BibleProject - The Spirit of Resurrection

Episode Date: October 12, 2026

Spirit of God E13 — The New Testament powerfully claims that the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is now also at work in his followers. The Spirit gives us new desires and ways of thinking, and one day the Spirit will recreate us with new resurrection bodies, like the one Jesus has! So how does this hope impact the way we live now? In this episode, Tim and Jon trace the connection between the Spirit and resurrection, revealing the Spirit of God as the bringer of new creation life.CHAPTERSResurrection After the Exile and a Surprising Twist (0:00-8:55)Raised by the Spirit of Holiness (8:55-22:01)Living in Resurrection Life (22:01-38:20)The Spirit Creating Resurrection Bodies (38:20-54:46)OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTView this episode’s official transcript.REFERENCED RESOURCESPaul and the Trinity: Persons, Relations, and the Pauline Letters by Wesley HillPractice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ by Eugene H. PetersonCheck out Tim's extensive collection of recommended books here.SHOW MUSIC“evening drive.” by Lofi Sunday feat. PAINT WITH SOUND.“Snow Fall” by Lofi Sunday feat. TBabz“Live and Love” by Lofi Sunday feat. TBabzBibleProject theme song by TENTS SHOW CREDITSProduction of today’s episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey and Aaron Olsen edited today’s episode and provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty writes the show notes. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Bible Project Podcast. We're working through a series on the Spirit of God. In the last few episodes, we've been tracing the role of the Spirit in the New Testament. And today, we look at an idea that's category-breaking. God's Spirit has the power to bring back life from the dead. I want to talk about the strong and repeated connection between the Spirit and not just life in general, the Spirit and resurrection life, new creation life. One thing we know for sure, we're all going to die.

One day, we will give back God's breath and return to the dust. But in Ezekiel 37, we get this bold, prophetic vision of resurrection. Ezekiel sees a graveyard of death, full of dry bones, but then the Spirit of God breathes new life into the bones, reanimating them, resurrecting them. And so the hope of the Hebrew Bible is this. Just like God gave humans life in the beginning with his breath, God's breath will give humanity new life after death.

Resurrection hope was an important hope in many strands of Judaism in the time of Jesus. However, the disciples were so focused on Jesus defeating Rome that they didn't see that Jesus had a bigger enemy. He came to defeat death itself. The Messianic deliverer is going to confront the powers. There's going to be some conflict. And then the resurrection from the dead of the many. and the fact that one would be raised before the many

that certainly took a bunch of people by surprise. And so the followers of Jesus had to consider what does the resurrection of Jesus mean for them. And what they found was life-altering. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead was alive in them as well. Paul says, man, if the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is dwelling in you,

then the one who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your dying body through the spirit. And so if the spirit who raised Jesus is alive in us, well, this has serious implications for how we live in our present bodies. Loving God and loving neighbor is resurrection life. And so learning how to reset all my life habits and my ways of thinking and living to be directed towards love, that's the way of life that displays the reality of the resurrection.

Today, Tim Mackey and I talk about the spirit's role in the resurrection of Jesus and the hope of future resurrection. It's happened already. There's a bit of walking, talking, existing resurrection, new creation life, and it is the risen Jesus. He is our future. He is what we will become. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey, Tim.

Hi, John. Hello. Hello. We are talking about the Spirit of God. Mm-hmm. and we're in the New Testament the Spirit shows up so much in the New Testament that instead of

tracing kind of one main thread seems like we're tracing all these like miniature threads that we've together and so last week we looked at this idea of prophecy Spirit and prophecy which was a second conversation of prophecy because we looked at that in the Hebrew Bible as well

yep that's right yeah we looked at how the spirits associated with temple imagery Oh, yes. But how the temple is people in the New Testament. And then the spirit as the spirit of the Messiah, the spirit in Jesus's life and mission. What I want to talk about here is the strong and repeated connection

between the spirit and not just life in general. That's been the baseline of everything, from the beginning, but the spirit and resurrection life or the spirit and new creation life. There's an important theme in the letters to the apostles. Should we just go for it? Yeah. Okay. Prophet Ezekiel, who's living in a refugee camp in Babylon, has a dream vision of the state of his people Israel at that point in their history.

