Victory Over the Grave | True Immortality in a Digital Age

In recent months, many of my conversations have centered on a discussion on what it means to be human in our modern times. We live in a time of total connectivity, yet it feels like we are more disconnected than ever from one another and from our humanity. These conversations have driven me to read several books that explore this idea.

One thing I have seen in books, online articles, and even social media posts is the obsession with trying to use technology to cheat death. From mechanically altering the human body to the idea of uploading one's consciousness from a fragile human frame, the suggestion of achieving immortality or extended earthly existence is quite popular, particularly among the very rich. Some tech billionaires have dropped unbelievable sums of money into the idea.

The whole discussion bewilders me. While I'm not an expert on technology or transhumanism, I fail to understand how something immaterial, like human consciousness, could possibly be transferred from a material being to a machine. In the event that it is achieved, what's keeping you from a loss of power or an accident causing your consciousness to be lost? Also, unless I've missed some significant breakthroughs, we must be a really long way off from accomplishing anything like this. To put your money, and more importantly, your hope of defeating death in something so unlikely to happen in your lifetime, is foolishness.

There is a lot that can be said about this topic from a Christian understanding of the world, but the most definitive answer comes to us in the resurrection. We live in a fallen world that is broken by sin, and the curse impacts us most deeply in the death of our bodies. Upon our expulsion from the Garden, our access to the Tree of Life was revoked. Death comes for us, and it is unavoidable. While we have long lists of problems in this life, that is the greatest dilemma.

The story of the gospel comes to us in that dilemma and gives us hope. God the Son inhabited our flesh, lived a perfect life on our behalf, and suffered the wrath of God at the cross. God himself, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, experienced the curse, but he did not remain in the grave. He rose victorious over the grave on the first day of the week. When we are united to him by faith, we have a sure and certain hope that we too will have victory over the grave when Jesus returns at the end of history to deliver his Kingdom to his Father.

This is why Paul can boldly say in 1 Corinthians 15:54-55, "When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

Our hope is not in the ability of some researcher to figure out how to put our minds into some mainframe in the cloud or move our consciousness into a robot. Our hope comes from our being united by faith to the one who defeated death and hell. He possessed all the wealth of heaven, and yet, he came to suffer, die, and defeat death for you. Our hope is not in escaping the flesh for something “better.” Our hope is in Christ who inhabited our flesh and redeemed us that we might have bodies that do not perish.

Dig Deeper

If the modern struggle to define what it means to be human resonates with you, listen to our recent sermon, Settling Our Identity Crisis, where we explore hot to live as real, embodied servants of God in a digital age.