Building of God

The Bible teaches that the "real me" is spirit. My body is a gift from God, a marvelous instrument through which I can express myself. Without our bodies, we could not relate to anything or anyone around us. What I am, what I think, what I feel; I relate to you through the medium of my body. You in turn because of your bodies can understand what I relate and in turn you relate to me. Because the body is the medium by which we relate, we begin to identify a person with their body. As we relate to each other, we begin to know, admire, appreciate and love each other. We experience loving relationships. That is exactly what God intended for man.

When our bodies, because of age, illness, accident or disease, can no longer relate what we are, what we feel or what we desire; when our bodies give us more pain than pleasure, they actually become prisons, incarcerating our spirits. Then it is time for God, in His love, to release our spirits from our bodies. The scriptures say that those who believe in Jesus Christ do not experience death, they just go through a metamorphosis or change of body.

In II Corinthians 5:1 Paul describes that change this way: "We know that, if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved [our human bodies return to dust], we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." To the believer then, death is nothing more than moving from a tent to a house!

If you've ever been camping, you know what it's like to stay in a tent for any period of time. It is exciting and fun, but often inconvenient. But you can put up with the inconvenience because you know it is only temporary.

No one thinks of a tent as a permanent dwelling, they think of it instead as something transient. It is the same with our sojourns in these bodies. One day I will move out of my tent and into my mansion, my building of God, not made by hands, that Jesus has gone to prepare for me. (John 14:1,2) You may read or hear someday that Chuck Smith died. Don't believe it. That will be poor reporting. It should be said that Chuck Smith moved from a worn-out tent into a beautiful mansion. Paul went on to say that, as we live in these bodies, we often groan, earnestly desiring to be delivered or freed from our bodily restrictions. We do not desire to be unembodied spirits, but we want to move into our new heavenly bodies. He concludes, that we know that as long as we are living in our present bodies, we are absent from the Lord. If we had our wish we would leave our earthly bodies so that we could be present with the Lord. Flesh and blood bodies cannot inherit the Kingdom of heaven, so the move from tent to mansion is imperative. "This corruption (my present body) must put on incorruption (my new body) and this mortal must put on immorality" (I Corinthians 15:53).

This brings in a flood of new questions and speculations which Paul anticipates in I Corinthians, chapter 15. First of all, how are the dead raised and what kind of bodies will they have when they come back with Christ? In I Thessalonians, chapter four, Paul teaches that when the Lord comes to snatch His church away, He will bring with Him all of the saints that have already gone to be with Him. We will meet together in the air and be with Him forever.

For an answer to the question of how the dead are raised, Paul points to nature to illustrate the truth. Resurrection is not something unique or far-fetched; it is often demonstrated in nature. Every time a seed is planted it dies before it comes forth in a new body and new life. This process is called germination. The very death of the seed is the process by which the new body comes forth. Paul is careful to point out, however, that the body that comes out of the ground is quite different than the body that was planted. We plant a bare grain, but God, through His miraculous recreative powers, gives it a new body that pleases Him. Paul tells us, "So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness [our present feeble bodies], it is raised in power [our new glorified form]: It is sown a natural body [our present bodies, as a result of catabolic forces taking their toll], it is raised a spiritual body" (I Corinthians 15:42-44).

But let's go a little further with Paul's illustration of the seed transformed into something new by death. If I held a scaly brown bulb before you and asked you what it was, you might carefully examine it and reply, "That's a gladiola, I think." Looking at that ugly thing, I might query, "A gladiola, are you sure?"

If I put the bulb in the soil and covered it with a little dirt, it would die and split. Out of that cleft a little white shoot would rise and turn green as it reached the atmosphere. As it continued to grow into a stalk, buds would emerge on the sides and open up into beautiful purple, or perhaps red variegated blossoms.

Again I might ask you, "What is that gorgeous flower?"

Again you'd answer, "A gladiola." I could object, saying, "A gladiola, you're putting me on! How can that beautiful flower be a gladiola, when you just told me the brown scaly bulb was a gladiola?"

But it would be true. Though the bodies of the bulb and the flower are completely different, they are definitely related, the one sprang from the death of the other.

One day in heaven, you might see a handsome creature with an abundance of wavy brown hair. You might ask, "Who is that?" And when someone responds, "It's Chuck," you'll probably say, "Come on, you must be putting me on!" Not so. I simply will have blossomed out in my new body, my building of God not made with hands.