and he sees a valley of dry bones in his vision. And God invites him to call out to the bones, and then the bones get flesh put on them, but there's no life in them. And so then Ezekiel calls to the spirit wind, and then they're filled up with breath. So importantly there, the vision of the resurrection of Israel

is an image about the restoration of God's people from exile and Babylon back into the land where they can experience a new Eden. But that image of dead bodies becoming alive again became a really, really important anchor in the late stages of the Hebrew Bible for God to truly solve the problem that humans have

and to fulfill God's purpose from the Eden ideal, it's going to have to involve solving this exile from Eden problem and returning to the dust. And then the last paragraph of Daniel says, hey Daniel, you know you're going to die here in Babylon and your visions are for a future time. But in that future time, many are going to wake up from the dust

unto eternal life. So this resurrection hope was an important hope in many strands of Judaism in the time of Jesus. Not all. Not everybody thought that that was a clear teaching. Famously, the Sadducees versus the Pharisees. Exactly right. Yes. And what's interesting

is that the Sadducees were the ones who had brokered a peace with Rome and they were benefiting from it financially. Yeah. So of course they wouldn't believe in resurrection. Because resurrection... They didn't need it. No, resurrection means that I might even die defying rum but God will raise me from the dead

so middle finger to you Roman governor right so resurrection had a political edge to it a resistance edge to it and it's definitely the vibe that Jesus gave across

you know who was pretty provocative pretty critical of the leaders in Jerusalem yeah he looked like a revolt movement yes and when he said into your hands I commit my Spirit as he's dying on the Roman execution rack, he's stating his confidence that God will redeem him and give him his breath back. So the surprise then is that when the apostles found the empty tomb and met Jesus alive again from the dead, there had to have been some reconfiguring

of their Hebrew Bible imagination going on there because you could walk away from the Hebrew Bible going, yeah, it's all going to hit the fan at some point and the messianic delivers going to confront the powers, there's going to be some conflict, and then the resurrection from the dead of the many. Yeah.

And the fact that one would be raised before the many that certainly took a bunch of people by surprise and then forced them to start to rethink how they saw the whole storyline. And what we have in the New Testament is the writings of the apostles

who have gone through that reconfiguring of their imagination. Yeah. And so what's interesting is if you start looking for the connection of resurrection language with spirit language, like it was in Ezekiel there, you find really interesting things, and that's what I want to show you.

So we're going to hang in the letters of Paul mostly, though there's one important passage in the letter 1st Peter. So if you just do a survey of resurrection language in the letters of Paul, what you'll most often find is that the resurrection of Jesus is said to be the work of God the Father. So here's just some passages, almost sampled at random. Romans 6 verse 4. The Messiah was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father.

It's the Father specifically who's said to be the one who raised the Messiah from the dead. The opening line of Paul's letter to the Galatians. Paul, an apostle, not from humans or by humans, but through Jesus, the Messiah. and God the Father who raised him from the dead. That's a classic. Yeah. Kind of Paulian statement right there. Jesus Messiah and God the Father who raised him from the dead.

In Romans chapter 10, Paul talks about this basic confession of Christian faith. Jesus is Lord. If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord. It's Romans chapter 10, verse 9. And if you trust in your heart that God raised him from the dead, salvation you'll be saved so there you go you get the idea we can multiply these examples by the dozens

so there aren't that many passages that connect the resurrection of Jesus to the spirit mostly they're connected to being the work of God the Father but there's a few that provide a twist

and these few are super interesting there's a handful of passages that connect the resurrection of Jesus specifically and also to the work of the Spirit. So the first one is actually in the letter of Peter, 1 Peter, Chapter 3,

and it's just so crystal clear that I want to start here. Okay. So it's 1st Peter 318. The Messiah died for sins once and for all. The righteous one for the unrighteous.

so that he might bring us to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit. And it actually goes on and becomes quite a complicated passage, so I'm just kind of putting a dot, dot, dot there. But that feels pretty clear. Clear in what sense? He was put to death in the flesh.

Flesh here is signaling like the mortals. whole mortal body. He breathed his last, his body gave up. Body gave out, yeah. But he came back to life again. And that was in the spirit.

So being put to death in the flesh is a way of just saying being killed? Being killed. Yeah, it seems like it's naming that the, what do you say, the limited life principle of his flesh and

blood body that we share, like his mortal body, that died. But he was also brought back to life. But he wasn't brought back to life in the flesh as just resuscitating his mortal body, but that this

life was in a higher register, I don't know, another category. And that category of life is just called in the spirit. So the spirit is both revivifying, re-creating, recreating, making possible a new mode of life existence that's contrasted with mortal flesh.

