We are now at Lord’s Day 22, Q57, where we are asked, “What comfort does the resurrection of the body offer you?” The answer we are expected to give is, “Not only shall my soul after this life immediately be taken up to Christ, my Head, but also this my flesh, raised by the power of Christ, shall be reunited with my soul and made like Christ's glorious body.”
There are two important propositions in Q22, the first part, dealing with human soul, and what happens to the soul when the body dies, and the second, the resurrection of the body, which will happen when the Lord returns. The catechist answers his own question with a ‘not only but also’ kind of answer. Not only will we have the comfort of being with the Lord when we die, but also, we shall one day be reunited with our physical body. In this episode we break down how the catechist deals with this:
Proposition One: The Human Soul. We all have a soul, when the body dies it rots away in the ground, but the soul lives on, and where does it live? - With the Lord, and how does that happen? - Because Christ is our head.
Proposition Two: The Human Body. The body that we have is laid to rest, ‘in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead.’ How so? The power of the risen Christ will also raise the dead, who have died in the Lord, the body will be reunited with the soul, and the body will never again suffer from decay, or sickness or sin, but will be LIKE CHRIST’s risen body. That restored body, made to be as originally intended, is described as ‘GLORIOUS!’
Problem: What happens in between the two? We call that gap between our death and resurrection, “The intermediate state.” Now, that’s quite a lot of information to sift through, so I’m going to look at it over two or three episodes.
Let’s deal with some issues around the death of the believer and the destiny of the soul at death.
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