This post is part of a series of communion mediations working through the Apostles’ Creed. You can read the creed here. You will see in the text that this was given December 7th, 2025, which was the second Sunday of the Advent season. As we approach the end of the Creed, we come today to the resurrection of the body. Does that seem out of place in the Advent season? Today is the Second Sunday of Advent, and you may ask, do we really need an Easter topic for today’s communion meditation? But I don't think there is a more appropriate time, to address this subject. The Second Sunday of Advent is traditionally devoted to the topic of peace. What is the clearest sign that there is not peace between God and this earth, between God and humanity? It's the presence of death, the first sentence passed upon sin. Jesus, in his first advent, came to remove both the power and the penalty of sin. At the cross he absorbed the wrath of God against our sin; and for those who have trusted in him, he gives them the Holy Spirit, and they are no longer bound by its power. He removed the power and penalty of sin, and in doing so, he defanged death. Where is thy sting? Where is thy victory? Paul cries out in 1 Corinthians 15, to death and the grave. If I am in Christ, then my sins are forgiven. If I am in Christ, I do not need to fear death—nor need I fear the death of those I love, if they are in Christ. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:13, that we do not grieve as those who have no hope. So Jesus has defanged death in his first coming. But salvation for our souls, as crucial and central and foundational as that is, is not our whole hope. It’s not all that Jesus has done and is doing. No, when our Lord returns a second time, when he comes in a Second Advent, he comes to remove death completely, including the death that our bodies now experience. This, where we live now, between the two advents of Christ, is a place where we can have real salvation and real freedom from the fear of death. But we are not free from the experience of death. We are not free from its presence in our lives. Paul says, again, in 1 Corinthians 15, that it is the last enemy to be defeated. But when Jesus returns, death will be defeated finally. We won’t just be disembodied spirits. In our popular conception of heaven, we tend to hold two separate and contradictory notions, both of which are wrong. We often think of disembodied spirits, and we also think of something like babies floating on clouds with harps. Those are different things—but either one pictures a very boring, ethereal existence. And that’s not the biblical picture of life post-second coming of Christ. We often turn to Revelation 21, where we are told that the Lord God will dwell there, in the New Heavens and Earth, with his people. He will be our God, and we will be His people, and he will dwell in the midst of us. And what won’t be there? There will be no more death, no more tears, no more mourning. And we will be there, according to 1 Corinthians 15, with resurrection bodies. Spiritual bodies. Not spiritual in the sense of less real, but rather, bodies that are more real than the bodies that we have right now. A body like Christ’s. That's the Resurrection Hope that we confess when we confess the Creed. That one day, we will have bodies that are more substantial, more real than this right now. So confessing the Resurrection of the body, we remembering the death and subsequent resurrection of Jesus Christ. His makes our resurrection not merely a hope, but a certainty. And that is supremely appropriate on a day here, during advent, as we celebrate the Lord and what he did for us. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willdole.substack.com/subscribe