And that is just called in the spirit. It's different from all these other passages that say Jesus raised from the dead by God or by God the Father. This is he was made alive in, or you could translate it by. You can translate it by? Yep, yep. It's just the Greek preposition N. That is the spirit. actually, that's a great lead-in to the next thing I want to show you.

This is in Romans chapter one. Man, there's something really cool here. The opening paragraph of Paul's letter to the Romans, he self-introduces. He's never been to Rome. Oh, okay. He's never been to these churches. He wants to go.

That's part of why he writes the letter. But he introduces himself, and he's introducing his framework and way of presenting the good news about it. Jesus because he's trying to create some relational connections here so he can go visit them. So he introduces himself, Paul, a bond servant or a slave of Messiah Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the good news of God, which God promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. So he's like, hey guys, like I'm Paul, I'm one of the apostles.

I'm down for the good news message about Jesus, just like you guys are. And just like you guys, what you mean by Jesus Messiah is that he's a Messiah foretold in the scriptures. I believe that too. And what exactly did God promise through the prophets in the scriptures? And he gives this amazing little poem, what we call Romans chapter 1, verse 3 through 4. It's super tight. It reads like Hebrew poetry. It's all symmetrical and all the parts match.

It's super cool. So what did God promise through the prophets in the scriptures? Verse three, this is about his son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh. Okay. Who was declared the son of God with power from the resurrection of the dead? according to the Spirit of holiness. That is Jesus Christ, our Lord.

And he gave us the grace of apostleship to go out to all of the nations. And you guys are called by him. You're in Rome. You're the Holy Saints. Grace and peace to you. So he's just, he's got this little poem that he just stuck in there. That is his summary of what God promised in the scriptures. that is the Old Testament.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Comparing the flesh. Mm-hmm. Once again, flesh was spirit. Yes. So, Jesus was human, the Senate of David.

According to the flesh. So that means according to his human lineage. Yeah. Yeah, right. Right. So he's referring to the traditions that appear elsewhere in the Gospels where Jesus is adopted into the line of David. Right.

Yeah. becoming adopted by Joseph. So he's a son of David. Yeah. According to his human lineage. And then who's also declared the son of God. Son of God. He's the son of David.

According to the flesh. He's the son of God. Some other category. Some other category. Yeah, that's right. And that was declared with power through the resurrection. That's how we know. The resurrection, what do you say, validated?

It made public. his identity. And that happened not according to his human lineage, the flesh. It's according to or by means of the spirit of holiness.

The spirit. So it's so interesting. He uses a phrase to describe the spirit but he doesn't use anywhere else ever again. The spirit of holiness? Yeah, he has a phrase Holy Spirit.

But here it's the Spirit of holiness, which is actually more like how you would say it in Hebrew. Oh. So it's a awkward Greek way of saying Holy Spirit. It's a great way of saying in Greek. You try to transliterate it?

Yeah. So many scholars talk about the Semitic flavor of this poem. This poem feels like it was actually written in Hebrew. Oh, uh. And has been hyper-literally rendered into Greek. Oh, okay. So it's funky Greek. It's great Hebrew in Greek.

Okay. which has led many people, scholars, to think that like he does in a few other places in his letters, where he's quoting an older poetic piece that had some pre-existence. Oh, really? And then he adapted then? Yeah. And it's speculating. But there's a poem, long poem, in his letter to the Philippians in Chapter 2. There's a poem in the beginning of the Colossians. In his letters to Timothy, sometimes he'll signal, he'll say, here's a faithful saying. meaning here's a saying

that's been around for a while and then he'll change modes and he'll quote these rad little summaries of Christian faith that have a poetic feel so there's some body of Christian theological poetry you know that Paul

maybe he wrote this maybe we don't know but he definitely switches modes in verses 3 and 4 and the language feels really different than the language around it. And it happens to have a hyper-symmetrical shape,

which is really cool, because Paul is describing the resurrection of Jesus as this almost like a royal, inaugural presentation of the new king. But is explicitly not just like a new son of David. He's a divine, he's the son of God. And the resurrection is said to be, it's the Greek preposition, Kata,

according to the Spirit of Holiness. The resurrection happened according to the Spirit of Holiness, which is not very coherent in English. According to. According to. So I've learned most and best here from the New Testament scholar Wesley Hill. It's an excellent little book called Paul in the Trinity. And he went deeper into the passage than I knew it was possible.

