DEVOTIONAL FOR SATURDAY AND SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 27-28:
Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Life in the kingdom”
Our Bible verse for today: “He will transform the body of our humble condition into the likeness of His glorious body, by the power that enables Him to subject everything to Himself.” Philippians 3:21
Our thought for today: “In the eternal kingdom your body will be the perfect age – forever.”
Ok, so once the Lord establishes His eternal kingdom we will all get glorious new resurrection bodies in which we will spend eternity. So how old will I be? More precisely, how old will my resurrection body be? What if I die at 90? Will my resurrection body be the spiritual equivalent of my 90 year old mortal body? Or how about the child who died at 2 years old? Will he or she be a toddler for eternity?
The fact is that the Bible doesn’t give us a clear answer to that question. Through the ages there has been a lot of speculation and debate about it, and some pretty good educated guesses. Let me share a few with you here. Alister McGrath is one of the most respected theologians of our day. Here’s his take on it:
“As each person reaches their peak of perfection around the age of 30, they will be resurrected, as they would have appeared at that time – even if they never lived to reach that age … The New Jerusalem will thus be populated by men and women as they would appear at the age of 30 … but with every blemish removed.”
Hank Hanegraaff (The Bible Answer Man on Christian Radio) is another respected voice in our day. He writes: Our DNA is programmed in such a way that, at a particular point, we reach optimal development from a functional perspective. For the most part, it appears that we reach this stage somewhere in our twenties or thirties .. If the blueprints for our glorified bodies are in the DNA, then it would stand to reason that our bodies will be resurrected at the optimal stage of development determined by our DNA.”
The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas wrote: “… human nature will be brought back by the resurrection of the state of its ultimate perfection, which is in the state of youth, toward which the movement of growth is terminated, and from which the movement of degeneration begins.” (In other words, at your highest point of perfection, but just before the long downward slide of deterioration begins.)
The consensus down through the ages seems to have been that our resurrection bodies will probably resemble a healthy 30 year old. However, others have maintained that there seems to be evidence in the Bible of children being in heaven and therefore maybe some people actually get to grow-up in the eternal kingdom. Still others argue that those passages simply refer to the “child-like” qualities that Jesus so values and which we will all have in abundance in our resurrection bodies.
Whatever the truth turns out to be, the fact remains that we will have resurrection bodies to spend eternity in, and they will be glorious. I’ll leave you today with some insight from Joni Eareckson Tada. She writes,
“One day no more bulging middles or balding tops. No varicose veins or crow’s feet. No more cellulite or support hose. Forget the thunder thighs and highway hips. Just a quick leapfrog over the tombstone and it’s the body you’ve always dreamed of. Fit and trim, smooth and sleek!”
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 