To muddy it up some, I think of my dead body being vivified with the in-breathing of the Spirit of Christ - which I can't say I can "PROVE" but which certainly resonates with major chunks of Romans and I Corinthians.
I think it is sufficient for me to say I agree with what you said above. The same goes for me: I can say with the Apostle Paul, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."
Anyway since we talk about ana-stasis and re-surrection, and there is a continuation of identity, "I" get "my" life restored) yet there is this "yet not I, but Christ in me" stuff to contend with. Kind of a "both/and" issue.
Exactly! I do not contend with this at all. In fact, I praise you for being bold enough to come right out and tell eveyone of the hope that is within you.
Obviously the Creator intended for His creatures to have bodies. he created them with such. We have already realized how man lost his deathlessness by sin, and "death (mortality) passed unto all men" (Rom. 5:12). Even after Jesus met the penalty for our sin by His own death, and after believers have responded in total faith to this merciful grace of God, there still remains the fact of man's mortality. Therefore it is is necessary, in the fulfillment of God's purpose, for His chosen ones to be restored to life through a resurrection of the body when He returns.
The gospel which the apostles proclaimed was that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, that he rose again according to the Scriptures" (I Cor. 15:3). Wherever they preached, the burden of assurance was that Christ who had died was now alive. The resurrection of Jesus was a demonstration and example of what every Christian may expect in the day of resurrection (2 Tim. 1:910). Paul worte, "Now if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised" (I Cor. 15:1213). Note that Paul does not argue taht if CHrist has not been raised then men will not be raised. His argument is the other way around, that if there is not a resurrection of the dead, then of course Christ could not have been raised. Chriast as a member of the human race, born of a woman, and subject to himan death and decay represents all the race in being resurrected. Paul said, "We witnessed of God that he raised up Christ; who he raised not up, if so be that the dead are not raised" (vs 15).
In the chronological calendar of events of Christ's return, the first thing we are told will happen will be the resurrection of the dead. The unbelievers will face judgment and destruction, but the saints shall be raised to immortality and the fulfillment of God's purpose.
In the 15th chapter of First Corithians, Paul makes it clear that the resurrected body will be a changed body. "We all shall not sleep, but we all shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptable and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality" (I Cor. 15:51-53)
"Resurrection", Oscar Cullman has written, "is a positive assertion: the whole man, who has really died, is recalled to life by a new act of creation by God. Something has happened - a miracle of creation: For something has also happened previously, something fearful: life formed by God has been destroyed" (Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead, MacMillan, New York).
The apostel John wrote that at Christ's coming "We shall be like him." (I John 3:2). Paul wrote that Christ "Shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be confromed to the body of his glory" (Phil. 3:21). His image at last! The purpose of God fulfilled. God will nto be thwarted. he will have what he set out to create and enjoy forever; man in His image. This is the destny of the believer.
Sorry to have preached..couldn't help it. The subject is dear to me. As to you also, I hope.
When I was an Episcopal priest, I always urged the passages from I Cor 15 for funerals of somebody who had died "full of years" and, so to speak "well". As a pastor, of course when there was much sorrow, I might suggest more consoling passages. But it seemed to me that, ceteris paribus, we ought to just put it right out there every once in a while.