Book of Common Prayer
Resurrection gives meaning to present Christian living
29 Otherwise, what are people doing when they get baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead simply aren’t raised, why should people get baptized on their behalf?
30 And why should we face danger every hour? 31 I die every day—yes, that’s something for you to boast about, my dear family, and that’s the boast I have in the Messiah, Jesus our Lord! 32 If, in human terms, I fought with wild animals at Ephesus, what use is that to me? If the dead are not raised, “let’s eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”!
33 Don’t be deceived: “bad company kills off good habits”! 34 Sober up; straighten up; stop sinning. Yes, some of you simply don’t know God! I’m saying this to bring shame on you.
The transformed resurrection body
35 But someone is now going to say: “How are the dead raised? What sort of body will they come back with?” 36 Stupid! What you sow doesn’t come to life unless it dies. 37 The thing you sow isn’t the body that is going to come later; it’s just a naked seed of, let’s say, wheat, or some other plant. 38 God then gives it a body of the sort he wants, with each of the seeds having its own particular body.
39 Not all physical objects have the same kind of physicality. There is one kind of physicality for humans, another kind for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 Some bodies belong in the heavens, and some on the earth; and the kind of glory appropriate for the ones in the heavens is different from the kind of glory appropriate for the ones on the earth. 41 There is one kind of glory for the sun, another for the moon, and another for the stars, since the stars themselves vary, with different degrees of glory.
The resurrection of Jesus
28 Dawn was breaking on the first day of the week; the sabbath was over. Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, had come to look at the tomb, 2 when suddenly there was a great earthquake. An angel of the Lord came down from heaven. He came to the stone, rolled it away, and sat down on top of it. 3 Looking at him was like looking at lightning, and his clothes were white, like snow. 4 The guards trembled with terror at him, and became like corpses themselves.
5 “Don’t be afraid,” said the angel to the women. “I know you’re looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He isn’t here! He’s been raised, as he said he would be! Come and see the place where he was lying— 7 and then go at once, and tell his disciples that he’s been raised from the dead, and that he’s going on ahead of you to Galilee. That’s where you’ll see him. There: I’ve told you.”
8 The women scurried off quickly away from the tomb, in a mixture of terror and great delight, and went to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly, there was Jesus himself. He met them and said, “Greetings!” They came up to him and took hold of his feet, prostrating themselves in front of him.
10 “Don’t be afraid,” said Jesus to them. “Go and tell my brothers that they should go to Galilee. Tell them they’ll see me there.”
The priests and the guards
11 While the women were on their way, some of the soldiers who had been on guard went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. 12 They called an emergency meeting with the elders, allotted a substantial sum of money, and gave it to the soldiers.
13 “This,” they told them, “is what you are to say: ‘His disciples came in the night, while we were asleep, and stole him away.’ 14 And if this gets reported to the governor, we’ll explain it to him and make sure you stay out of trouble.”
15 They took the money and did as they had been instructed. And this story still goes the rounds among the Jews to this day.
The Great Commission
16 So the eleven disciples went off to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had instructed them to go.
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.