He makes a very persuasive case that, this phrase of according to the Spirit of Holiness, is describing the spirit as the agent of the resurrection. Which makes sense, because the resurrection is about coming to life again. And Ezekiel 37 is like ground zero and Genesis 2 come together. And so it makes all the sense in the world that you would describe the resurrection, of course being the work of God, the Father, but also being the work of the Holy. Spirit. Okay, so what's the point here of him using this flesh versus spirit? Seems important

in Paul in general, flesh versus spirit. Oh, yes. Right. Because for Paul, it really matters that Jesus is who he is for the whole world, for the universe, because he is Israel's Messiah. Yeah. Okay. So Paul, yeah, has a firm conviction that what God was doing for the universe was happening through this family and through this family's royal Messiah. Okay. And so both the flesh lineage of Jesus matters for who he is and what he did. And then also his divine identity obviously really matters too. That it's both. It's human and divine.

In a way that we're merging human and divine. Yeah. His human lineage and his divine. identity. And this divine identity was put on public display through his resurrection from the dead, which happened as a work of the spirit. So he's laying tracks here. I think Paul has chosen this poem and put it here because it's going to provide the vocabulary for some of the most important ideas that he's going to develop later on, which is about how the resurrection of Jesus, by means of the spirit is something that we get to participate in.

His resurrection becomes a model for our own resurrection, and the spirit is at work in both. So in Romans chapter 8, which is not the climax of the letter, but it is an important, what do you say, like a false peak, false summit, if you're ever climbing a tall hill or a mountain. It's majestic and amazing and the view is incredible, but it is not yet the climax, but a bunch of themes come together.

Okay. And he's talking about how the spirit of life in Messiah Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death. And what the law of sin and death means, and that's all a much longer conversation. Okay. So I just want to highlight, we've been set free. That's Exodus redemption language to be liberated. And what are we enslaved to? Yeah.

Sin and death. Okay. the spirit it's about life and you're like yeah breath right so what he goes on to talk about is that man if the spirit of life has been made available to us through messiah jesus then however the spirit works through jesus is going to be how the spirit works through me and in me and so he says down in verse nine this is the section i want to focus on he says hey, you guys, if you're followers of Jesus, you are no longer in the flesh. Rather, you are in the spirit. Notice the spirit, flesh contrast. Yeah.

Keeps happening. If indeed the spirit of God is dwelling in you. So now we're pulling on temple language. If you're the temple, which you are, then you don't exist in the mode of normal, mortal, human life anymore. The context of your life isn't defined by the 70-ish

years you might get here on planet Earth. Do you say the context of your life? Yeah. Yeah. Like most of us view our lives within a storyline that begins with our birth and ends with our death. Yeah. And that's how I think about the meaning of my life

within those parameters. and he's saying, man, if you're a follower of the risen Jesus, the meaning of your life now has a much bigger set of parameters. Yeah. Bigger context. So, yeah, Paul uses this phrase a lot, like the flesh and the spirit. And I don't know if I fully appreciate the way he is framing it. Because we've kind of really gone out of our way to talk about how to be flesh means to be filled with the spirit.

you can't separate the two. As soon as God's breath, his spirit leaves, I'm done. I'm toast. Yeah. So to be flesh is to be breathing in and saturated with God's spirit. Yeah. So there's a real merging of those two ideas. Yeah.

But then what Paul seems to want to do is kind of make them a distinction of like two different modes or something. Yeah. So in this setting, flesh, this Greek word sarks, is talking about the mode of physical life. that I have in this body that is dying. It's of limited duration because I'm outside of Eden and I'm going to die. That's why I was just trying to imagine that idea of parameters or context. This body's dying. Yeah.

It only has so much of a future and a potential. Okay. And if I only think of the potential of this body that's dying in the span of years that I get, that's going to really limit my imagination for what God wants to invite me into, which is something that transcends that. So flesh becomes this shorthand for just a mortal life, a dying body. But you are present tense in the spirit. You are now participating in a life energy that transcends that limit.

The spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. Yeah, yeah. You're in that. you're in that he goes on if anyone doesn't have the spirit of the Messiah

like oh okay he just called it the spirit of God now he's calling it the spirit of Jesus the Messiah if anyone doesn't have the spirit of the Messiah he doesn't belong to him

if the Messiah is in you even though your body he switches from flesh to body even though your body is dead because of sin, but your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And then the next sentence is like the climax of this paragraph.

