Q. 56. What benefits will the saints receive from Christ at the resurrection of the dead?

• WSC 37–38
• Heidelberg Catechism, 57–58
• Belgic Confession 37

General resurrection. In the general resurrection, all people will be raised bodily. The souls of the righteous will be rejoined with their glorified bodies and receive their eternal reward. The souls of the wicked will also be rejoined with their bodies, but they will go on to eternal punishment.

Saints. All true believers are “saints” or “holy ones,” set apart to God in Christ.

Raised up in glory. The souls of the saints will be reunited with their physical bodies, which will be raised from the dead and transformed to be like Christ’s resurrection body. While the intermediate state is one of glorious rest in the Lord’s presence, the Bible says very little about the present heaven, and describes souls without a body as “naked” (2 Corinthians 5:3). The driving Christian concern is “that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:11). “Man’s ultimate perfection demands the reunion of soul and body” (Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, 151). This is commonly called glorification.

Acquitted. While we are justified before God and forgiven of our sins at the moment that we believe (Q. 50), there remains a final justification or public declaration of our righteousness on the last day.

Full enjoyment of God. Christians seek eternal happiness in God. “Man’s beatitude depends, as on its cause, on the glory which man has with God” (Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II.2.3). “How can he give eternal life who cannot give happiness? For we mean by eternal life that life where there is endless happiness” (Augustine, The City of God 6.12). The blissfully happy, perfectly blessed final state, in which we have direct experience of God, is commonly called the beatific vision (see Q. 1).