wondered this for a while as I watch elderly neighbors & family age/slow down
why didn't God let our bodies stay youthful?
we could still live/age but why not do it in a 25 yr old body?
why must we suffer with old age diseases & end up in wheelchairs and/or nursing homes
"sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned" - Romans 5:12
Death, according to Scripture, is the chief enemy--the chief enemy against God's creation. So we read that when the Lord returns in glory, He comes to raise the dead, and there is the full and final victory over death. So in 1 Corinthians 15, St. Paul writes that, "For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death." (1 Corinthians 15:25-26), and concerning the bodily resurrection of the dead at the Lord's return,
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For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 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?' The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." - 1 Corinthians 15:52-57
After the Lord's return, and God makes all things new and sets all things right, here is what the Age to Come is like:
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Then I saw a new heavens and a new earth, for the first heavens and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of the heavens from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold! The dwelling place of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.'
And He who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold! I am making all things new!'" - Revelation 21:1-5
The promise we have in Christ is that even as God raised Him up, so shall we be raised up on the Last Day. Our life in eternity isn't "in heaven" as disembodied spirits (a popular modern misconception, but one which the Bible never teaches and Christianity has never accepted). Rather eternal life includes eternal bodily life. Death and sin has rendered our flesh weak, mortal, perishable--we die, we suffer, we struggle, we get sick, we eventually grow old and decay in the ground back into dust. That isn't what God designed things to be.
The resurrection of Jesus means that the promise of resurrection is true. That is why Paul writes that if there is no future resurrection of the dead, then Jesus isn't risen either, and if Jesus isn't risen, then our faith is pointless and we are to be pitied (see 1 Corinthians 15:12-24). Which is why Paul also writes in Romans 8:11 that the Holy Spirit in us is the evidence that what God has done for Jesus He will do for us as well.
So why sickness, old age, death? Because we live in a fallen world, a world that is ravaged by death, a creation held in bondage and slavery to death. It is precisely that slavery and captivity to death that Christ came to rescue us--save us--from; and ultimately to save and rescue all of creation.
The essential message of the entire Bible is this: God's faithfulness to creation in Jesus Christ.
-CryptoLutheran