The Bible never teaches that the body is dispensable and only the soul survives. Man is incomplete without it and there could be no final victory over death for the Christian which did not involve the resurrection of the body. This is the great work which only God can do and which makes us entirely dependent on him. Though that body will be raised in glory, in incorruption, yet there is a continuity between that spiritual body and the natural that we have borne, so that Job can say ‘in my flesh I shall see God’. It will be recognisable as the flesh of the same man. It will be a glorified spiritual body rather than a natural body, but it will be a body of flesh, none the less.
In our flesh, clothed with our resurrection body we will see God and all the promises to this effect are intended to be understood in this way. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ They shall in the future see God not as disembodied spirits but as complete human beings who stand on the earth in resurrected form. This Redeemer who he has spoken of is none other than God, one and the same person. He is the one standing on the dust at the last. The Christian interpreter unashamedly brings all his New Testament presuppositions to this passage and rightly reads into it all the light that he gains from the completed word of God. For God, who is the author of Scripture, does not grow in knowledge as we do, but always speaks from the perspective of omniscience. There is increasing detail given in later revelation, but nothing given before needs to be changed.
This revelation given to Job includes insight into the resurrection. What does it matter that we have to go through trials in this life, if all will be relieved at the end and we will be brought into everlasting blessing. We are able to say with the apostle, ‘I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us’ (Romans 8:18). This truth is powerful enough to dispel the greatest suffering in this life, and is how the martyrs comforted themselves.
Christianity is nothing without the supernatural. It is not just a moral code. The believer’s dearest hopes and longings can only be realised through the power of God, by which he will raise those who are long dead back to life. How can we have comfort in our mortal state unless we can believe in such a God? Our resurrection, of course, is founded on Christ’s resurrection, and so Paul says that saving faith affirms in the heart that God raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9).
‘If a man finds himself forsaken by God, so that he sees nothing but cause for despair, and death menaces him on all sides … and yet nevertheless he continues to hold his own, and is steadfast in faith, so that he says, “I will call upon my God, and I will yet experience his help; his mighty power is enough to give us courage, even when we seem to be forsaken”, that is the man who overcomes all worldly things. The faith and hope which he has is God is not in the things that are seen … but go beyond the world, as it is said that we must hope against hope, and that hope concerns what is unseen’ (Calvin – English updated).
The KJV renders the verse ‘and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God’. The word ‘worms’ is in italics in this version and is added by the translators. The Hebrew says, ‘and after my skin they strike off [or by a different verb, surround] this (feminine) ...’. Other versions do not add ‘worms’ but translate the verb as ‘destroyed’ in the passive. From his flesh he will see God, even after that flesh has been destroyed, for the process of destruction which Job sees proceeding even while he is still alive, he fully expects to reach its conclusion just as it has for all those who lived before him.