This is the second of a pair of articles on the body and the soul. The first article focused on the doctrine of creation and reflected on contemporary ethical issues in the world. In this second article, we turn to the doctrine of redemption and reflect on contemporary issues in the church.
We have to confess that over the centuries the Christian church has sometimes had a rather mixed track record concerning its view of body and soul. From the time of the early church we know of the influence of the ascetics, who had an extreme emphasis on physical self-denial and rejection of the physical body as of lower value than the soul, or indeed as the source of sin and evil. This developed in the Medieval period within aspects of the monastic movement, specifically in a rejection of marriage being compatible with spiritual vocation.
Why have there been such excesses and errors?
One reason is simply confusion over biblical language. In the first article, we considered the confusion surrounding the OT’s use of the word nephesh, or the NT’s use of the word psyche. There has been a tendency to emphasise the soul as being distinct and separate from the body, and a suggestion that the soul is the part of us which relates to God, whereas the physical body is simply concerned with physical things. And so the soul is considered to be more spiritual. There has also been confusion over the word ‘flesh’, identifying our sinful desires with our physical bodies as if it is our bodies that are particularly associated with evil.
Another reason for the excesses and errors has been confusion in our thinking about eschatology. That might involve vague thinking of our souls being eternal and our bodies being mortal, so it is our souls which need to be saved for a ‘heavenly’ and disembodied existence in the presence of the Lord. Or indeed, thinking of the realm of this present world as irretrievably evil and fit only for destruction, so our souls need to be rescued from this physical realm.
And then there are new challenges for us to consider. We are all familiar with the increasing prevalence of social media. In the life of the church, services are live-streamed, pre-recorded sermons are consumed, and theological training for ministry is delivered in virtual form. What are we to make of all of this?
We begin with Romans12:1-3, and Paul’s description of Christians as living sacrifices. It is interesting to reflect on the reference here. Is Paul looking back to the age of OT animal sacrifices? Or is he pointing us to the sacrifice of Christ for us to imitate? Or is he taking us back to Abraham laying Isaac on the altar? Because the example of Abraham teaches us that if our faith in Christ is real, then it will necessarily issue in the fruits of practical repentance and obedience (cf. Jas 2:20-22).
The key question for us is why Paul specifies our bodies as living sacrifices? Why doesn’t he just say present yourselves as living sacrifices? He does not mention the body in complete isolation – he goes on to speak of the transformation of our minds. But it prompts the question of Paul’s understanding of the body in our Christian life and service. Indeed, elsewhere in Romans, Paul assigns a particular importance to the role our physical bodies in sin and sanctification. In what follows, we shall consider first, the role of our bodies in sanctification; then, the role of our bodies in our spirituality, in the sense of engagement with God in devotion and worship, both personally and corporately; and, finally, the role of our bodies in light of the resurrection of the body.
The Discipline of the Body
We approach this subject with a good deal of apprehension. We are very familiar with the dangers of Gnostic thinking, and of confusing the physical body with what Paul describes as our flesh. So we will begin by looking at Paul’s use of the word ‘flesh’.
The word flesh means different things in different contexts, and sometimes in different ways within one verse. For example, it can mean human flesh, flesh and blood: ‘The Word became flesh’ (Jn 1:14). Or it can mean flesh as in our natural human descent: ‘Israel according to the flesh’ (1 Cor 10:18). Or it can mean something that the NIV translates as sinful nature. I am not convinced that is the best translation, but it gives a sense of Paul’s meaning, because he uses the word flesh to describe our sinful desires and actions. For example, ‘the works of the flesh are obvious’ (Gal 5:19).
And because that same word flesh is also used of our physical bodies, then it is tempting to understand that our human sinfulness is rooted in the physical part of our being. Our greed is a matter of the stomach. Our lust is our physical sexual appetite, our hormones. Our sloth is our sluggish and comfort-loving bodies.
But that is not Paul’s meaning. He is not speaking anatomically, as if we can divide ourselves into one part which is our flesh and another superior part which is our spirit. Rather, he is speaking eschatologically. Our flesh identifies us as belonging to the realm of this present evil age. We are sons of Adam according to the flesh. We are physically descended from Adam. We bear the nature of Adam, naturally speaking, and our bodies are Adamic bodies. Therefore, to live according to the flesh is to live according to that selfish grasping spirit that says with Adam and Eve in the Garden ‘I want to be like God’. Whereas now, as Christians born again by the Spirit, we are called to live according to the New Creation, to walk step in step with the Spirit. These are eschatological categories.
