Resurrection, judgment and the new creation

The resurrection of the body

The Apostles' Creed ends with "the Resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting" The Apostles' Creed, and the Nicene Creed with "I look for the Resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come" The Nicene Creed. The Christian's last hope is not a soul drifting for ever, but the whole person raised to life.

Scripture says that all the dead will rise. Paul told Felix of his hope "that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked" (Acts 24:15), and Jesus said this.

Do not be amazed at this, for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out — those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

John 5:28-29

Augustine presses the point home: "What can be plainer? Men’s bodies are in their graves, not their souls" Augustine.

What kind of body will believers have? Paul answers with a seed. "What is sown is perishable; it is raised imperishable" (1 Corinthians 15:42). As the wheat is one with the seed yet far more than it, so the resurrection body is continuous with this one, yet transformed: imperishable, glorious, powerful. Paul calls it "a spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:44), which many interpreters take to mean not a body made of spirit but a body wholly alive with the Holy Spirit. Its pattern is the risen body of Christ (The resurrection).

But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself, will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body.

Philippians 3:20-21

The judgment of Christ

After the resurrection comes the judgment. God "has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed", and he has proved it by raising that Man from the dead (Acts 17:31). "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ," Paul says (2 Corinthians 5:10). When the Son of Man separates the nations like sheep and goats, he looks for love shown to the least: "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me" (Matthew 25:40). God "will repay each one according to his deeds" (Romans 2:6), and he shows no favouritism.

Who, then, can stand? The same Scripture says, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1), and Jesus promised that whoever believes "will not come under judgment. Indeed, he has crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24). The deeds brought to light on that day are the fruit of a living faith, worked in us by Christ's grace; on how the traditions relate faith and works, see Faith and justification. Augustine finds comfort in who the Judge is: "He will sit a Judge Who stood before the judge" Augustine. The one who will judge us is the one who was judged for us.

Hell

Jesus, who spoke most tenderly of the Father's love, also spoke most solemnly of hell. "Fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell," he said (Matthew 10:28). He spoke of the place "where ‘their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.’" (Mark 9:48), and he ended his picture of the judgment: "they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matthew 25:46). Christians have understood the nature of hell in three main ways.

The first is eternal conscious punishment, the view of the great majority of the church in East and West. The Athanasian Creed confesses that at Christ's coming all will rise with their bodies and give account of their works, "and they that have done good shall go into life everlasting: and they that have done evil into everlasting fire" The Athanasian Creed. Augustine argued that since Matthew 25:46 uses the same word ‘eternal’ for the punishment and for the life, one cannot be endless and the other not Augustine, City of God, Book 21, and the Westminster Confession, chapter 33, teaches the same Westminster Confession, ch. 33.

The second is conditional immortality, or annihilationism. It holds that the soul is not immortal by nature; immortality is God's gift. So those who reject him, after just punishment, finally perish and cease to be. It takes words like "the penalty of eternal destruction" (2 Thessalonians 1:9) and "the second death" (Revelation 20:14) at their plainest. Seventh-day Adventists and some evangelicals hold it; the Anglican evangelical John Stott said he inclined to it, tentatively Evangelical Essentials.

The third is the hope that all will finally be saved. Origen, in the third century, speculated in On First Principles that all things would in the end be restored to God Origen, On First Principles, and some modern theologians share this hope, pointing to God's purpose "that God may be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28) and to God "who wants everyone to be saved" (1 Timothy 2:4). But it should be said plainly: the historic creeds and most of the church have not accepted universal salvation, and in the sixth century the teaching of Origen's later followers on this point was condemned.

All three views agree that hell is real and that it is separation from God: to be "separated from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His might" (2 Thessalonians 1:9). All agree that judgment belongs to God, the Judge of all the earth who will do what is right. So we do not pronounce on anyone's final end or use hell to frighten people, and we hear these warnings with the heart of a God who is "not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). For more, see Are heaven and hell real? and What is the last judgment?.

All things new

The Bible's final hope is not escape from God's world but its renewal. Creation itself groans, waiting until it "will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). Isaiah foresaw it (Isaiah 65:17), and Peter waited for "a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13). John saw it come.

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. ‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.

Revelation 21:3-4

God's people have wept often enough, Matthew Henry observes, "but no signs, no remembrance of former sorrows shall remain" Matthew Henry. Then the river of life flows from the throne, the tree of life lost in Eden stands on its banks, the curse is gone, and God's servants "will see His face" (Revelation 22:4).

The first lesson of this course began with the words "No one has ever seen God" (John 1:18). The God who made himself known in his Son will at last live with his people face to face. That is eternal life, and that is our hope.

So the church waits, and prays. The first Christians prayed in Aramaic, maran atha (μαρὰν ἀθά): "Come, O Lord!" (1 Corinthians 16:22). The Didache, from around AD 100, ends its Eucharistic prayer with that word The Didache, ch. 10, and the Westminster Confession closes its chapter on the last judgment by urging us to be "ever prepared to say, Come Lord Jesus, come quickly" Westminster Confession, 33.3. Near its very end the Bible prays it too, and with that prayer this course ends.

He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Revelation 22:20

Practice