Jesus lives! Henceforth is death
But the gate of life immortal.
These words from an Easter hymn go back to an 18th-century German writer, Christian Gellert. The word "immortal" has actually crept in to fill up the line (the original reads Jesus lebt. Nun ist der Tod / Mir der Eingang in das Leben), but it is not out of place. We all know that life after death will have a different quality to the life we are leading at the moment.
Immortality - for us
The word, athanatos in Greek, does not even appear in the Bible, though its associated noun, athanasia, immortality does. Perhaps writers avoided it, because it would have reminded readers of the Greek gods, referred to by pagans as "the immortals". The Christian God is unchanging, imperishable, eternal: but only at 1 Tim 6:16 does the Bible go so far as to say that God "has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light".
Immortality otherwise is reserved for us humans. The hymn rightly says that it comes as a result of the resurrection. And this is what Paul tells the Corinthians.
The stroppy Corinthians
The Corinthians were an argumentative lot. Living in a seaport where people with all and every possible view were able to have their say, they were always asking "Why shouldn't we do this or that?" Why can't we eat meat offered to pagan gods? Why must women cover their heads when they pray? Why do we need to marry - can't we just live with someone? Why should our services be so formal - can't everyone speak in tongues? Who is this man Paul trying to lay down the law for us?
And so some of them also asked, what is this nonsense about resurrection? Why should they believe in it when it was obvious that people's bodies after death were in no condition to sit on clouds or play harps? And this question gave rise to one of Paul's almost hymn-like replies - you'll find it in 1 Corinthians 15.
A different body
Animals, birds and fish have different types of body. In the same way, earthly bodies are different from heavenly bodies. We shall lose our physical body, and gain a spiritual body. Jesus has gone before us, and because he has been raised from the dead, so shall we be raised. At a trumpet call, we shall be transformed - the perishable will become imperishable, the mortal will become immortal.
Outside the material world
Immortality does not simply mean "not dying", just as eternal does not simply mean "lasting an infinite length of time." God is outside the dimension of time: the ideas of "when did God begin to exist", or of "who made God" are meaningless ones, for time, and with it the laws of cause and effect, were made by God. In the same way, immortality means living outside this world, where material things are subject to death or decay, and living in a spiritual world, where, in Paul's words "death has no more dominion". Think perhaps of music or poetry - it exists, but it cannot die.
Easter opens the gate to this new dimension - a dimension where, in Isaiah's words, quoted by Paul, "death is swallowed up" (Isaiah 25:8). We can hardly begin to describe it, for in this world we can only catch glimpses of heaven. But in Christ's resurrection, we have the first fruits of this new world, where sin and death are no more, and God is all in all.
HD