A Transformation Like No Other - 1 Corinthians 15:50-53

Devotional Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 15

Week 11
 
A Transformation Like No Other - 1 Corinthians 15:50-53In his first epistle, the Apostle John wrote the following about our hope to fellow believers: “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.   And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 Jn. 3:2-3).  What a beautiful thought.  As much as we know – and want to know – Jesus now, and as much as we desire to have the Holy Spirit produce the character of Christ in us, we will not fully know what it is to be like Him until He appears and receives us to be with Him.  Since we know that day is coming, we should desire to be more pure, more holy, each day to be as much like Him here as we can be.  When others truly see Christ in us, they, too, will be transformed from death into life through faith in Him!

Paul describes this hope of change in a more detailed way.  He emphasizes that inheritance of a place in the kingdom of God will not take place while we are still flesh and blood as we are.  In our present physical form, we are subject to death; to perishing.  We must be changed into beings who are not subject to the ravages of aging and death.  

Paul was given the opportunity of revealing the mystery of the process of transfer from this life to life with God.  It is a “mystery” because it was not revealed in the past, but it is now revealed through this letter.  Yes, there are a few passages in the Old Testament that refer to resurrection, and Jesus told his disciples to watch for His coming.  Jesus Himself rose from the dead, and the disciples spent time with him observing the changes that had taken place in their Lord.  Eternal life had been promised!  But, before John wrote his epistles, and before the book of Revelation was written, Paul was given the opportunity of telling us a vital truth:  some believers will not die, but all believers will be changed when Jesus comes.  It will be so rapid a change that Paul describes it as being in a moment, as rapid as a beam of light twinkling from an eye.  One moment our flesh and blood bodies will have corrupted in the earth, or we will still be alive in perishable flesh and blood bodies, and in the next moment we’ll be changed.  The bodies that died and were corrupted will be raised imperishable, and the believers who are alive at His coming will be changed from those who are destined to death to immortal beings:  beings who will never experience death.

The sounding of the trumpet is always a call for attention.  Jesus described this sounding in this way:  31 "And He will send forth His angels with A GREAT TRUMPET and THEY WILL GATHER TOGETHER His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other” (Matt. 24:31).   In another letter, Paul described this event in the following words:  16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.  Therefore comfort one another with these words. (1 Thess. 4:16-18).  For the saints of God, no further calls to action or war will be needed.  This one sounding will be the last: we who are alive will be gathered to the Lord, but not until after those who were dead have been raised.  

We will all meet the Lord in the air when He comes in the clouds.  We will all be transformed!   In reference to the dead, Paul does not answer the question of whether the soul and spirit sleep with the body until the resurrection, or not.  He speaks of “the dead” rising, and “the living” being changed, but he is emphasizing the body here.  It is the body that is corruptible.  But in another place, he answers the soul sleep question with a simple phrase:   “Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord-- for we walk by faith, not by sight-- we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord”  (2 Cor. 5:6-8).  When we are caught up (“raptured”) alive to be with the Lord, everything changes at once.  When we die, our bodies die, but our immaterial parts (soul, spirit) are absent from the body and present with the Lord.  

Some struggle with the idea of bodiless existence.  In truth, spirit-beings (angels, for example) would not struggle with this at all!   Our human, emotional struggle, is with the idea that we are not whole without the “material” and “immaterial” me being one unit.  Paul’s teaching here is that the whole “me” will be transformed for life in eternity.   Exactly what the immaterial “me” will be like apart from the body is neither explained nor emphasized.  What is emphasized is that the mortality (capability of death) and corruptibility (capability of corruption) will be removed.  We will be clothed with both immortality and incorruptibility!    Death will be swallowed up in life!