So maybe let's just pause before we get there. This isn't this great reading Paul's letters? It's actually really quite hard. It is very hard. Like Peter said, it's hard. Yeah. Hard to read. That's why I gave up reading the Bible.

The letters of Paul? Yeah. Ah, yeah, yeah. Well, because I was taught to, that's, that was my Bible. Start. That's where I start and that's where I end. Maybe sample a few Psalms. That's right.

But like, Gospel of John? What about the Gospel of John? You know what? The Gospels were not that big of a deal. It was Paul. You're referring to your own church upbringing. My own church upbringing.

Yeah. And so I would spend a lot of time in these passages and I just would be like, I just don't. What's he saying? Get it. Yeah. I feel some trauma coming back into my body. Yeah. All right.

Take deep breath. Let's, uh, So let's take it. So you aren't in the flesh, follower of Jesus. Their identity and way of existing isn't defined by the limits of their dying body. You are in the spirit. You're in touch with the life principle of God that transcends all of that. Yeah.

And that spirit's dwelling in you, temple language, in you. Yeah. And this isn't just the spirit that gives us all life. This is encountering the spirit in this supercharged way that Jesus experienced it, which had him go through death and resurrect into some new life. But, man, this is good. We've been hitting this in these last few episodes. The spirit that gives everything in every one life is the spirit of God. But we can only handle it for a limited period of time because we abuse it and do a lot of folly and harm.

by the, with the spirit that's on loan to us. To talk about that, we're talking about our flesh. So that is our flesh being in possession of the spirit of God. But man, what if you and I could be given the gift of God's spirit without that limit? What if we could handle it? If, this is verse 11, if the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he will also give life to your dying. bodies through his spirit who dwells in you.

Okay. Yeah, it's a new way to experience the spirit, a way that transcends death. Ah, because here's a thing. I actually haven't lived the kind of human life that's fully in line with the will of God. But the Messiah has, he did that for us. So now, the spirit that animated him to do that and that was given over to death, and then the new creation body that the spirit made for him

that's what's now available to me. It's the new way. Okay, so, and we've been talking about Spirit 1.02.0. Is this 2.0? Yes, the Spirit of eternal life. The Spirit of Life. That's how we opened the chapter.

Chapter 8. You know, I think I talked before about how the 1.02.0 is not landing for me. I almost now picture this spectrum where you've got on one far end of the spectrum, you've got, I exist and I'm alive, and so I'm connected to God's spirit,

but every other part of me is like fighting against God. Out of line. Out of line. And it's just a pure grace that I exist. And that's the kind of humanity that God's like, yeah, don't eat of the tree of life, and let's like contain this and let me be patient with it. Yes, right.

They should probably go back to dust after a few decades. Yes. Yeah. So that's on one end of the spectrum. The other far end of the spectrum is I'm so connected to God's life. I'm eating of God's life and doing it such a way that I can just exist forever. That's great, John. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so. So, yeah, instead of completely separate spirit, one point of two. The spirit is just spirit. It's just spirit. But my openness, my access, my participation. And my connection to it. My connection to it. Yeah, this might be going too far.

Yeah. Maybe what's helpful for me is to think of two toggles. Two toggles? Yeah, so you've got one spectrum, but you've got two toggles. What's a toggle? How would you define toggle? Oh, a toggle. Switching from one side to another.

So like, or two sliders. You've got two sliders. Two little markers. Yeah. Okay. You slide along the spectrum line. And one is the intensity of God's spirit. Yeah, great, great.

How much intensity am I experiencing? So on one end, is I'm breathing in God's spirit and I'm alive. That's pretty special. But that's like baseline intensity. Yeah, yeah. And then the other side is like, I don't know, what would be the most intense eating a tree of life?

Yeah, eternal life. Yeah. Yeah. And so somewhere along the spectrum is like God rushing on Samson. I see. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or God giving Joseph the ability to interpret Pharaoh's dream

and come up with a policy. plan to save everybody. There's another slider, which is how aligned is my spirit with God's spirit. Oh, okay. Right? Ooh, yeah. And you can go all the way from like, I'm not aligned at all. I'm completely misaligned.

I'm the wicked. You know? I'm going to be turning the shaft and it's a grace that I exist. Yeah. And then there's Jesus, the Messiah, on the other side. Yeah. Pure alignment. Yeah.

