His Flesh Saw Not Corruption
October 2nd, 2017
[Edited: January 12, 2018]
Acts 2:24-31 – God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him [at Psalm 16:8-11], ‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’
Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.
Acts 13:35-37 - Therefore he says also in [Psalm 16:10], 'You will not let your Holy One see corruption.' For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised up did not see corruption.
This plainly shows that the resurrection body of Christ is human and is the self-same physical body that he died in. For only if he rose up in it could it not see corruption. How do those who, like Witnesses, deny the humanity of Christ's resurrection handle this passage? Poorly, I think. All they can say is that it was not permitted to smell and to slowly waste away - why? Because, they say, God dissolved it himself. But, in fact, this only hastens the corruption process that the Holy Spirit promised that Christ would not see. Thus, t was the body that was put to death that was raised anew.
