Burial or Cremation: Does It Matter?

Photo by Diogo Palhais
I recently completed preaching through 1 Corinthians. After walking through 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul spends an enormous amount of space dealing with the reality and importance of the future bodily resurrection for all believers, many questions were raised among some of our church members regarding those who do not have a body. What about those who have been blown to smithereens from some massive explosion? Not only that, but what about the simple fact that the human body decomposes so that the only thing left are bones? What body is to be resurrected on the last day? Paul’s answer is that God is able to give each person a body as he has chosen (v.38), and that body will be a glorified body—a body that is similar to this body in some ways and dissimilar in other ways. With regards to our resurrected bodies, there is both continuity and discontinuity.

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