And then if you get both of those over to the right, Right. Oh, man. You know? Yeah. That's eternal life. That's a new creation right there. That's new creation. Yeah.

You toggle over intensity, but you keep your spirit misaligned. Yeah. Or your heart. Missaligned. Yeah. You've got like a Samson. Yeah. Scrate, John.

Right? Excellent. Yes. It's fantastic. That's right. So Paul's specifically highlighting here the intensity toggle. The intensity toggle. Yeah.

Actually, nope, both. Because you're dead because of sin. Yeah. That's a misalignment. It's a heart misalignment. They're completely joined in Paul's thought. Sin and death. The problem is sin and death.

We're dying. That is we're way over to the left on the intensity, so we can only have the spirit for a couple decades, a few decades. And we're misaligned because of sin. There you go. And that's life outside of Eden. That's the flesh for Paul. This toggles all the way over to the left.

And Messiah is toggles all the way over to the right. right, both of them. And if you are in the Messiah and confessed faith in him and what he's done for us and on our behalf, then man, it may be hard to believe. But your true identity is with the toggles all the way to the right. You can't align your will with gods. You can't get that toggle correct. Yeah, yeah. So you just got to be in me because I got that slider all over to the Right. So now if you experience the intensity of the spirit, it'll lead to resurrection life like it does for me. What's so great, okay, this is fantastic. In chapter 8, Paul says, man, if the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is dwelling in you, then the one who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your dying body through the spirit. So there it's Jesus is raised from the dead. So I'm going to be raised.

raised from the dead. But you can flip it over to another passage in chapter 6 where he says, just as Roman 6 verse 4, just as the Messiah was raised from the dead through the glory of the father. And what you expect him to say is, so you too will be raised from the dead. That's not what he says. What he says is just as the Messiah was raised from the dead through the glory of the father, so also we can walk in kinotes of life, newness of life. A new way of life, a brand new category, a new way of living. But in context, what he's talking about is, if you're in the Messiah and your future's covered, can you just go on with like destructive, sinful habits knowing that it's all going

work out in the end. And Paul's like, well, he says no. Strongly says no. And he says, because Jesus is raised from the dead. So if that's who you really are, your identity is that in the Messiah, then a whole new kind of life. But here you're talking about our moral choices. So once again, Jesus is raised from the dead, meaning I will be raised and I can live in a kind of resurrection life, which is about a moral or moral compass. So that's what he means that while your body is dead, it is actually alive. It's right, exactly. Yes, that's right.

It's a new mode. Yeah, yeah. Loving God and loving neighbor is resurrection life. And so learning how to reset all my life habits and my ways of thinking and living to be directed towards love and serving others in humility, that's the way of life that displays the reality of resurrection. So this is where the fruit of the spirit

in Paul's letter to the Galatians and so once again it's a flesh spirit contrast here's the deeds of the flesh and he gives such a long list you know immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy,

outburst of anger, disputes, dissension, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like that. Yeah. You're like, things like that. It's a pretty big list. But what we're saying is a category of things in which I'm using the life energy God's given me. Yeah, yeah.

To actually bring chaos and disorder and destruction towards others. Yep. And myself. Yep. That's right. And Paul's shorthand for that is deeds of the flesh. Deeds of the flesh. And he contrasts the deeds of the flesh with the fruit singular of the spirit.

So the flesh produces. produces actions, deeds. But the spirit grows fruit, which has to be an Eden image. It's a tree. The fruit of the spirit is, and then he gives the ninefold list. And love is the first one, of course.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. In Paul's mind, resurrection and ethics, resurrection and morality, they're the same. Now, to this question about the kind of body that the resurrection is, so Paul actually thought a lot about this, and he was asked questions about it by the Corinthians in 1st Corinthians 15. In fact, he even quotes her questions.

He said, some of you might say, how are the dead raised? How are dead people raised? What kind of body will they have? Like, that was their question. Yeah. Here's his analogy. He says, listen, let's say you got a seed in your hand. and you plant it in the ground.

That seed won't come to life until its current form dies. And the thing that you plant isn't the body that is going to become. You're going to plant like a bare seed, like maybe a wheat kernel or something like that. But God gives to it a body just as he purposes,

and to each one of those seeds. He gives its own body. So the wheat stock is the body of the wheat seed. Right. The husk. So the wheat seed has a body, but that dies, withers away, but a new body emerges. Emerges from it. Yeah, that's right.

