Body Life

 February 12, 2022

Christianity is an odd religion. In contrast to many modern apologists who see life only in physical and materialistic categories, we align with most people throughout history who believe also in the spiritual dimension. Unlike most of them however, we hold to the dual significance of the material and immaterial, body and soul. Salvation doesn’t consist in the spirit being set free from the body, but in the body becoming fully conformed to spiritual purposes.

In 2 Corinthians 4:7 & 11, Paul says “We have this treasure (“the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” — v.6), in earthen vessels…that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” He continues in 5:1, saying that “if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” In other words, we shall someday exchange a tent for a house, ie, something far more substantial than these bodies that define and delineate life in this world.

He presses home his conviction with these words in v. 4: “We who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life.” The goal of life is not some ethereal, spiritual existence that has shed the confines of bodily life, but rather a substantive, bodily life that is fully animated, unfettered and unrestricted by the limitations of mortal flesh. Notice that in v. 8, he doesn’t say we will be freed from these physical bodies; merely absent from them so we may be fully (and corporally) present with Christ.

So, we who follow Christ believe in the sacredness of the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit, the dwelling place of God himself. What we do with these bodies is important, for we are fully made in God’s image. We reject physical abuse in any form, affirm life at all times, and treat the whole person as sacred. We neither minimize the physical, nor do we deny the spiritual, but hold both in high regard as we choose life because Life has chosen us (John 1:4 & 14:6).