Before I go any further on what the Bible tells us about the future history of the mortal human race, I must address the end of that history: the final resurrection.
When Paul was arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, he soon realized they weren’t going to give him a fair trial. (They started torturing him and then self-righteously accused him of insubordination when he objected to this behavior.) So he had to make a strategic move:
Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.” And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees’ party stood up and contended sharply, “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?” And when the dissension became violent, the tribune, afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him away from among them by force and bring him into the barracks.
The following night the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.”
Acts 23:6–11 ESV
Even though Paul was being strategic, he would never preach false doctrine to escape death. So when he called himself a Pharisee, meaning a Jewish believer in the resurrection, he was not lying. If we had any doubts about this, the fact that Jesus commends Paul for his testimony should end them.
So this passage demonstrates that there were two major schools of thought and Paul sided with the one that believed in the resurrection. He publicly appealed to their belief as a common property between himself and the non-Christian Pharisees.
Paul got a new trial before by Roman Governor Festus away from Jerusalem in Caesarea. The High Priest Ananias sent a delegation to testify against Paul. Apparently, he made sure the delegation were all Pharisees, and not Sadducees, not wanting a replay of the defeat in Jerusalem.
Paul’s defense again invoked the belief they hold in common:
Knowing that for many years you have been a judge over this nation, I cheerfully make my defense. You can verify that it is not more than twelve days since I went up to worship in Jerusalem, and they did not find me disputing with anyone or stirring up a crowd, either in the temple or in the synagogues or in the city. Neither can they prove to you what they now bring up against me. But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets, having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. So I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.
Acts 24:10b–16 ESV
Notice that Paul is no longer trying a strategy to divide but is directly appealing his case. He has better hopes for this judge and for an honest verdict. He doesn’t claim to be a Pharisee by name in this instance, but the meaning is the same. He is a fellow believer, with his accusers (which is how we know the party consisted of only Pharisees), in the future resurrection of the righteous and the wicked. His doctrine of the resurrection, is not unique to Christianity, but is a common article of faith between Christians and Jews of the Pharisaical persuasion. He is declaring something that everyone understands, not a doctrine unique to Christianity
So this is an essential context for the Gospel and all Christian teaching. God is real. He is our judge. And there will be a resurrection of everyone, both the righteous and the unrighteous. Since we know we shall appear before God, he makes an effort to have a clear conscience.
By the way, when we talk about the Pharisees and the resurrection, we are talking about a group for which there is a bit of documentary evidence. We not only have writing about them outside Scripture, and writing by them, but also writing that they read and that helped form their character and belief.
An example of this belief can easily be demonstrated from 2 Maccabees 7 (RSV). In this chapter, seven brothers and their mother are tortured to death because they refuse to eat swine flesh. While the first brother is mutilated and then fried to death in a big pan, his mother and brothers
encouraged one another to die nobly, saying, “The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us, as Moses declared in his song which bore witness against the people to their faces when he said, ‘And he will have compassion on his servants.’”
vv 5b-6
How did these martyrs expect God’s compassion to be manifested? The answer is revealed quite clearly. The second martyr says as he dies: “You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws” (v. 9). The third unflinchingly holds out his hands and tongue to be cut off, saying “I got these from Heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again” (v. 11). The fourth also expresses hope in the resurrection. The next two content themselves with predicting punishment on their torturers. Though their mother is forced to watch these gruesome murders of her children, she encourages them, saying,
“I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws.”
vv 23-24.
Instead of killing the last brother right away, the king offered him life and wealth and power if he would eat pork. He ordered the victim’s mother to persuade her son to accept his offer. Instead the woman said to her son in Hebrew,
“My son, have pity on me. I carried you nine months in my womb, and nursed you for three years, and have reared you and brought you up to this point in your life, and have taken care of you. I beseech you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. Thus also mankind comes into being. Do not fear this butcher. Accept death, so that in God’s mercy I may get you back again with your brothers.”
v. 27b-29
It is noteworthy that the narrator explains the mother’s courage as being caused by “her hope in the Lord” (v.20). Likewise, when the seventh son willingly went to his death, it was the result of “putting his whole trust in the Lord” (v. 39). But that faith in God meant trusting Him to act in a concrete way: He would raise them from the dead, restoring their mutilated and burned bodies.