That's his first analogy. All right. Yep. Then he changes direction here, and he says, not all flesh is the same kind of flesh. But there's one flesh for human beings. Notice the list that he's about to give. The flesh of human beings, there's a thing.

another kind of flesh for animals, another flesh for birds, another flesh for fish, even the heavenly bodies. Sun, moon, and stars? And there are earthly bodies. So you're like, wow, that comes right out of Genesis 1, doesn't it? Human, animal, bird, fish, heavenly, earthly. So the glory of heavenly bodies, that's one category, the glory of an earthly body, that's another category.

And even there's one kind of glory that the sun has that's different than what the moon has, different from what the stars have, and stars differ from stars, some are brighter, some or less. Okay.

It's the same with the resurrection of the dead. What's the same? Like that. There's different types of ways to be embodied. Yeah, different types of bodies. So the point is, look around the universe

and you'll see there's different ways to exist in physical form. Okay. Different physical modes of existence. So that itself should tell us that, okay, maybe there are modes of physical existence that I've never even observed or encountered. Or have thought of, yeah.

Or thought of. We're experienced. So that's the same with the resurrection of the dead. He goes back to the seed metaphor. Something that's planted in corruptibility. So you could have a body that breaks down that's dying. But what if that's

just like the seed form? Well, then if it were to be raised up, could theoretically be raised up in incorruptibility. What might get planted in dishonor could be raised up in glory. What gets planted

in weakness could be raised up in power. And then here we go. This is the real rabbit hole. What is planted as a psychicos body could get raised up as a pneumaticos body

because, you know, if there is a psychicose body, there is also a pneumaticos body. So, Psyche is the word from which you get psyche. It's the word life essence or life being. He's getting this word from Genesis 2, where it is written, the first human, Adam,

became a living Psyche. Oh, that's the Greek translation. Yeah, he's quoting from the Greek translation of the creation of the human, Genesis 2, and he's noting that God formed the human from the dust of the ground, breathed into his life, and he became a living Psyche. A Siki?

Yep, a Siki, which gets translated often in English translations as soul. Right. So there is a soullish body but by that he doesn't mean the eternal immortal soul what he means is the human body

that dies outside of Eden so that's the human that gets exiled from Eden and that dies and returns to that dust so he could have said there is a fleshly body and it would have been pretty close to I think what he means here

but for a whole bunch of other reasons seems like he's using this word and that's we don't have to go I get it. I think I get it. So what's planted as a natural, like, from the dust type of body. Yeah. But man, it could get raised up as a, and then he uses the word spirit, but it's in grammatical form, it's called an adverb.

Because the spirit has now become like a mode, not a mode of existence. This is often translated spiritual body. Yeah. And I don't think that's helpful because it's naming the spirit as the one who's sustaining that. Spirited body? A spirited body, like God's spirited. Spirit generated and sustained body. The spirit of the Messiah.

So it's planted as a dust-like body. It's raised up as a kind of body that's with the toggles all the way to the right. And he calls that in Pnevaticos, or in our translation, spiritual body. So he goes on. He says, listen, the spirit body. is not the body that came first in the biblical story. It's that psychicose body. Because the first human is from the earth, that is from the dust.

But the second human, here's another twist. The second human is from the sky. Yeah. Conceived by the spirit. Conceived by the spirit. By sky, he means from God. Yeah. Yeah. So just like there's the one made of dust,

so everybody who came from him, they're dust. But there's the one from heaven, and everybody who's of that one, they also have a heavenly identity. We've borne the image of the one who's from the earth. We will bear the image of the one who's from heaven. So I say the siblings, flesh and blood are not able to inherit the kingdom of God. And by flesh and blood here, he means that soullish body. Solish, soulish body. And he goes on, these are famous lines. Here's a mystery.

We're not all going to sleep, but we will all be changed. In the moment, the blink of an eye at the last trumpet, he's thinking here about like the curtain, draw of the curtain, close of the show, the dead will be raised up, imperishable, and we will be changed. Paul isn't saying that the spirited body will not be material. Mm-mm. It's just a...

He's saying, look, there's different types of material bodies. That's right. Right? Yeah, that's right. Look at the birds. Look at the fish and look at the animals and look at us. Like, we're different type of bodies. And then look at the sun.

