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The Foolishness of Trying to Define the Unknown

1 Corinthians 15:35-38
But someone will ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?' How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. (NIVUK)

God is not curious about anything because He knows everything. Although we are made in His image, we are not God! Our knowledge is limited to what we have been taught, what we experience and what we can find out by using our previous knowledge as tools. Human curiosity has been rewarded through logical scientific method, discovering many of the properties of the world and universe; but only because God’s creation is logical and not random.
 
Every new discovery must start with information which is true; otherwise the conclusion will always be wrong (which is why scientific 'facts' are sometime rewritten). In the fields of philosophy and theology, unless there is divine revelation, fallible experience is the only guide. But in questions about life after death, none of the numerous fanciful theories can be proved until we get the other side of death. That is why the resurrection of Jesus, and what He has revealed through the apostles about what will be proved true in the future, is the only information we can trust.
 
Even so we are curious. What will it be like in eternity, what will we do? What will our resurrection body be like? Paul says it is foolish to try to define what you do not know. If nobody had ever watched a chick hatch from an egg or seen an oak come from an acorn - we could only speculate about eggs and seeds. The only reason we can be totally confident that there is a resurrection body is that Jesus was seen alive in such a body; clearly recognisable, about to walk and talk and eat food, but also able to appear and disappear. It had properties which we do not understand. And yet His resurrection is enough evidence to assure us that there is life after death for those who belong to Christ, that He will come back again, and that we will also be raised with new, different bodies.
 
Our curiosity will raise a million questions, but God will only reveal what we need to know in order to obey Him and to trust Him about what is not yet fully revealed. Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” It is foolish to make up what God has chosen not to reveal. It causes divisions in churches, heresy and apostasy: the world-wide church is infected by it. Although there is much we cannot know now, we can be confident that Jesus is alive, that His resurrection body had different properties, and that when He returns we will also have a resurrection body which can never spoil or fade or decay. So let's keep obeying Jesus in what we know and keep trusting Him for what is to come.

Prayer 
All-knowing God. Thank You that You have not revealed to me information I do not need or could not cope with. Forgive me for failing to obey what You have commanded, and for worrying about the future because I have failed to trust You. Please help me to cherish the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and use what the Bible does say about the second coming and eternity to strengthen my resolve to serve my Saviour as He builds His church. In His Name. Amen.
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© Dr Paul Adams