To identify our fleshly lusts simply with our physical bodies is inadequate. Where do hatred and greed and lust and coveting come from? Is it just a physical thing? No, it is rooted in the thoughts of our minds, and the desires of our hearts. When I sin, it is all of me that sins. It is not part of me. My soul is not exempt from my sinful desires. Indeed, I find it interesting to see Paul’s use of the word psychikos, which is closely related to the world psyche which we translate as life or soul. According to Paul, being psychikos refers to our worldliness; it is our commitment to the life of the flesh apart from the Spirit, the life of this present evil age.
So, the tension and conflict in the Christian life is not between the physical body and the soul. The conflict is between the desires of the flesh, and the will of the Spirit – namely the Holy Spirit (cf. Gal 5:17).
However, we cannot stop there. We acknowledge that our physical bodies are not sinful in and of themselves (as opposed to our souls which have a more spiritual inclination). Butd we must not swing to the opposite extreme and suggest that our soul is the seat of all sinful activity and our body is the merely physical means by which those sinful activities are expressed. Matthew Lapine helpfully points out that Paul is much more robust than we might be in identifying the physical body with sin.1Matthew A. LaPine, The Logic of the Body: Retrieving Theological Psychology (Lexham Press, 2020), 270–80. Sin, we are told, dwells in our flesh, but also in our members (Rom 7:23) – those same physical members which we are now commanded to present as instruments to righteousness (Rom 6:13). Sin dwells in our physical body (Rom 7:24). Paul cries out, ‘Who will deliver me from this body of death?’
To return to the analogy of the golf buggy used in the earlier article, we might think of our human agency – our soul – as completely sovereign in directing the golf buggy of our physical body. On this understanding, our soul alone would be culpable when we sin, just as the driver of the buggy should be held accountable for his erratic driving. But what if the buggy itself has certain mechanical defects and idiosyncrasies, so that it does not always go in the direction in which the driver points it? Perhaps it jolts and jerks, or accelerates unpredictably, or has unreliable brakes. Perhaps our physical bodies have an inclination towards sin which is ingrained within them, or to which they are vulnerable because of past sinful activity or suffering abuse and the sins of others.
We all know that some of our sinful inclinations are prompted by our physical bodies and physical desires. Think of what it means to be hangry. You haven’t eaten; you are tired; you’ve had a long day with too many things to do. And when you finally stumble through the door, one of your children careers into you and knocks you sideways. And you lose it. Now, are you saying that your physical condition had no part to play in your outburst of anger?
And it is not just that our physical bodies can weaken us in the moment of temptation. They may have ‘muscle memory’, so that they almost automatically incline towards sinful activity or desires. This is particularly obvious for those converted from an immoral or drug-taking background; very often it is difficult to break those habits and inclinations. But actually it is true for all of us, however respectable our pre-Christian past might be, because we are all children of Adam and bear the likeness of our father. Alarmingly, like all children, we quite naturally display the habits and ways of our parents. And this, it seems to me, is what Paul is talking about in Romans 6:12-13 when he says, ‘do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires’. In other words, there is to be a conscious and deliberate reckoning of ourselves as dead to sin and directing our bodies away from sin towards godly service. Instead of surrendering our bodies to their sinful habits and desires we are to take ourselves in hand and train our bodies for service of the Lord.
Paul makes a very interesting reference along these lines in Ephesians 2:3. What he says literally is that we were living according to the desires of our flesh, doing the will or the desires of the flesh and the mind. Now almost universally, English translations (rightly) render that second reference to the flesh as our physical body, meaning that we were doing the desires of body and mind. In other words, the sinful desires of the flesh originate not just in the mind, or the sinful heart, but also in the physical body. The physical body is not a passive instrument when engaging in sinful activity.
Therefore, in repentance, we are to positively engage the body now in acts of righteous service. Paul urges us to ‘offer every member of our bodies as weapons of righteousness to God’, and then even more radically to .offer your members as slaves of righteousness leading to holiness’ (Rom 6:19). In other words, it is as we consciously and deliberately discipline our members to embrace a life of righteous service of the Lord that we will enjoy the fruit of holiness. And, as Paul goes on to say, this leads to eternal life (Rom 6:22).
