Better Resurrection
Does this ever happen to you: You are reading about a topic you have studied many times before but a particular phrase or concept seems to jump off the page at you? Often when this happens to me, as I continue to study I realize that I have used my love of language to glean a meaning that isn’t actually present in what I just read. However, those nuggets often become food for thought and further study.
That happened when I was studying about all the ways the writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is better. He is a better High Priest of a better covenant, with better promises, and so on. I had done a simple search of the word “better” in Hebrews and toward the end, those two words – better resurrection – jumped out at me.
In context, they are found in chapter 11 and refer to the fact that there were faithful people under the old law who chose to stay faithful in the midst of torture that they may receive the better resurrection. My brain started spinning about what would be a better resurrection. I thought about people in the Bible who were resurrected and realized that so far, they have only ever been resurrected to this life!
Lazarus came back, but he came back to the same society and culture that hated his Friend who had raised him and even plotted to kill him again so that he wasn’t proof of Jesus’s deity (John 12:10). While I am sure that Eutychus (Acts 20) and Dorcas (Acts 9) were thankful to some degree, being brought back to this life came with the same day-to-day issues – bills, responsibilities, decisions.
So what will be a better resurrection; the one those faithful people in Hebrews 11:35 were desiring? It will be on that last, great resurrection when the One Who has already experienced that resurrection returns and “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:4). We will “be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” (1 Cor. 15:51-53) That is the better resurrection.
“Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:8)
AUTHOR: Amber Tatum
