Will we be resurrected in the same body?

Not in the same perishable body. God raises a person in a new form suited to the life to come, a form we do not yet know.

Look at any group of people. Some are young and healthy. Others can hardly walk, have stiff joints or poor eyesight. Many die only in old age, when body and senses have already declined a great deal. Should someone be raised again in exactly that condition? That would be no reward, and it does not fit God’s mercy.

The earthly body itself does not last either. Walk through an old cemetery and you will find many graves of which no trace remains. Many people have no grave at all, such as those who were lost at sea. The body decays and passes into the earth and into other living things.

This is why the Holy Qur’an links the resurrection to the power of the Creator, not to putting old bones back together. He who created a human being the first time can create them a second time. The second verse above even says that God will develop us into a form we do not know now.

What lives on and is raised is the soul, the real self of a person, with everything it has become in this life. It is given a form suited to its new world. No one there will be old, sick or frail. Whoever suffered in old age need not fear carrying that suffering with them.