Now, clearly, we need to be careful and balanced in our understanding at this point. We are not saying that holiness is simply a matter of physical and outward observance. Indeed, even here in Romans 6 Paul is keen to emphasise that our obedience flows from the heart (v. 17). We need to be renewed first in our thinking. We need Christ to dwell in our hearts by faith, to take up as it were that place of dominion in the control room of our lives.
But I fear that perhaps the pendulum today has swung so far to an emphasis on the primacy of the heart and of having right desires, that Christian discipline and duty and outward obedience are less emphasised for fear of adopting a merely outward religiosity without heart reality.
The important point here, as we think of body and soul together, as we think of ourselves as holistic beings, is that we cannot neglect one at the expense of the other, but we should not deny the role of physical discipline and practice in cultivating holiness. That is clear in Romans 6:19. But also elsewhere, the apostle Paul is unembarrassed to speak of beating his body to make it his slave (1 Cor 9:27). The Lord Jesus Christ assumes that we will fast as a discipline alongside prayer (Matt 6:16-18). That might make us uncomfortable, but our very discomfort prompts the question as to whether we have lost a biblical sense of physical discipline. And the specific purpose of that discipline is to direct our bodies towards their intended purpose of serving the Lord.
Indeed, we cannot claim genuine spiritual experience inwardly if there is no evidence of it outwardly. There are many places in the NT where that is emphasised, not least in James, but also in 1John 3:17 – if we have material possessions but show no pity to our brother or sister in Christ how can the love of God be in us? Moreover, every time final judgment is mentioned in the NT it is judgment according to works.
We are to deliberately present our bodies as living sacrifices. While our sinful self – body and soul – is inclined to be selfish and self-indulgent, the Lord’s purpose is portrayed in Jesus Christ who is self-sacrificing. God created us to present our bodies as living sacrifices in the service of him and of his people. And God created your specific body with specific strengths and gifts and capacities to perform specific works of service. So, to Jeremiah, God says, ‘before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations’ (Jer 1:5). Paul echoes this when he speaks of being set apart before he was born (Gal 1:15). This applies also to us: we have been given specific gifts so that we can make a specific contribution to the work of the Lord. Just as the Lord makes us male or female, which have functional purpose for fruitfulness, and for the whole range of strengths and weaknesses of male and female, so he creates us with specific gifts. Take King David: he was appointed to be the youngest son (a testimony of weakness), yet alslo growing in strength to be the Lord’s warrior and with the musical and poetic gifts to sing Psalms to the Lord. Or take Hannah: she was appointed to be infertile yet longing for a son, which would drive her to desperate prayer which would prove to be a turning point in the history of Israel and ultimately to songs of praise to God who heard and answered her cry.
We are all conscious of our weaknesses and shortcomings. We may wish that we had greater intellectual gifts, or greater stamina, or more robust health. And this sense of weakness finds its ultimate contemporary expression in transhumanism, which has increasing ambitions to enhance our human capacities beyond God’s created purpose. But we are to be content with the calling the Lord has given us, and the mind and body the Lord has given us to fulfil that vocation. You may not have the same gifts as another brother or sister. You may not have the same strength, or stamina, or capacity as another believer. But we are not to envy the gifts of others. As Christian believers that is not our path. Rather than envying others, we should rejoice in the vocation the Lord has appointed for us personally. We are bespoke servants for a bespoke ministry in the Lord’s purpose. And whatever gifts the Lord has given us, whatever strength we have, is given for the purpose of glorifying Him especially by serving others.
The Spirituality of the Body
I wonder if you think that this heading is a contradiction in terms? When we are talking about spirituality, and especially the exercises of worship, and devotion, and prayer, then our immediate inclination is to assume that these are matters more for the soul than for the body. Especially in this age of the New Covenant, that we have left behind the emphasis on outward, physical and visible rites and ceremonies. As the Lord Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, worship now is not now a matter of physical locations, this mountain or that, but a matter of Spirit and Truth (Jn 4:19-24). Hebrews tells us that as we worship, we come to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem with thousands of angels in joyful assembly and the spirits of the righteous made perfect (Heb 12:22-24). Clearly we are not talking about a physical or visible location.
It would be very tempting to conclude that worship and devotion to God are merely exercises of the soul in which the body and physical faculties are more or less irrelevant. But that is not the testimony of the Psalms:
‘O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.’ (Ps 63:1)
‘My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.’ (Ps 84:2)
If we were to go back to the Garden of Eden and ask the freshly created Adam whether he related to God as a soul or as a body, and how his soul and body function differently, he would not have understood what we were talking about. He is a living being. He knows God. He is holistic. He lives and works as body and soul. He relates to God body and soul. One of the obvious ways in which this is expressed in Scripture is the importance of posture and activity during worship.
