Absent from the body

How does Paul put it? ““Absent from the body;”” but you have hardly said that word, when he adds, ““present with the Lord.”” The eyes are closed on earth and opened again in heaven. They loose their anchor, and immediately they come to the desired haven. How long that state of disembodied happiness shall last it is not for us to know, but by-and-by, when the fullness of time shall come, the Lord Jesus shall consummate all things by the resurrection of these bodies.

The trumpet shall sound, and as Jesus Christ’’s body rose from the dead as the first-fruits, so shall we arise, every man in his own order. Raised up by divine power, our very bodies shall be reunited with our souls to live with Christ, raised however, not as they shall be put into the grave to slumber, but in a nobler image. They were sown like the shrivelled seed, they shall come up like the fair flowers which decorate your summer gardens. Planted as a dull unattractive bulb, to develop into a glory like that of a lovely lily with snowy cup and petals of gold. Sown like the shrivelled barley or wheat, to come up as a fair green blade, or to become the golden ear. ““It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.””

Come, my soul, what a promise is given thee in God’’s word of the life that is to come! A promise for my soul, did I say? A promise for my body too. These aches and pains shall be repaid; this weariness and these sicknesses shall all be recompensed. The body shall be re-married to the soul, from which it parted with so much grief, and the marriage shall be the more joyous because there never shall be another divorce. Then, in body and in soul made perfect, the fullness of our bliss shall have arrived.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Profit Of Godliness In The Life To Come," delivered June 19, 1870