God created Adam and Eve as living souls in physical bodies. It was and is God’s very good plan for mankind that he should be a created being of both soul and body. This is confirmed by the fact that Jesus Christ and all who follow Him will live forever in heavenly bodies. If there is no resurrection of the dead then it means that God has abandoned His original plan of creation. The final resurrection of the body, which is the unique hope of the Christian, confirms that God’s original plan was indeed very good, and that He has not abandoned His original intention in the created order. Of course Adam fell into sin in the garden, and with Adam, all of mankind fell. As a result, our physical bodies are fallen and subject to temptation, sin, and finally death. God sent His Son, the last Adam, to die in our place, and He secured victory over death by raising Him from the grave, so that all who are in Christ will also rise on the last day. The Corinthian church in the First Century had some in their midst who denied the resurrection of the dead, and in so doing, they denied the importance of God’s created order. The redemption of our bodies in the final resurrection is proof of the fact that God is unchanging – that He is the same yesterday, today and forever; and if He pronounced the creation of the physical body as “very good” (Genesis 1:26-31), then we would expect that in the end, He would finally give us new bodies that are very good. The unique Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body is an essential teaching of the New Testament because it proves that for eternity, love wins and death loses.