Now, I am conscious that I need to tread carefully here! I would guess that all of us at this conference, or almost all, would subscribe to the regulative principle in worship, but we interpret that in different ways. I am not trying to mandate any particular forms or styles of worship here, but I am trying to establish that posture and activity during worship are not unimportant.
Most obviously, there is the action of bowing down, or prostration. We cannot read the OT without seeing that bowing down or prostrating yourself is inseparable from expression of honour to a king, or worship of a deity (e.g., Ps 95:6). This is also assumed in the NT: the unbeliever comes into the worship service and falls down and worships God (1 Cor 14:25). And there is a whole range of physical expressions of worship, whether it be raising the hands either to bless the Lord (Ps 134:1), or to plead for His help and mercy (Pss 28:1-2; 88:8-10); kneeling, bowing and falling down, exhibiting humility and abject shame before the Lord (Rev 4:9-11; 5:8-14; Ezra 9:5-6; 2 Chron 6:12- 14; Ps 35:13-14; Neh 8:5-6). Paul speaks of kneeling before the Father in Eph.3 as an expression of the urgency and reality of his prayers (Eph 3:14). There is in the OT dancing or leaping, manifesting intense joy (Ps 149:3-4; Ex. 15:20- 21; 2 Sam. 6:14-17); and clapping and shouting praise to God (Pss 47:1-2; 66:1). The shouting here is to shout as in a battle cry; it is to shout at the top your voice.
Whatever we do with all of that, we have to acknowledge that Biblical worship was much more physically expressive than our worship services today. And we cannot say that posture is unimportant. We cannot separate the state of our physical bodies from our engagement in worship, either personally or corporately. Indeed, I am impressed by the testimony of John Stott that as far as possible he prepared his sermons on his knees. I do not dismiss the practice as unimportant. If we spend the great majority of our worship services in a seated position, then are we not saying that our spirituality is only a matter of inward engagement and has little or nothing to do with the physical body?
That brings us to the second element which is the close relationship between the state of our bodies and the state of our spiritual vitality. We all know the enervating impact of sickness on our psychological state. We may have no physical strength to rise from our bed. Our brain may be disordered and clouded, and we are unable to think clearly or to read or process material intelligently. We may become depressed and gloomy. We cannot separate physical sickness from a sense of spiritual malaise. There may also be a sense of faltering spiritually as we grow older. Perhaps we do not have the sense of zeal or enthusiasm that once we know. Our emotions do not burn so brightly or with such intensity; our passions are dulled. I found it distressing as a pastor to speak with godly elderly souls who were approaching death who were anxious because they had lost any sense of the Lord’s presence, and any clarity about assurance of salvation. There was just that enervating weakness and emptiness.
Now, the link is not always demonstrated in that way; intense suffering can go hand in hand with vital spiritual experience. Indeed, the apostle Paul testified that as his physical body wasted away, his inner man was renewed day by day (2 Cor 4:16). In other words, his very mortality drove him to find hope and joy in the Lord and the prospect of bodily resurrection.
This is a complex area. Our pastoral skills are stretched to the limit and we need spiritual wisdom. When someone comes to us who is struggling, is the problem a spiritual problem, or a physical problem or a psychological problem? Very often the answer is, ‘Yes!’, just as David, who was afflicted with a sense of guilt had psychosomatic symptoms – his bones wasted away, he groaned, his strength was sapped as in heat of summer (Ps 32).
So, we see the important of being embodied souls. We cannot separate physical experience from spiritual experience. And we cannot imagine that our physical health and our diet are irrelevant to our spiritual life. Those who are ministers are more prone than most to be deskbound, to be bookish, and so to be depressive, and for our human experience to be unnatural in some way.
The Fellowship of the Body
We have seen the connection between the physical body and spirituality. Now we must look at this as a corporate experience. Because while the NT speaks clearly of our approach to the heavenly sanctuary, the church is also described as the temple of the Living God (Eph 2:21-22; 1 Pet 2:4-5). Spiritual worship takes place in the context of physical fellowship. That is the anticipation of the New Creation, the single resurrected throng of the saints in the presence of the Lord.
