When G. K. Chesterton’s sister, Beatrice, died at the age of eight, her grief-stricken father turned her picture to the wall, got rid of all her possessions, and forbade the mention of her name. The Christian faith does not guarantee us tomorrow, but it does guarantee us eternity in Christ. The trumpeter may be weak but the trumpet sound is not.
- We shall be changed.
- 15:50-52. This is a mystery, something that God has revealed. When Christ comes again, some Christians will have been asleep for centuries, others will still be alive – but they will all be changed. None of this has happened yet. This is not heaven, but the end of all things when Christ comes for His kingdom. Didymus the Blind from Alexandria in the fourth century wrote: ‘Somehow, then, what is raised is both other than and the same as the body that perishes.’ The ‘we’ does not mean that Paul expects to be still alive, but that there will be Christians on earth when Christ comes. This is the great transformation.
- The transformation will be instantaneous.
- 15:52. The Greek word is atomos, from which we get ‘atom’, the smallest body. It is not growing as in John 15:1-5.
- Death is defeated, and the victory seen by all.
- 15:53-55. Death is like the schoolyard bully who has received a hiding. Paul taunts him. In 1542 Martin Luther’s daughter, Magdalene, died at the age of thirteen: ‘As they laid her in the coffin he said: “Darling Lena, you will rise and shine like a star, yea, like the sun’
- 15:56; law and sin together make death appalling to the sinner whose sins are not forgiven.
- 15:57; Rev.1:17-18. Dark, dark indeed the grave would be/ Had we no light, O God, from Thee! So it would be, but we have light.