For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
(1 Cor. 15:53–55)
Our bodies are perishable by nature. Given over to death by Adam’s sin, and hastened to our ruin by our own headlong rush to live out the sin we are born with, we are like the toys in the film Toy Story 3. One problem after another has led the toys into a furnace. They try to climb out, but the mountain of rubbish they are slithering down is too steep and too unstable to climb. They slide inexorably towards the fire. With no hope of escape, the toys take one another’s hands for comfort as they wait for the flames.
Their predicament is a fair picture of ours. We are sliding inescapably towards death. Our aches and illnesses give us unwelcome reminders of what is to come. I tend to think of the toys as being like the church. We take hold of each other’s hands, living in this broken and fallen world by offering love to one another, stretching out to draw in anyone we can to our family. And we hold hands as we slip together towards the inevitable.
And then the little toy aliens make it to the control room, unknown to the toys, and use an enormous crane to scoop their friends to safety. The church is rescued too, though not through any strength of her own. But not unlike the end for the toys, the future of God’s friends is not in the furnace but in a rescue: “This perishable body must put on the imperishable.” Christ will come back for us.
We will be raised from the dead. Not with the same bodies as we have now, but with transformed bodies. The sinful nature, our bent towards selfishness and cruelty, will be utterly gone. With it we will shed our trajectory towards death and instead be curved eternally towards life and light.
Older folk I know have their characters etched on their faces. There is a deep beauty to a face marked with the laughter of decades, with tears shed for real sadnesses, and with a brow fur- rowed from earnest prayer and shared sorrows. That beauty is mingled these days with the decay of ageing. The slide towards death and the grasping tentacles of entropy mark us younger ones too. But what will it look like to gaze on a ninety-two-year- old man in his resurrection body, all signs of sin and death gone and only the marks of good tears and good laughter left? The beauty would floor us if we saw it. What will that man look like after a thousand years in Christ’s presence?
The weakness of our fallen state, and of our sin itself, will be gone forever. Victory swallows up death.
Even here, though, where we see a move from weakness to strength, it is only because of weakness and through weakness that this strength can come. Christ died in weakness to rise in glorious victory and vindication. God his Father raised him from the dead, so vindicating him and showing that he truly is the righteous, obedient, glorious, and eternal Son of God and promised Messiah. The curse, judgement, death, and humilia- tion that he took on himself was truly his. It was truly his by love, though, not because he deserved it.
Jesus rode a donkey through the gates of Jerusalem, arriving in humble peace rather than prestigious triumph. But he did not treat the gates of death so gently! He smashed them to splinters and carried off their frame and bars. He left death ransacked and plundered, her sting taken and her power broken.
His weakness and strength paved the way for us to see our need, our dependence on a Saviour. We are weak, and by showing us our helplessness, the Holy Spirit has opened our eyes to see Jesus’ rescue.
Death has no victory—the weakness of our fallen state, of our inherited guilt, of our inevitable death is completely undone. Death also has no sting. Paul goes on to say that “the power of sin is the law”—i.e., the ways that we break God’s good and holy commands. The “sting of death is [our] sin” (1 Cor. 15:56), and when our sin is gone, death no longer becomes the confirmation of our utter weakness, but instead the doorway to life in Christ. Even as we die, weaker than we have ever been, we are welcomed into the warm light of the love of God. We are stronger than ever.
Taken from Weakness Our Strength: Learming from Christ Crucified
