No resurrection, no salvation! This, in short, is what the Apostle Paul argues. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then them also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. * * * But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. 1 Cor. 15:16-20.
When God gave his elect to Christ to save them from their sins it was to save their bodies as well as their souls. They belong to Christ in soul and body. Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are Gods. Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? * * * the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God? 1 Cor. 6: 15, 19, 20.
While the whole man is redeemed from iniquity by the blood of Christ, yet in the work of regeneration there is no change from natural to spiritual made in the mortal bodies of the saints. That important and necessary event is reserved for the resurrection. If regeneration made a man spiritual in body as well as in soul then there could be no warfare be¬tween the flesh and the Spirit. There would be then a com¬plete harmony and oneness between them, resulting in sinless perfection he flesh, and if such a being could remain on earth rending unto Caesar would be forever done with, and the whole time, night and day, would be taken up in the worship and service of God. God has therefore wisely reserved the time for sinless perfection in the flesh to the resur¬rection, when the resurrected saints will be as the angels of God in heaven and fashioned in body like the glorious body of Jesus. Mt. 22: 30; Mark 12: 25; Phil. 3: 21.
The resurrection of the dead is one of the symbols of wa¬ter baptism which the apostle Paul unanswerably wet the non-resurrectionists of apostolic times. He said, What shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead? 1 Cor. 15:29. Why represent in baptism, and teach by it, the resurrection of the dead if there be no resurrection? It seems that even the non- resurrectionists believed in baptism and under¬stood that it not only symbolized the death, burial and resur¬rection of Christ, the head of the church, but also the resurrection of the church, His body, from the grave, that as the head rose from the grave so must the body also rise. As Christ is the head of the church and the church is his body, and as the head and the body are one, the grave could not give up the head and hold the body. Both must come forth, or both remain, in the grave, but the non-resurrectionists, it seems, admitted that Christ was raised from the dead. So Pauls argument caught them in their own trap. With wondrous power and glory the salvation of God shines bright and clear in the resurrection of the sainted dead from the grave. It is the crowning work of salvation and full preparation for heaven and immortal glory. The bodies of the saints go down into the grave in corruption, but they are raised in incorruption. Sown in dishonor, but raised in glory, sown in weakness, but raised in power; sown a natural body but raised a spiritual body. Behold I shew you a mystery; we shall all not sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a mo¬ment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality, so when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.See 15th. chapter of 1st Corinthians.
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