In Paul's lesson on resurrection in I Corinthians 15, he asserts that, even as we have borne the image of the earth and have been earthly, so shall we bear the image of the heavens. He is pointing out the fact that, when God created these bodies to house our spirits, He made them out of the earth and He made them for the environmental conditions on Earth. It is true that the seventeen elements found in the soil are the same seventeen elements found in our bodies. God said to Adam, "Dust thou art and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19).

Once, a little boy who was taught that same scripture in Sunday school went home and looked under his bed and excitedly cried to his mother: "Come quick, there's someone under my bed and he's either coming or going!"

In the Psalms, we are told that God knows our frame: that we are made out of dust. (Psalm 103:14) My body was not just made out of earth, it was made for the Earth. My body was designed to extract oxygen from the atmosphere composed of 79 parts nitrogen, 20 parts oxygen and one part other trace gasses. My body was designed to withstand fourteen pounds of pressure per square inch. My body was not made for any other place in our solar system, or as far as we know, any other place in our universe. If we want to take our bodies away from this planet, even a few thousand feet above it, we must take an artificial environment with us. Pilots that fly the SR71, a plane that can climb in excess of 80,000 feet above the Earth, must wear pressurized suits with nitrogen and oxygen tanks. Without these suits, their body liquids would ooze out through their skin, in less than a scant ten miles from the surface of the Earth.

God has promised that, eternally, we will dwell with Him in His glorious Kingdom. We don't know what the environmental conditions of heaven are but there is no doubt that they are different from the conditions here; no doubt far superior. God could outfit us with space suits and let us clomp clumsily around heaven, or He could give us totally new bodies designed to take us anywhere in the universe. God has wisely opted for the latter. He has prepared a mansion for me, a building of God not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. You may think that a change to a new body that is adapted to a totally different environment sounds rather far-fetched and incredible. Again we can turn to nature for illustrations that demonstrate the viability of this concept.

Look at the tadpole, by design it is limited to the water, yet when it goes through it's metamorphosis and is transformed into a frog, it can now live on land also. Better yet, look at a fuzzy little caterpillar, crawling across a field. I can imagine him trying to cross a highway in the summer with all his little feet on the hot black asphalt, thinking to himself, "How wonderful it would be if I could fly! I am so tired of hot dirty feet." He might even attempt to fly by crawling up a tree, jumping off a limb and wiggling as fast as possible. But he's not aerodynamically designed for flight, so he'll just fall to the ground. One day however, he may climb up the wall of your house, ooze a little natural glue to affix himself under your windowsill, spin a chrysalis and hang motionless for a while. If you were to squeeze that chrysalis, you would find an orange-yellow liquid inside. If you let it hang there though, and you watch it carefully, you will see it begin to twitch one day. It will jerk convulsively until beautiful orange and black wings unfurl and a new butterfly perches for a moment on his empty chrysalis. Then, without lessons or instructions, that Monarch butterfly will soon begin to fly around the yard then over the fence and far away.

A metamorphosis from a body limited to crawling on the earth to one that can fly through the air is amazing. The new body allows the butterfly to exist in a whole new environment.

Sometimes as I look around at the chaos and sorrow on earth. I say, "Oh God, I am so tired of hot dirty feet, I wish I could fly!" And one of these days, this corruption will put on incorruption, this mortal will put on immortality, and I will be changed in the twinkling of an eye. (I Corinthians 15:52-54) I will soar above the clouds to be with my God in the glories of His eternal Kingdom, a world without end.

When I am gone, don't weep for me. I will be where my heart now longs to be, beholding the beauty of the face of the one I have never seen, yet I love. And though I don't see Him yet, I rejoice with unspeakable joy, full of glory (I Peter 1:8). I discovered, through the death of my godly parents, that my great sorrow was not for them, but for myself, for my personal loss of the beautiful input they always had in my life. My sorrow was selfish. I wasn't ready to let them go yet. I felt I still needed the security I always felt from their assurance and love. When I thought of them, there in His glorious presence, I rejoiced for them while I wept for myself.

Unless we are alive, and remain until the coming of the Lord, we can be sure that one of these days, our spirits will leave our mortal bodies. Our friends might say we have died, but if we have lived and believed in Jesus, according to His promise, we will have merely moved from our tents to our eternal homes where we will, as David, "dwell in the house of the Lord forever." (Psalm 23:6)

We will have blossomed like the gladiola, and we will soar in our new environment like the butterfly. Thank God this is our living hope, guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead!