Matthew 28:6

Matthew 28:6

(with 1 Corinthians 15:44 )

The Resurrection from the Dead.

We still assert, in words, a literal resurrection of the body, but none of us believe it. Our hymns, our prayers, our epitaphs, and too often our sermons, imply that the dust of our bodies shall be reanimated in some far-off future, and joined to the waiting soul. At the same time, we know that science declares it to be impossible; our reason revolts from it; it is sustained by no analogy; it is an outworn and nearly discarded opinion. There is, however, a general feeling of perplexity in regard to it. The view now offered is substantially this: that the resurrection is from the dead, and not from the grave; that it takes place at death; that it is general in the sense of universal; that the spiritual body, or the basis of the spiritual body, already exists, and that this is the body that is raised up, God giving it such an outward form as pleaseth Him, and thus preserving that dualistic state essential to consciousness, if not to existence itself. Let us notice some considerations that render these views probable.

I. The butterfly gains its perfect form, not by assimilating the. worm, but by getting rid of it. It is the most beautiful analogy in nature, its very gospel upon the resurrection at first a creeping thing, dull and earth-bound, a slight period of dormancy, and then a winged creature floating upon the air and feeding upon flowers, one life, yet possessing from the first the potency of two forms.

II. The entire significance and value of the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead centre in the fact that it sets forth human identity. The question now arises, in what does identity consist? Identity does not lie in matter, nor is it dependent upon matter. Man is not the matter that makes up the perpetual flux known as the human frame; he is nothing that the chemist can put test to. He must be something, not material, that endures, on which the shifting phenomena of animal life play themselves off. The body is not the man, and it is the man who is raised up. He goes into the other world simply unclothed of flesh, there to take on an environing body suited to his new conditions. As here we have a body adapted to gravitation, and time, and space, so doubtless it will be hereafter; the spirit will build about itself a body such as its new conditions demand.

T. T. Munger, The Freedom of Faith, p. 295.

References: Matthew 28:6 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i., No. 18; vol. xviii., No. 1081; J. Keble, Sermons on Various Occasions, p. 523; D. Rose, Christian World Pulpit, vol. i., p. 321; G. W. McCree, Ibid., vol. xxix., p. 314; Preacher's Monthly, vol. ix., p. 214; vol. x., p. 117; J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College, vol. i., p. 313; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 562; Armitage, American Pulpit of the Day, vol. i., p. 251.Matthew 28:7 . S. A. Tipple, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 24; H.W. Beecher, Ibid ., vol. xix., p. 52.