I have no idea if this event happened exactly as described, or if it is a compilation of many events, it was unquestionably inspirational and formative literature in first-century Palestine. (It might explain why Peter had to be told three times in his vision to eat unclean animals and he kept refusing! Godly people had died by gruesome torture keeping those food laws.) The Pharisees were a known group in history and everything confirms what the New Testament tells us, that they believed in a physical resurrection of the body to immortality on a final day when the saints would be blessed and the enemies of God condemned.
So again: when Paul says that he shares the same belief as the Pharisees, and when Luke explains the difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, as affirming or denying a final resurrection of the righteous and the wicked, he is affirming a basic piece of common ground between him and a specific school of Jewish thought in the first century. It is a school of thought that is also described when Jesus confronts the Sadducees in Luke’s Gospel, and is also recorded in Mathew and Mark.
There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”
And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.”
Luke 20:27–36 ESV
The Pharisees believed in the future bodily resurrection and the Sadducees denied the future bodily resurrection. Paul and Jesus were, in that sense, on the side of the Pharisees and against the Sadducees.Paul was kept in custody by Felix for a couple of years, and Luke writes,
he sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus. And as he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment, Felix was alarmed and said, “Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity I will summon you.”
Acts 24:24-27
In context it seems that Luke is telling us that Paul preached about the Final Judgment he proclaimed during the hearing. The final resurrection of everyone really matters to the rationale of proclaiming faith in Christ.
A little late, in defending himself before Governor Festus and Herod Agrippa, Paul again mentions the beliefs of the Pharisees and their relation to his own beliefs as a Christian:
They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that according to the strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee. And now I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, to which our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship night and day. And for this hope I am accused by Jews, O king! Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?
Acts 26:5-8
Then, in explaining what Jesus did for us, Paul says:
To this day I have had the help that comes from God, and so I stand here testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass: that the Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.
Acts 26:22–23
So Jesus was first to experience resurrection, but that same hope is being proclaimed now to all. If he’s the first, that means the rest of us will experience it as well. Again, a final resurrection is the essential context for the entire Christian story.
And we find exactly the same reasoning 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 8 for believers who can trust they will be raised in glory. Paul assures the Corinthians that Jesus was the first fruits showing what kind of harvest we can expect (15:20-23). He tells the Romans,
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
Romans 8:11 ESV
If all we had was Acts alone, we would still be able to construct the theology of physical resurrection that we find in 1 Corinthians and Romans and several other places. It was the common faith of the Pharisees and Pharisee-adjacent Jews.
This faith is demonstrated over and over again in the Gospels and Acts. When Jesus reminds Miriam that her dead brother Lazarus will rise again, she immediately replies: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24). Miriam, thus, also had that “hope in God” of which Paul later said that his accusers accepted “that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust.”
Now the fact that God will judge the world at the final resurrection also leads him to describe other events as resurrections. To give an uncontroversial example: Ezekiel 37 prophesies the restoration of Israel from exile after they were deported to Babylon and other places. And the prophecy is a vision of a valley of dry bones whom God give flesh and breath to so that they become a resurrected army.
There are other passages in Scripture like that and sometime Bible students might have different opinions about whether a certain text refers to a final resurrection or something else that will occur in the mortal world. But what there can be no debate over is that Jesus and Paul and all the other faithful apostles taught a final resurrection that would be physical. For believers it will resemble Jesus’ own resurrection and glorification. That is what Paul preached: that Jesus “by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light” to us.
The future resurrection could be a terrible day of darkness. Without Christ, we would never be prepared for immortality. But, having entrusted ourselves to Christ, we can be confident that the record of our sins will not be remembered against us, and the power of sin over us will be completely annihilated.
So we can look forward to the resurrection as our vindication as God’s sons. That’s what Jesus told the Sadducees, remember: “for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.” As Paul wrote decades later:
For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Romans 8:22–25 ESV
Paul is talking about the same resurrection he preached in public hearings, not some private code. It was the “light” he was called to shine and we are too. And it was the hope, not only that our bodies would be raised, but that the works done for the Lord in our bodies would be remembered and rewarded. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians after his extensive defense and explanation of the resurrection:
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
1 Corinthians 15:58 ESV
Fantastic! I have profited greatly from your teaching gifts Pastor Mark. Thank you for your faithful service to our King!