Resurrection
Resurrection (Greek anastasis, "a rising up") is the act of God by which the dead are raised to renewed bodily life. It is not the mere immortality of the soul, nor a resuscitation to ordinary life that would end again in death, but the raising and transformation of the whole person — body and soul together — to a deathless, imperishable existence. As such it is the distinctive Christian hope, grounded not in human nature but in the power of the living God who "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Romans 4:17).
The hope unfolds gradually in the Old Testament. The LORD is the one who "kills and makes alive" (Deuteronomy 32:39; 1 Samuel 2:6). Job confesses, "I know that my Redeemer lives... and after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God" (Job 19:25–27); the psalmist trusts that God will not abandon him to the grave (Psalm 16:10). Isaiah promises, "Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise" (Isaiah 26:19), Ezekiel beholds a valley of dry bones coming to life by the breath of God (Ezekiel 37:1–14), and Daniel speaks plainly of the last day: "many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Daniel 12:2).
The whole doctrine centres on the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. On the third day God raised him from the dead, leaving an empty tomb and appearing to many witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:3–8); he declared himself "the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25). His rising vindicated him as Son of God (Romans 1:4) and secured the believer's justification (Romans 4:25). Paul calls him "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20–22) and "the firstborn from the dead" (Colossians 1:18) — the pattern and pledge of all that will follow.
Because Christ is risen, his people will rise. At his coming the dead in Christ will be raised and the living transformed, the body "sown perishable" being raised "imperishable... a spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:42–44, 51–54). The same Spirit who raised Jesus will give life to their mortal bodies (Romans 8:11), conforming them to his glorious body (Philippians 3:21) in the redemption for which creation groans (Romans 8:23). Scripture teaches a resurrection of all the dead — "a resurrection of both the just and the unjust" — some to life and some to judgment (John 5:28–29; Acts 24:15).
The resurrection is therefore the ground and goal of the Christian faith. "If Christ has not been raised," Paul insists, "your faith is futile and you are still in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17); but he has been raised, and so death itself, "the last enemy," is doomed to be destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26). The believer's hope is not escape from the body but its glorious renewal, embodied and unending life with God in a redeemed creation — the final triumph of the gospel and the swallowing up of death in victory.