JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

Paul summarizes his argument by saying, "It is sown a physical body, it is raised a
spiritual body" (1 Co 15:44). When Paul uses the words "spiritual body" he does not mean
spiritual in the sense of "noncorporeal." The translation "physical body" is not quite accurate
since the Greek word has no equivalent term in English.
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The Greek word is psychikon, from psyche which means "life" or "soul." The physical-the
mortal body—is not made of psyche; it is a body animated by psyche.
In the same way the resurrection body will not be made of pneuma--spirit. It is true that
some Greek philosophers did not consider pneuma to be nonmaterial as we do; they thought of
pneuma as a very fine, invisible, celestial substance capable of interpenetrating all other forms of
being. However such an understanding of "spirit" is totally foreign to Scripture. "Spirit" to Paul
is God's spirit--the Holy Spirit. The resurrection body will be one which is completely animated
and empowered by the Spirit of God.
Although Paul does conceive of God's spirit as dwelling in believers here and now, the
sphere of the Spirit's work in this life is the human spirit, not the human body. When Paul tells
the believers at Ephesus that they once were dead but now have been made alive, he refers to
spiritual life. In spirit, we have been made alive with Christ. In spirit, we have been raised up
with Him. In spirit, we have been exalted to heaven and seated at the right hand of God with
Christ (Eph 2:5-6). Again Paul says:
"But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits
are alive because of righteousness" (Ro 8:10).
In the next verse, Paul makes it clear that to have Christ dwelling in a person is identical
to having the Spirit indwell a person (v. 11). This is why Paul can affirm that we have this
treasure of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ in "jars of clay" (2 Co
4:7) which are subject to all kinds of sufferings.
The "spiritual body" (pneumatikon soma), therefore, is a bodytransformed by the "lifegiving
Spirit" of God adapted for existence in the new redeemed order of the Age to Come.
Such existence is "beyond history" not in the sense that it is unreal or nonexistent, but in that it is
an order of existence in which the "laws of nature" and normal historical causality no longer
apply.
Related to this order of existence we find Jesus saying:
"The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are
considered worthy of taking part in that age [the Age to Come] and in the
resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and
they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God's children
since they are children of the resurrection. But in the account of the bush,