The Scriptures make a direct connection between our unity as believers and the Lord’s presence and blessing. Think for example of Psalm 133. It is where God’s people dwell together in unity that the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore. In the NT this is expressed most clearly perhaps in Ephesian. We are to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (4:3). We are to grow up into maturity in Christ through our fellowship and mutual edification and as each part of the body does its work (4:13,15-16). We are the temple in which God lives by his Spirit (2:22). It is together with the saints that we grasp the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ and are filled to the measure of the all the fulness of God (3:18-19). Corporate worship is a mark of being filled with the Spirit (5:18-20). Negatively, we grieve the Spirit when our fellowship is marred by unwholesome talk, or bitterness or anger (4:29-31). Elsewhere Jesus warns us against coming to offer our gift at the altar if we are not reconciled to our brother (Matt 5:23-24). Paul speaks of judgment at the Lord’s Supper because of divisions in the fellowship (1Cor 11:17-34).
This is the model of Christian life and worship, from the first church gatherings in Acts 2 onwards. In other words, NT spirituality is corporate spirituality. We are commanded not to neglect meeting together but to keep encouraging one another, and spurring one another on to love and good deeds (Heb 10:24-25). Indeed, one of the main NT images of the church is of a body, articulated together and living and growing as each member contributes to the whole. And sometimes the NT speaks in alarmingly specific physical ways about foot washing and greeting with holy kisses, however we might apply those practices today.
Yet now, today, we have the phenomenon of worship via Zoom or YouTube. We have ‘fellowship’ with disembodied two-dimensional church members, or perhaps just with a disembodied preacher. Our experience of life and ministry is increasingly remote. Even in the area of training for ministry, some deliver content in the form of pre-recorded video lectures. Now I don’t have time to dwell on this, but suffice to say that remote access to fellowship, and remote access to worship is very different from the experience of being in the room. None of us will deny the limited benefit for the housebound or the isolated believer of having some access to a worship service, but they are not able to engage in corporate worship; they are remote observers of a corporate worship service.
I will simply make the obvious point that if we are embodied souls, then disembodied fellowship and worship falls far short of biblical expectations. It is of no surprise that regular use of social media and ‘screen time’ are associated with declining mental health. We were not designed for this. Positively, we are commanded not to neglect meeting together, not only because the meeting is an opportunity to personally encourage one another, but the meeting itself is an encouragement. There is a dynamic of corporate worship which is different from the dynamic of personal and private devotion. I am sure that many of you will share my experience of perhaps struggling spiritually or psychologically but nevertheless going to the church service. And as the church service proceeds, and we engage with the singing, the prayers, the reading and preaching of Scripture, so our spirits are lifted. There is a psychological element to this, but there is also a spiritual element. God promises to meet with his people as they gather corporately in his presence.
Now, much more could be said about this. I rather fear that we have lost the sense of the supernatural in our gatherings for corporate worship, and our sense of expectation that we are gathering in the Lord’s immediate presence. Martyn Lloyd-Jones resisted radio broadcasts of worship and preaching and insisted that we should make it a priority to be present at every worship service. As he put it:
[I]f you do not come to every service you may live to find a day when people will tell you of an amazing occurrence in a service on a Sunday night or on a Sunday morning – and you were not there, you missed it. In other words, we should create a spirit of expectation in the people and show them the danger of missing some wonderful ‘times of refreshing…from the presence of the Lord’.2Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Zondervan, 1971), 154.
And of course this is highlighted specifically in the sacraments. The significance of baptism is the vital spiritual elements of repentance, faith, union with Christ, forgiveness of sins, Spirit baptism, the new birth, adoption, and being joined to the family of God. And yet all of this is conveyed through water, and the apostles are unafraid to associate the spiritual blessings directly with the physical act: ‘Repent and be baptised for the forgiveness of sins’ (Acts 2:38); ‘Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you’ (1 Pet 3:21); etc. I will not dwell on this, but suffice to say for now that baptism is not an empty ritual. In the Lord’s Supper we do not hold to transubstantiation or consubstantiation, but equally we are not merely memorialists. There is a spiritual power and reality. This is the appointed meeting place between the Lord and his people, where the benefits and blessings of salvation are applied to our souls by faith.
We must not underplay the spirituality of the body, either personally or corporately.
