What an alarming statement from God to Adam is found in Genesis 3: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” That was for Adam, yes, but also you, his progeny, for it is affirmed throughout Scripture, and with ample imperative data.
This is a succinct statement, arresting and unambiguous. You are not going to escape this fact. Your body is an arrangement of dust particles that will disassemble into dust again, and further, into whatever components that dust includes. Scrape up a handful of dust and think, “These molecules are what God has used to make us and what will be the remains of our body on earth after we die.”
Are you unimportant therefore? Like various kinds of ground coffee, are you just another unique dirt blend?
Another spokesmen for God about the ongoing increase of humans, the psalmist David, spoke poetically with wonder about how this happens. Note his amazement while not negating man’s dust substance.
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! (Psalm 139:13-17 ESV)
The psalmist says that a baby is “knitted together” by God in the womb and also “woven in the depths of the earth.” Is he confused!? No. He is showing that the women hosting the baby in her womb is dust also.
The magnificence is in what God has accomplished with what he chose to work with.
Look what a world he has made including especially this exceptional mankind, crafted in “his own image.”
He Will Change These Bodies
He will change these bodies when he raises them either to “a resurrection of life, or . . . a resurrection of judgment” (Jn 5: 28-29). You will not be glorified dust then, but a recognizable resurrected body. For the believer, this body will be like Jesus’ heavenly body.
It is a surprise for many Christians to learn that the Christian faith is far more materialistic than most other religions. We do not mean that we are to seek to be sinfully materialistic as in putting the things we own and the money we think about above God. What we mean is that God cares for and saves the material body as well as the soul. His resurrection and our resurrection confirms this, if nothing else will.
The body, even the deceased body, is important to God and the people of God in Bible history. God himself buried Moses on Pisgah, and he prophesied and planned burial for Jesus’ body in a borrowed tomb from which he was resurrected. And think of Abraham who went to such lengths to bury his wife by purchasing a field and a cave for the one he loved, and eventually to be returned there for his own burial place, a momentous episode in the Genesis account. And do not forget Lazarus, Jesus’ close friend, who was resuscitated from his burial cave as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ resurrection. These true stories show us that the body is important and that dust can change to glory when Christ returns. As we walk through the graveyard, or stand beside the grave of a loved one, we should rejoice in the resurrection of the bodies of believers and the love God has for the body as well as the soul.
Remember that there is a continuation between the body of your earthly existence and your future glorified body. The first body is material; the changed resurrected body is spiritual, yet it is “you” that is raised. As we view the graves of believers, we should be drawn to honor and thank God that this person — body, soul and spirit —is preserved blameless for the coming Day and for eternity through Jesus (see 1 Cor 15). For this, among so many other things, our God is to be honored.