One pastor said about his preaching, “I preach as one who may never preach again, as a dying man to dying men.” I heard a news commentator wish for one who had died to “rest in peace and in power.” In these recent years, we have said goodbye to so many of God’s very finest servants. If serving God well does not ultimately shield us from pain and death, we may wonder why we serve the Lord, at all. Do you ever wonder? We serve the Lord out of gratitude for God’s gift of eternal life through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
In his greatest teaching on the resurrection of our bodies, Paul reminds the Corinthians that Jesus was raised from the dead as a body. In the same way, when Christians are buried, we are planted as seeds. The body is sown perishable but is raised imperishable, sown in dishonor, raised in glory, sown in weakness, raised in power, sown as a natural body and raised as a spiritual body.
Paul teaches the Philippians that if we are absent from the body, we are present with the Lord. Nevertheless, the physical body remains here on earth in some form. But those bodies will be raised first at Christ’s return, then those who are alive will join them in the air. Ultimately the perishable, mortal body must be transformed into an imperishable, immortal body. When that happens, death is finally swallowed up in victory. Paul taunts death asking, “Where is your victory?” and “Where is your sting?”
We live today in view of this future victory. So Paul writes “Therefore . . .” to remind us of the present implications of our future resurrection. In view of the resurrection, we stand firm, immovable and we give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord because we know our labor in the Lord is not in vain. This is why we give ourselves fully to God: because on the cross Jesus gave himself fully for us and in the resurrection, he was raised fully for us Christians serve a Savior who has defeated death. Let’s live for him today!