That's a different type of body altogether. So, like, there's different types of way of being embodied. And now couldn't be the case that this one that we're in now that's going to die is really an opportunity for the new thing that you don't have a category. 4 to emerge. Yeah. And then guess what? It's happened already. There's a bit of walking, talking,

existing resurrection, new creation life. There's only one specimen right now in reality, and it is the risen Jesus. Wow. And he is our future. He is what we will become. And it's started in you already. That kind of body.

You're not in that body, but you're kind of like... Yeah, you're in the space. spirit. But you're in the spirit. Oh, that's interesting. And then your way of making choices right now can become a living demonstration of that future body. That new type of body. Yeah. Because you're in the spirit. You're in the spirit now. So your body is dead, but your spirit is alive. Oh, that, okay. You know, I've asked with Adam and Eve, it seems like the intention was in their body, they could live forever. in the garden. If I did a thought experiment with how that story would go, it's Adam and Eve going, cool, God, we're going to live by your wisdom, we're going to eat of the tree of the life, and we're going to live forever here with you. Then they wouldn't need to die, right?

As we've been reading this, I just have been thinking, what if they had to die? Sure. What if they had to be changed to use Paul's language? And one way of changing is a lot of. dying. But dying is a sign that your toggles are all the way to left. You've got out of sync with God's will.

But what if you always stayed in sync with God's will, then that would involve dust being changed into something more permanent. And that's toggles to the right. And that's toggles to the right. And how do you know the difference? Because they both are going to feel like death. Sure, because it's a transformation that

takes you into a way of existing that you don't have categories for. So it might feel certainly will feel scary. Maybe that's similar to how people in these visions or they have experiences of God and they are afraid because fear kicks in when we're like, I'm out of control and I don't feel safe.

Well, so the Paul does say, not everyone's going to die, but they will be changed. So there's a way to change without going through death. That's right, yeah. God can do it either way. In theory, Adam and Eve could have gone that route. Yeah.

That's fascinating. Mm-hmm. So what we're saying is Adam and Eve could have experienced eternal life and that would have involved a transformation of their dust existence into some other

form. It would have had to have. Yeah. So by not calling it death, but calling it being changed, you could still just say it's a type of death. In order to change, something has to die. Sure. Yeah. What had to die was

a desire that Eve had. Yeah, I see. That she would have had to surrender that desire and trusting that God's word is actual a better life. But there is a death to a certain way of defining life that looked good to her.

So is it Paul saying then that type of death or being changed, that can actually happen now in you before your body dies? That's the emphasis of Romans. eight.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Ultimately, your body will need to die. Yeah. Although there's this category, it seems like, of, well, you know, at some point, you're not going to die. You're just going to be changed.

Yeah. That's right. Yeah. It's interesting when he uses the seed metaphor, he talks about a seed dying. Yeah. So that the plant can grow. Right. I wouldn't think of death.

I would think of transformation. That's being changed. I would call that change. Yeah. But he's using it as an analogy for humans, which now outside of Eden here, we, are going to die unless you happen to be that however many people it'll be enoch the be yeah yeah that's right enoch Elijah and whoever is there when the curtain when the curtain comes down the spirit and resurrection it's really actually really

significant isn't it the longer I've sat with these handful of texts in Paul and Peter the more I realize there's a whole universe to explore here well and you said it makes sense that if creation is through the spirit, new creation will also be through the spirit. Yeah. If life is by the spirit, resurrection life is also by the spirit.

It's true of Jesus, it's true of me. Not just in the future. Eugene Peterson wrote a book out of this whole set of ideas that he just called practice resurrection. Your resurrection in the future is something you can put into practice now.

That's another way of describing what Paul was trying to say here. Just as the Messiah was raised so we can walk in newness of life. That was Romans 6. Life in the spirit. Cool. All right.

Here's where I want to go now. There's more places to go. We should go to a part of the New Testament we've hardly touched, which is the Gospel of John. And the Gospel of John has some really unique, like truly in the New Testament,

unique ways of talking about the Spirit that paved the way for what we'll talk about in our final episode, which is going beyond the New Testament into the first couple centuries after the New Testament to talk about how the Spirit of God came more and more clearly a unique person alongside the Father and the Son in terms of the development of Trinitarian doctrine. Where did all that come from? And the Gospel of John is hugely important.

So to John, and then to the Trinity in the next couple conversations. Thanks for listening to Bible Project podcast next week. We're going to look at the Gospel of John, and we're going to see that life with God's spirit is a deep connection with God that transforms us. That kind of close, personal, intimate union with the source of all life and goodness,

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