God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
Does the Bible Prohibit Cremation?
1. Scripture says nothing about a required mode of burial for either believers or non-believers. However, burying the body was the standard practice among the Israelites in the Old Testament and Christians in the New (exceptions: 1 Sam. 31:8-13; Jos. 7:25).
2. Obviously any buried body will eventually decompose (Ecc. 12:7). So cremation isn’t a strange or wrong practice – it merely accelerates the natural process of oxidation.
3. The believer will one day receive a new body (1 Cor. 15:42-49; 1 Thes. 4:13-18; Job 19:25-26), thus the state of what remains of the old body is unimportant.
4. The imagery of Christ’s resurrection pictures burial and then a raising up from the dead (Rom. 6:3-5; 1 Cor. 15:3-4). Because of that, many Christians prefer burial to cremation to maintain a likeness to Christ's burial (although literally He was laid in state in a cave, not buried in the ground).
He is the King of kings, the radiance of His glory, the Lord of the spaceless, fabulous, infinite universe, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, unspeakable holy, dwelling in light, unapproachable, changeless ... and yet He condescended to be enclosed in lowly human flesh, to be born a despised Judean, in a filthy stable, in the womb of a simple Israeli woman and without fanfare or pomp.