“Reach your finger here and look at my hands, and reach your hand here and put it into my side.”

In other words, the wound was still such that Thomas could put his hand in. So this is very important because when you get resurrected you’re not going to have a new body, you’re going to have a different body but it will be the same body changed.

Now, Paul tells us of five specific changes that will take place in our resurrection body. And he speaks of this in 1 Corinthians 15:42–44 and verses 52 and 53. So we’ll read those verses. 42–44 and 52 and 53. Paul says:

“So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption.”

You know what corruption is? It’s decay. Anything that decays is corrupt.

“It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”

There is a natural body, there is a spiritual body. Now, that’s hard to understand. Unfortunately, the translation doesn’t help very much. This is one of the problems of the English translation and every translation seems to have the same problem. The Greek word is psuchekos which is directly derived from the Greek word for a soul which is psuche. There’s only one reasonable translation which is soulish. It is sown a soulish body, it is raised a spiritual body. You see there the distinction between spirit and soul. Now some languages, for instance, Swedish, has a word for soulish. So does Danish. And really, English has got to have that word rightly to represent what the Bible teaches.

For instance, in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 Paul says:

“The soulish man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God.”

But the translations all say “the natural man,” “the carnal man,” et cetera. It all obscures this tremendously important distinction between the soulish and the spiritual. So it’s sown, it’s buried a soulish body, it’s raised a spiritual body.

Now, ask me to explain that and I’m not sure I can. But I know what it says. But I suggest to you that in our present body the soul makes the decisions. If I want to go through the door my soul says we’ll go through the door and my feet obey. And so, in a sense, our spirit is dependent upon our soul. You remember what David said to his soul, “Soul, praise the Lord.” Come on, get moving. The spirit, you see, wanted to praise the Lord but the soul was sluggish in response. That’s apparently the way it was. We have to stir up our souls from our spirits to do the right thing. We know we should be praising the Lord but our souls are sluggish and so we have to stir them up. This may not satisfy you but it’s the best I can do.

When it’s raised it will be a spiritual body. In other words, the spirit will control the body direct. How? I don’t know. There was a man years ago, a barber in Denmark where my first wife was living, he was a rather simpleminded man but he said one day, “I had a dream.” And he said, “I was in a sort of body and I just pointed to where I wanted to go. If I wanted to go up I pointed up and I went up. If I wanted to go to the right I pointed to the right, if

Laying the Foundation

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