Will God resurrect my cremated body?

Ask NT Wright Anything

Premier Unbelievable

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity, History

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Cremation, grace & Resurrection:. This week Tom tackles what does grace really mean in the Bible? Does cremation affect the Christian hope of resurrection? And how should we understand Jesus’ relationship to the Old Testament law? In this episode of Ask NT Wright Anything, Tom Wright and Mike Bird explore the deep connections between 'hesed' in the Old Testament and 'charis' in the New, offering a rich picture of God’s love and faithfulness. They tackle the sensitive topic of cremation and Christian burial, affirming the unshakable hope of resurrection. Finally, together Mike and Tom unpack how Jesus fulfils— not abolishes —the law, showing the continuity between the covenants and the forward-looking nature of practices like the Sabbath. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Well, hello and welcome to the Ask NT Wright Anything podcast, the show where we answer your
0:09.4	questions about the life of faith and anything in the Bible. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College,
0:15.2	and as ever, I'm joined by. I'm Tom Wright from my study in Oxford in England.
0:20.4	And Tom, today we have some great questions. We've got questions about the nature of grace,
0:26.5	even on cremation, whether, you know, that's something fitting for Christians, and Jesus and the Law.
0:33.2	So this is going to be a pretty good episode.
0:35.5	Our first question comes from David Maybe, and he's got a
0:40.5	question about grace and loving kindness as it relates to the Old and the New Testament. He
0:47.2	begins by talking about how much he loves the show and he enjoys even reading the transcript,
0:52.2	and this is his question, he says,
0:57.0	do you see a correlation between grace,
0:59.0	Karis, in the New Testament,
1:03.0	and loving kindness, Hesed in the Hebrew Bible?
1:05.8	This has always fascinated me. The Hebrew word Hesed is extremely difficult to translate into English and appears as loving kindness,
1:13.0	steadfast love, covenant love, and many more variations.
1:17.0	David Stern in his complete Jewish Bible frequently translates Hesed as grace.
1:23.3	David DeSilver wrote a great description of how the understanding of grace in the first century was based on giving, receiving, and giving thanks.
1:32.3	And John Barclay describes grace as a gift.
1:35.3	The giving of Jesus Christ is the greatest gift to humanity.
1:38.9	In other words, Jesus is grace.
1:41.4	In Amazing Hesed, living a grace-filled Judaism, Rabbi Shapiro argues that Judaism
1:48.5	has always believed in God's love being freely given by grace. I was brought up in the Anglican
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Premier Unbelievable, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Premier Unbelievable and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.