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The whole of our life is interwoven with the life of Christ. His first coming has been to us salvation. We live still because He lives. The completion of our salvation in the deliverance of our body from the bondage of corruption is wrapped up in His personal resurrection and quickening power.

I. THE MARVEL WHICH IS TO BE WROUGHT BY OUR LORD AT HIS COMING.

1. He will change the body in which our humiliation is manifested and enclosed, and will transform it until it is like the body in which He enjoys and reveals His glory. Three times human eyes have seen something of the body of glory — in the face of Moses, after his forty days' communion; in the transfiguration of Christ; in the angel face of Stephen.

2. Turning to 1 Corinthians 15 we learn —

(1) That the body is corruptible, subject to decay; but the new body shall be incorruptible. For the immortal spirit it shall be the immortal companion.

(2) It is sown in weakness, weak to perform our will, weaker still to perform God's, weak to do and to suffer; but it is to be raised in power and be made like unto the angels who excel in strength.

(3) It is a natural or soulish body — a body fit for the soul, for the lowest faculties of our mental nature; but it will be raised a spiritual body, adapted to the noblest portion of our nature, suitable for the highest aspirations of perfected humanity.

(4) It is sinful, its members have been instruments of unrighteousness. It is true it is the temple of the Holy Ghost, but there are traces about it of the time when it was a den of thieves. But it awaits the time when it shall be perfectly sinless.

(5) Being sinless it shall be painless. Truly, we who are in this tabernacle do groan. Up yonder the rod shall no longer chasten, the faultiness being removed.

(6) The spiritual body will not need to sleep, for it will serve God day and night in His temple without weariness.

(7) It will be perfect. If the saints have lost a sense or a limb or are halt or maimed they will not be so in heaven, for as to body and soul "they are without fault before the throne of God." "We shall be like Him," therefore beautiful.

3. The miracle will be amazing if you view it as occurring to those who shall be alive when Christ comes. Reflect, however, that most will be in their graves, and of many all trace will have disappeared.

4. By what possibility then can the self same bodies be raised? I answer, it needs a miracle to make any of these dry bones live, and a miracle being granted impossibility vanishes. He who formed each atom from nothing can gather each particle from confusion.

II. THIS POWER WHICH IS TO RAISE THE DEAD IS RESIDENT IN CHRIST AT THIS MOMENT. It is not some new power which Christ will take in the latter days.

1. This power is ascribed to Christ as the Saviour, and it is precisely in that capacity that we need the exercise of His power at this moment. How large, then, may be our expectations for the conversion of men. Nothing is too hard for the Lord. If as Saviour He will wake the dead, He can now quicken the spiritually dead. Your own regeneration was as remarkable an instance of Divine power as the resurrection will be.

2. Opposition may be expected to this power, but that resistance will be overcome. There will be no resistance to the resurrection, but to the spiritual there is prejudice, hatred of Christ, sinful preferences, etc. But "He is able to subdue all things unto Himself."

3. The text includes all supposable cases. Not here and there one, but all things. No man is so fallen but Jesus can save him.

4. Nothing is said concerning the unfitness of the means. The text obliterates man altogether. Jesus can and will do it all.

5. The ability is present with the Saviour. He is as strong now as He ever will be, for He changes not.

6. The text suggests a parallel between the resurrection and the subduing of all things.

(1) All men are dead in sin, but He can raise them; many corrupt with vice, but He can transform them; some lost to hope as though their bodies were scattered to the winds — but He who raises the dead of all sorts can raise sinners of all sorts by the self same power.

(2) As the dead are to be made like unto Christ, so the wicked when converted are made like Him. Brilliant examples of virtue shall be found in those who were terrible instances of vice.

III. THE WORK WHICH WE DESIRE TO SEE ACCOMPLISHED. The Saviour subduing souls, not to our way of thinking, to our Church, to the honour of our powers of persuasion, but "unto Himself."

1. This subjection is eminently desirable since it consists in transformation.

2. To be subjected to Christ is to be fitted for heaven.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

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KJV: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

WEB: who will change the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working by which he is able even to subject all things to himself.