“teaching about ritual washings, laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment” (Hebrews 6:2 HCSB).
The next item on the list of elemental truths from Hebrews 6:1-2 involves the resurrection of the dead. This reference to the afterlife is mentioned in several Old Testament passages, including Isaiah 26:19, Job 19:25-27, and Psalm 17:15. Perhaps the clearest Old Testament expression of this doctrine appears in the book of the Biblical prophet Daniel…
“And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Some to everlasting life, Some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2).
In the New Testament, we see the resurrection of the dead referenced in John 11:24, Acts 24:15, and Romans 6:8-9. Paul the Apostle also addressed this subject at length in the book of 1 Corinthians…
“Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?… For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive…
But someone will say, ‘How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?’ Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain—perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body” (1 Corinthians 15:12, 21-22, 35-38).
This analogy illustrates the resurrection of the dead in several ways. For instance…
- A seed will not reach its final stage of development unless it is buried. Human beings generally conclude their physical lives with a similar burial process.
- A seed planted in the ground will eventually produce something different from itself. The same is true of the resurrection of the dead: “…you are not planting the body which it will become” (NLV).
- A plant and a seed are not the same, but there is a correlation between the two. In a similar manner, there is a one-to-one correlation between the physical body that dies and the body that will be resurrected.
- Two seeds may initially appear similar but later produce different plants. This is true of the resurrected body as well: “…God gives it the new body He wants it to have. A different plant grows from each kind of seed” (NLT).
We’ll conclude our review of these “elementary principals of Christ” with a look at the subject of eternal judgment next.