Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ 1 Corinthians

[Benjamin]

What kind of body do people have when they go to heaven?

What kind of body do people have when they go to heaven?

Do people who die of old age get their young bodies back?

Or are there just disembodied souls floating around in an immaterial world?

[jimwalton]

If we're going with what the Bible says, we're certainly not going to be disembodied souls floating around in an immaterial world. One of the important repercussions of Jesus's resurrection is to show that resurrection would be physical, not just disembodied floating as the Jews, Romans, and Greeks presumed. So we know it's not that.

1 Corinthians 15.35-50 is addressing the very question you are asking. We learn there that the resurrection body ("when they go to heaven") will be a heavenly body, but will still have a physical aspect to it. He's not thinking of the heavenly body as being "clothed with light" or like a soul in an astral home or anything like that. It will be a body, all right, but unable to deteriorate or die. It will have capabilities the present body knows nothing of.

We get a clue from the resurrection body of Jesus. It was a body just like the one he had before, but qualitatively different. He was apparently more real than our earth because it seems he could walk through doors as if they weren't even there. But he could eat food just like before, so he wasn't a ghost.

The Bible doesn't tell us much else. I tend to think that we will be our ideal selves. (You wanted to know if we got our young bodies back.). Heaven is portrayed by the Bible as the ideal state. For instance, Revelation 7.16 illustrates it by saying they will never hunger or thirst; the sun will not beat down on them, nor any scorching heat. Hunger and thirst are typical and common sources of suffering, and the image being portrayed is that there will not be any kind of suffering. I could say with confidence that people will not be crippled or blind (or autistic or schizophrenic) in heaven. When Jesus was on earth he was showing us what the kingdom of heaven would be like, and he healed cripples so they could walk, made the blind see, and the deaf to hear. The message behind those healings is that God is a God of wholeness and life, leading me to extrapolate with confidence that in heaven there will be no unwholeness.

Lastly, when Jesus rose from the dead, he had been beaten so severely that his body was virtually if not literally destroyed. But in his resurrection body he was whole, not limping (or anything else). The bodies we have here on earth will be changed (1 Cor. 15.35-58, esp. 51). One thing in specific we are told is that they may be buried in weakness (a word that also means sickness or illness as well as weakness), but they will be raised in power (a word that also means capability). 1 Cor. 15.49 says that we will no longer be like we were on earth, but we will be more like the resurrection body of Jesus.