Our glorified body
For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 1 Thessalonians 4:15-16 NLT
Our lives lived in Christ will die in Him and when we die in Christ, we will be raised in Him. When Paul was in Athens, he preached the doctrine of the resurrection. There are those in the crowd that mocked him. “When they heard Paul speak about the resurrection of the dead, some laughed in contempt” (Acts 17:32). The ones who sneered at his preaching do not think that their bodies being resurrected from the dead does not provide hope. How could a dead decayed body be resurrected? And who would want to have that decayed body back? This is why they rejected the notion that there will be a resurrection. Yet, from the text Paul is claiming that the doctrine of the resurrection comes from the authoritative word of God. When the Lord Jesus Christ returns, He “will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). The resurrected body will be different from the old one. “‘How will the dead be raised? What kind of bodies will they have?’ What a foolish question! When you put a seed into the ground, it doesn’t grow into a plant unless it dies first. And what you put in the ground is not the plant that will grow, but only a bare seed of wheat or whatever you are planting. Then God gives it the new body he wants it to have. A different plant grows from each kind of seed’” (1 Corinthians 15:35-38). Paul pointed out that God in His power will raise those who are in Him with a glorified body. He used the analogy of a seed dying on the ground to produce a beautiful plant. The plant that grows does not look like the seed but there is a continuity between the plant and the seed. This glorified body that will be provided by God in His return will be identical to the glorified body of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. “And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control” (Philippians 3:20-21). Let us then live our lives with the anticipation that Christ’s return is imminent. Though we might be dead by the time He returns, the outcome will be the same for those who are in Christ. Those “who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep… And the dead in Christ will rise first.”
Blessings,
