Reunion in Heaven

Until death man comprises “spirit and soul and body” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). After death he lives on, conscious and aware, without his body until he gets it back, raised from the dead, that he may be a complete man again. A Christian man between death and resurrection, though unbodied, is ‘‘with Christ,” enjoying a ‘‘very far better” life than he knew before his death (Philippians 1:23).

Christ Recognizable
What change did Christ’s death and resurrection make in him? In personality, none. He was still the same person, still loved by the same friends and still hated by the same foes. And his body, though a strange change had taken place in the nature of its substance, was unchanged in form. Unless “Their eyes were holden that they should not know him” (Luke 24:16), his friends recognized him, “knowing that it was the Lord” (John 21:12).

   In his risen body, Christ repeatedly appeared to his disciples. They saw, heard, and handled him. They walked, talked, and ate with him. They knew him to be the same man, unaltered in personality and bodily appearance.

Christ the Firstfruits
“Now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that are asleep” (l Corinthians 15:20). As evidence and sample of the harvest that was beginning, Jews “offered” the fruit gathered first to God. Hence, this verse teaches that Christ’s resurrection is evidence and example of the resurrection his saints may expect at his coming. Another scripture that teaches the same thing reads simply: “We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). The birth, death, and resurrection of Christ are not exceptionable; they are the common lot of all men.

   That a natural body asleep in Jesus shall be awakened, with its identity preserved, still a body but a spiritual body, “conformed to the body of his glory” (Philippians 3:21), and recognizable as His was, is a conclusion unavoidable. “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44). A spiritual resurrection-body, note, is as certain and as actual as a natural body. A person without a body may be an angel, but certainly not a man as God made him, and as he shall be again when his redemption is perfected. If by altering its atomic structure man can change matter into energy, why is it incredible that God the Maker of man and matter, can, without changing its form, turn a natural body into a spiritual body? Is this more wonderful than making our natural body to begin with out of dust!

 Reunion
There is much unscriptural, extravagant fantasy about life after death. Some seem to think that in heaven saints will sit on clouds and play harps for all eternity, or perhaps hang as bubbles in the sun. Insofar as the Bible paints celestial scenery and life, it uses colors taken from the palette of terrestrial life. And the pictures minister to our natural and proper longing for a human heaven.

   Christ’s story of the rich man and Lazarus teaches that memory and natural affection survive death. The rich man in Hades is still concerned about his brothers, yet alive on Earth (Luke 16:28). How we love even the very bodies of our close kindred! Well, instead of being lost to us forever at death, their bodies together with ours, incapable of weariness, suffering, deformity, and death, shall be raised that the whole triune man, “spirit and soul and body” may “be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Then, Satan’s ruin of the whole man wholly corrected, broken Christian families shall be reunited in eternal, fadeless beauty and perfection. How foolish were caterpillars to dread leaving their cocoons to become butterflies! Does not the heart beat, and the breath come, a little faster? ‘‘Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift.”

Excerpts from 20th Century Christian (ca. 1950s)

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R. C. Bell (1877-1964) was a preacher and Christian educator working for 50 years with Christian schools located in seven different states. This work included 25 of those years with Abilene Christian College, in addition to working with Harding College, David Lipscomb College, Harper College, Thorp Spring Christian College, and Cordell Chrisitan College.