1 Corinthians 15:21, “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.”
When Paul speaks of the resurrection—as we will see in verses 35-42, and even more clearly in Romans 8:18-25 —he has more in mind than just the resurrection of believer’s bodies. Ultimately the “resurrection,” entails the regeneration of all creation. All of created reality is now in “seed form,” according to 1 Cor.15:35ff; humans—yes—but also trees and stars and animals and planets….all of these things are “bare kernels” and all of them have appointed “resurrection bodies” that correlate to their present forms as a fully grown stalk of corn correlates to a seed. We live in a universe of seeds in various stages of being sown (which looks like entropy at this stage); the day is coming when all of them will be planted and all of them will be raised to new, imperishable, spiritually attuned life.
What I want to consider briefly this morning is that this would not happen apart from Christ—apart from His crucifixion and subsequent resurrection. If the Son of God had not bound created reality to Himself, borne its death, and raised it up again in Himself to God—if Christ had never been, then creation would be one unending and unchanging descent into annihilation. There would be only death.
But because Christ is; because God—from before “Let there be”—ordained that the Son should everlastingly and perfectly bind created reality to Himself, should experience in Himself the fullness of creation’s death (both material and immaterial) should swallow up on the cross not only the descent into chaos inherent in a reality that is not God but also humanity’s willful opposition to God and the personal wrath of God against such opposition, and—having borne these things to their infinite limits (in fact, having set their limits in His own experience of them), that He should then be raised up again to new life, carrying all that He has united to Himself up into the undying life of God; because God has done this….there is and will be resurrection from the dead for all who are in Christ and, in them, for all of creation.
The whole death-to-life pattern of reality—sunrise and sunset, sowing and reaping, eating, drinking, sleeping and waking, the process of reproduction, the emotional experiences of the human life, and on and on we could go—this entire pattern exists only because from before time began, it was ordained that the Son of God should be incarnate, should die, and should rise again, thus declaring the Name of God to the universe and granting created existence—with humans at the head—eternal life with and in God.
