctrine of the Scriptures. This is only a pagan doctrine. Many of the pagan philosophers believed in the immortality of the soul. According to their philosophical speculation, the body was the source of all evil and death was welcomed by them as a means of escape for their souls from their evil bodies. Modernists have practically the same pagan conception of immortality which is limited to the soul and personality only and does not include the body in any way. The writer challenges any reader to prove from the New Testament where the word “soma” meaning “body” is ever used in a bad sense. It is true that the New Testament Scriptures command us to war against the flesh (sarx) and to overcome the lusts thereof, but it does not consider the body to be an enemy of the soul. The lustful flesh is quite different a thing from the body, which is a marvelous creation of God.
We know that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul only is not only foreign to the teachings of the Old Testament, but is foreign to the teachings of the Old Testament also. For the doctrine of immortality in the Old Testament is identical with that of the New testament. An immortality for both body and soul, or the whole man, is taught throughout the entire Bible.
It cannot be doubted that Job believed in the resurrection of the body and in the immortality for the whole man when he said, “For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” (Job 19:25-26) The Psalmist says, “Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope.” (Psalm 16:9) Isaiah, the prophet, expresses his faith in the resurrection of his body when he says, “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.” (Isaiah 26:19) And Daniel, the prophet, says, “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. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.” (Daniel 12:2-3)
There is no question about the teachings of the New Testament in regard to the doctrine of the immortality of the whole man. When Christ spoke of His own resurrection, He always meant the resurrection of His body. And whenever He spoke of His return to judge the world and to raise the dead, he always meant the resurrection of the dead bodies of men. He could refer to no other resurrection than to the bodily resurrection of men, because there is no other resurrection possible. What other resurrection could Christ have meant except the bodily resurrection when He says, “All that are in the graves shall hear his voice?” (John 5:28) A spiritual resurrection, which is a concept of modern religious liberalism, is a misnomer. Neither Jesus nor Paul were guilty of preaching a spiritual resurrection of man. They taught immortality for the whole man and without exception.
On the other hand, the Modernists, who are our twentieth century Sadducees, reject the doctrine of immortality for man's body because this would require a miracle—a miracle of the resurrection of a material body, which is in opposition to their naturalistic theories. They believe in neither the resurrection of the body nor of the flesh. They believe, to be sure, in the survival of the personality only, and in a mere ghostly persistence of men after death. They do not think that the body is an expression of the personality. This is in violent contrast to the sound thinking of Moberly who says,
“A human body is the necessary—it is the only method and condition on earth, of spiritual personality. It is capable of expressing spirit very badly; it is capable of belying it; it is in fact, almost always falling short of at least the ideal expression of it. And yet a body is the only method of spiritual life; and bodies are really vehicles and expressions of spirit; whilst the perfect ideal would certainly be, not spirit without body, but body which was the ideally perfect utterance of spirit.” (Moberly, Problems and Principles, p. 358.)
St. Paul taught essentially the same thing which Moberly espoused in his great resurrection Chapter. (I Corinthians 15: 13-19) According to St. Paul, future existence for the Christian, after the return of Christ, is not the disembodied life, but the soul and body of man reunited and living together forever in perfect union.
One of the reasons for the incarnation of Christ was for the purpose of redeeming man's body. Had Christ intended to redeem only the souls of men, then there would have been no need for Him to have been born in the flesh. Moreover, if Christ had been incarnated for only thirty-three years and then would have discarded His human nature and His human body at death, returning to the state in which He existed before He came into the world, then we would have reason to believe that Christ's redemptive work did not include man's body.
Thus Christ was incarnated also for the purpose of redeeming the human body. He magnified the human body, not only by being born in a human body, but He loved His human body so much that He did not discard it at death but arose with it and still retains it in Heaven today. In His risen body He is going to return to judge the quick and the dead. And it is His blessed will concerning His people, whom He has redeemed as the God-man by His Cross and resurrection, that they too shall live again and forever in Heaven in their bodies, after the general resurrection. If God wanted spiritual beings entirely in Heaven, why did He ever create man who has a body?
...Furthermore, we claim that the great doctrine of the Christian's resurrection body is the most ridiculous belief that man has ever entertained, if Christ, the Maker and Fashioner of the human body, does not live in His body today to raise our bodies from the dead. The only purpose our bodies shall serve after death is to provide humus for the enrichment of the soil of the earth, if Christ does not live to raise them and to robe them with life and glory again. [emphasis added]
SOURCE: Dr. Laurence W. Miller, “JESUS CHRIST IS ALIVE”; chapter IV, “THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST IS A PLEDGE OF THE BELIEVER'S RESURRECTION AND IMMORTALITY,” pp. 73-78; W. A. Wilde Company, ©1949.
Wow, what a great commentary on the Scriptures! I love what Dr. Miller just wrote. Our Lord Jesus Christ is alive today, still in the same resurrected and glorified body that He had when He ascended up into Heaven...
Acts 1:9-11, “And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”
THE END
“Nothing
in my future can ever affect the salvation that I have... Once you trust
the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are eternally secure!”
—Pastor Hank Lindstrom (1940-2008), a quote from the classic MP3 sermon
titled, “
