We Shall Be Changed

What will life be like when the Lord Jesus returns and His people are resurrected in glory? Today, Sinclair Ferguson illustrates what we can know about the wonderful mystery of the resurrection to come.

This week on Things Unseen, as we approach the celebration of the first coming of Christ at Christmastime, we’re also looking forward to His return, His second coming. And yesterday, we were thinking about the order of the events that will surround that one great event. When Adam sinned, his life was thrust from forward gear, in obedience to God, back into reverse gear, disobedience and rebellion. I wonder if you’ve ever tried to drive in reverse gear? It’s not easy. It’s harder to go straight, and somehow it’s not a very fast or smooth way to go. And perhaps we can think of what happens at the return of Christ is that He will thrust everything, the whole gearing of creation, from reverse gear into forward gear. Everything will be transformed, run better, more efficiently, more comfortably, we might even say more easily. It will be as it really ought to have been. And that’s what the resurrection will be like.

If you’re a regular with us on Things Unseen, you’ll probably know that I love golf, although I’ve become a bit of a disaster on the golf course. But years ago, I used to keep an old driver in the trunk of my car, and if I had a spare thirty minutes, I’d maybe find a driving range. One day—I think we’re talking in the 1980s now—I was happily hitting golf balls in a driving range in Philadelphia near where I worked, and there was an older man in the next bay, and he was using a top-of-the-line latest technology driver. And he leaned over and he said to me, “Have a try with this one, son.” Somewhat reluctantly, I took up his offer, and I immediately felt the difference from my own old driver. This one felt and looked fabulous, and it was easy to swing, and the ball flew off the club face, sailing past the balls I’d hit with my old driver. It seemed effortless, easy by comparison. And I handed it back to him a little reluctantly, knowing it was a far more expensive club than I was ever likely to buy.

And then I had this heart-lifting thought that was more than compensation for handing back the driver. I thought: “Wow, I think I’ve just experienced the nearest thing a golfer can experience to the resurrection of the body. Think of it, Sinclair: one day it will seem the most natural wonderful thing and even easy thing in the world to live every moment to please God free from sin. My body will feel different, resurrected. My mind won’t be distracted from Jesus. Obedience will be completely natural.” And as the hymn says so wonderfully, “All the ransom church of God will then be saved to sin no more.” It’s almost unimaginable. And next in importance to the fact that the Lord Jesus will reign as King is the fact that we will live in the presence of the Father completely happy, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, free from sin, finding it easy and joyful to serve Him without reservation. Doesn’t that grip your mind and flood your heart with anticipation of the return of the Lord Jesus?

Here’s another way to think about this: we sometimes wonder, and we’ve actually asked before on the podcast, whether we’ll recognize each other in the resurrection. After all, Paul says we’ll all be changed. But think about it this way: Sometime ago, I met someone I hadn’t seen for ages, and he introduced himself to me. And it turned out he’d asked a mutual friend if he ever saw me, would he still recognize me? My friend said, “You will, but he wears eyeglasses, spectacles now,” but I had to look twice to recognize him. I’d never have imagined that he would be so self-assured, so composed, so well-spoken, such an urbane person—the person he’d turned out to be. But I could see he was the same person I’d known half a century ago, but wonderfully changed, and I felt, actually, quite an improved version.

And the resurrection will surely be something like that. Yes, we’ll maybe have to look twice at each other, first of all, to recognize that what we are seeing is the inside ministry of the Holy Spirit in their lives turned outside as they’re made more and more like Christ. Then we’ll see who they really were and also who they really now are. That’s something to look forward to, isn’t it? Especially since the Apostle John promises us that it doesn’t yet appear what we shall be, although we are already the children of God, but when we see Him, we will be like Him. What a day to look forward to.