Thomas Boston, in Human Nature in its Fourfold State, imagines the future reunion of a believer’s body with his soul at the resurrection. The conversation goes like this, slightly updated:
Body to the soul: “O my soul, have we got together again after so long a separation? Have you come back to your old habitation, never more to leave? O joyful meeting! How unlike our present state is to what our condition was, when a separation was made between us at death! Now is our mourning turned into joy. The light and gladness sown before are now sprung up. Blessed be the day in which I was united to you, Soul, whose chief care was to get ‘Christ in us the hope of glory,’ and to make me a temple for his Holy Spirit. O blessed Soul, which in the time of our pilgrimage kept your eye to the land then afar off, but now near at hand! You took me into secret places, and there made me to bow these knees before the Lord, that I might bear a part in our humiliation before him. And now is the time that I am lifted up. You employed this tongue in confessions, petitions and thanksgivings, which now on shall be employed in praising forevermore. You made these sometimes weeping eyes sow that seed of tears, now sprung up in joy that shall never end. I was happily beaten down by you and kept in subjection, while others pampered their flesh and made their bellies their gods, to their own destruction. But now I gloriously arise, to take my place in the mansions of glory, while they are dragged out of their graves to be cast into fiery flames. Now, my Soul, you shall complain no more of a sick and painful body, you shall be no more clogged up with weak and weary flesh. I shall now keep pace with you in the praises of our God forevermore.”
Soul to the body: “O happy day, in which I return to dwell in that blessed body, which was, and is and will be forever a member of Christ, a temple of the Holy Spirit! Now I shall be eternally knit to you. Death shall never make another separation between us. Arise then, my body, and come away! And let these eyes, which were used to weep over my sins, behold with joy the face of our glorious Redeemer. Lo! this is our God, and we have waited for him. Let these ears, which were used to hear the word of life in the temple below, come and hear the hallelujahs in the temple above. Let these feet, that carried me to the congregation of saints on earth, take their place among those in heaven. And let this tongue, which confessed Christ before men, join the choir of the upper house in his praises forevermore. Body, you shall fast no more, but keep an everlasting feast; you shall weep no more, neither shall your countenance be overclouded; but you shall shine forever, as a star in the skies. We took part together in the fight; come, let us go together to receive and wear the crown!”
This post was originally published on The Gospel Coalition
