Christ Has Redeemed Our Bodies

Christ has redeemed the bodies of all his children. In that day when Christ redeemed our souls, he redeemed the tabernacles in which our souls dwell. At the same moment when the spirit was redeemed by blood, Christ who gave his human soul and his human body to death, purchased the body as well as the soul of every believer. . . .

Though in a little time I shall slumber in the tomb, though worms devour this body, I know that my Redeemer liveth, and because he lives I know that in my flesh I shall see God. These eyes which soon shall be glazed in death, shall not be always closed in darkness; death shall be made to give back his prey; he shall restore all that he has taken. . . .

Christ shall raise them with himself. Think of that, ye that have lost friends--ye weeping children of sorrow! Your redeemed friends shall live again. The very hands that grasped yours with a death clutch, shall, with eye-strings that never shall be broken, wake up in the noon-day of felicity. That very frame which thou didst sorrowfully convey, with dread attire of funeral, to bury in its tomb--yes, that selfsame body, made like the image of Jesus Christ, spiritualized and changed, but nevertheless the selfsame body, shall rise again; and thou, if thou art redeemed, shalt see it, for Christ has purchased it, and Christ shall not die in vain. Death will not have one bone of the righteous--nay, not a particle of their dust--nay, not a hair of their heads. It shall all come back. Christ has purchased all our body, and the whole body shall be completed, and united in heaven with the glorified soul. The bodies of the righteous are redeemed, and redeemed for eternal happiness.

--Charles Spurgeon, "Plenteous Redemption," The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. VII (Pilgrim Publications, 1969)