An eternal Spring is coming

I love spring. The bright colours, fresh smells, cool breezes, warm sunshine, rainstorms, turning the heat/air conditioning off at night and sleeping with the windows open, eating meals outside instead of inside, and being able to be outside without sweating all make spring one of my favourite times of the year. Springtime shows us the glory of God’s creation in ways that winter, summer, and fall do not. But springtime also shows us something else.  

If we look at springtime with Biblical eyes, we see resurrection. During spring, the Lord brings new life to His creation. Trees get their leaves back, flowers bloom, birds hatch, and animals come out of hibernation. Martin Luther once said, “Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.” The dawning of spring is a truly marvellous thing to watch.  

Marvellous because it’s so beautiful. But also marvellous because it teaches us an important theological truth. According to Psalm 19 and Romans 1, everything in creation teaches us something about the Creator. This means that even the way God ordained the seasons can show us something of His overall plan for the world, that even the patterns of creation show us something of the purposes of the Creator. In theological terms, God’s general revelation illustrates and points us to special revelation.

Springtime shows us that God delights to make things new. Winter does not last forever (unless you live in Antarctica!). Every single year, God reminds His creation that He can bring dead things to life. Springtime points us to the resurrection, and resurrection is the promise of the gospel.

Every single year, God reminds His creation that He can bring dead things to life

Death will die

The gospel teaches us that we are born dead in our sins, but that we can be made alive spiritually by grace and through faith in Jesus (Ephesians 2:1-8).  But it also teaches us that our new spiritual life will one day be accompanied by new physical life.  

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:51-53, “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”

Did you see the promise: “We shall all be changed”? Immortality for mortality, imperishable for perishable. Our bodies will be made new. Jesus “will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). “When He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). 

After the Winter of this life, an eternal Spring will come for all who hope in Jesus Christ. Darkness will fade, light will shine. Death will die, life will never end. Pain will cease, pleasures forevermore will be ours (Psalm 16:11).

Jesus’ resurrection was the inauguration of this great, cosmic Spring that will come (1 Corinthians 15:20, 23). When He returns to the earth, He will return to make it new (Revelation 21:1-5). Those who love Him will live in a new world with God. A world with no more sin or suffering. 

This eternal Spring is promised for those who “confess with their mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in their hearts that God raised Him from the dead” (Romans 10:9). The promise of the resurrection is a new body and a new world for those who obey the gospel. Springtime hints at the glory of this newness. Do you see it?