We are so used to the truth that Christ’s death saves us, that we forget that his rising saves us too. His death contributed something unique, because it took away our sins. But the Resurrection must not be forgotten. St Paul said: “Christ was put to death for our sins and raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25). His rising brings about the resurrection of our bodies and the resurrection of our souls.
To be a true human being, you need a body and a soul. If we are to be saved from everything that destroys our humanity, we need to be saved in our bodies and our souls. So when God became human in Jesus Christ, he became a true human being. Our Saviour united to himself a body and a soul, so he could heal both our souls and our bodies.
When we die, the soul is separated from the body. When we rise, they are reunited. Deprived of its body, the soul wants its body back, so there is a true human being again. Even when happy in heaven, the soul still wants its body back to share in the soul’s happiness.
Jesus saved us from sin and death by dying and rising. His body and soul were separated at his death on the Cross, and his body and soul were reunited on the third day. His soul wanted its body back, just as ours will. And when he rose from the dead, the Son of God reunited the very same soul and the very same body. The tomb really was empty. Jesus demonstrated the reality of his body to his disciples by eating before them, by showing them his wounds.
Our resurrection and Jesus’s Resurrection are intimately linked. Christ’s resurrection causes our resurrection. Of course God will be the ultimate cause. Only God has the power to raise the dead. But just as we use tools – pens to write on paper, hands to hold the pen – so God uses “instruments”. Think how the risen Christ uses the sacraments to bring us the Spirit’s grace. That’s just one way God uses Christ’s humanity to complete our salvation. God used Christ’s body, his soul, everything he did and suffered on earth, to save us. He uses Christ’s rising to raise up our bodies and souls. And just as every artist works from a model, with a plan in mind, so Christ will pattern our resurrection bodies on his.
Though Jesus took back the same body at the Resurrection, it was remarkably different. It was perfect. Even during his earthly life, though Jesus was perfect overall, he was not perfect in every way. He was not only a true human being, with a body as well as a soul, but he was also perfectly human. He enjoyed many graces, virtues and gifts that raised his soul to perfection, including the perfection of knowing and loving his Father.
All this helped him towards our salvation. But in other ways he was not so perfect – he could suffer and die – but even these imperfections worked for our benefit. And so Christ was made “perfect through suffering” (Hebrews 2:10). When God raised him up, his body enjoyed a new perfection it did not enjoy before. So, in rising, Christ makes us share in this new perfection at our own resurrection. Our perfection is patterned on his.
Paul declared that our resurrection body will be a “spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44). It is no less a physical body, but is transformed by the Spirit in its relation to the glorified soul. We experience difficulties now in how our bodies relate to our souls. The nature of the body inevitably slows us down, makes us open to suffering, and so on. But the resurrection body relates differently, as we see in Jesus. He becomes present among his disciples in a moment. Though he was not the first to rise from the dead, he was the first to rise never to suffer or die again, the model for our risen life with all the saints.
But Christ’s rising does not just raise up our bodies. It raises up our souls too, and it does so now. Remember that Paul said that Christ was raised for our justification. His new life brings new life to us already by the Spirit’s work in our souls, making us right and just before God, fitting us for the new heaven and earth. We already share by faith in Christ’s perfect knowing and loving of the Father. If we believe in the one who raised Christ from the dead, then he will give life to our mortal bodies, and we shall share for ever in Christ’s Resurrection as true human beings, in body and in soul.
Fr Simon Francis Gaine OP is the Regent of Blackfriars, Oxford, and the author of Did the Saviour See the Father? Christ, Salvation and the Vision of God (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015)
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