The Destiny of the Body
Finally, I want to reflect briefly on the person of Christ. Once again this theme is too rich for detailed treatment here. But let me state the central issue simply. We may be inclined to believe that our engagement with God is essentially a spiritual rather than a physical exercise because God is Spirit. As the children’s catechism puts it: he does not have a body like men.
And yet, God does have a body, in the sense that in the Lord Jesus Christ, he took flesh and dwelt amongst us. God has revealed himself in this world in physical bodily form. Indeed, the Lord Jesus Christ makes the astonishing statement to Philip: ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ (Jn 14:9). Now there are depths of Christology here that we do not have time to plumb. But the point is that God reveals himself through Christ incarnate. And then, in the Acts of the Apostles, we see the continuing works of the Lord Jesus Christ through the church by his Spirit (cf. Acts 1:1). Indeed, we simply take it for granted that God reveals himself and works today through our physical bodies, and through our fellowship and ministry as the church. In salvation, faith comes by hearing – and how can they hear without a preacher? The answer is that they could easily be saved without a preacher if God chose to work unilaterally and non-physically by his Spirit, but he does not. Likewise, the church is built up as each member works and exercises their gifts and teaches and encourages one another.
Now it seems to me that there could be no clearer testimony to the importance of our embodied existence than that Christ, to effect our redemption, became incarnate. And his concern was not just to redeem us spiritually as souls but also to redeem us physically as bodies. The Lord Jesus Christ did not just come to deal with a purely spiritual issue. If that had been the case, then redemption could have been effected in the Garden of Gethsemane. But if our bodies are essential to our humanity, and if our bodies themselves are sinful, then our physical bodies also need to be redeemed. And the Scriptures do not spare us the brutal physical reality of the Cross. His hands and feet were nailed to the Cross, his back was beaten, his heart was pierced, his head was crowned with thorns, his mouth was parched. He suffered physical, and psychological, and spiritual anguish. Paul expresses it very brutally: ‘to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross’and ‘he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death’ (Col 1:20, 22).
Only because of the physical, bodily, sufferings of Christ is there any hope of the resurrection and the redemption and the transformation of our bodies. Remember the very vivid and physical imagery of Isaiah 53: he took up our pain; he was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities; by his wounds you are healed.
In other words, the Lord’s purpose is to redeem our bodies. The bodies which we now have. There is an identity between our physical bodies now and our resurrection bodies. We cannot dwell on that, and indeed Paul regards too much contemplation of this theme as foolishness. Nevertheless there is continuity. So, we cannot say that our physical bodies are unimportant or disposable. As Christians we bury our dead rather than cremating them. Paul makes a sustained argument against sexual immorality in 1Corinthians 6 on the basis that not only are our bodies now temples of the Holy Spirit, but also that they will be raised from the dead. What we do with our bodies now matters because our bodies will be raised.
Your identity and mine is the same from our conception to our eternal future. Remember that we were chosen in Christ from before the foundation of the world. Our names are written in heaven (Lk 10:20; Phil 4:3; Heb 12:23; Rev 3:5; 21:27). And this demonstrates the folly of seeking to determine our own ‘identity’, apart from the identity that the Lord has appointed for us in creation and in redemption. God has determined to redeem us body and soul.
And in eternal glory, our worship in the resurrection body will be directed towards the Lamb, who still bears his human nature, body and soul. The Lord Jesus Christ did not simply take flesh for the temporary purpose of securing our redemption through his life and death. He continues to bear human nature, and will engage with us in our resurrection bodies for all eternity. Eternal worship will be a physical experience.
The hope of Job was seeing the Lord face to face.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet inmy flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me! (Job 19:26b-27a)
The ultimate spiritual experience is in our resurrected bodies as we encounter our glorified embodied Lord.
Conclusion
My hope is that these thoughts will prompt us to reflect in a holistic way about Christian spirituality, both personally and corporately. Our spiritual lives are not simply expressed in the spiritual realm, in the arena of mental contemplation or emotional engagement. We are called to present our bodies as living sacrifices. There is to be discipline of the body, to direct our members away from sinful desires and habits and towards service and devotion.
There are many ways in which we succumb to a physical/ spiritual divide. Just as the ascetics despised the body, or the medieval clerics despised secular vocations, so today we can be too preoccupied with a hyper-spiritual focus on saving souls, rather than holistic discipleship and restoration of God’s creation purpose. Ultimately our goal is not a disembodied heaven, but a New Creation of resurrection bodies in which we are called to live wholeheartedly in the service of the Lord and of one another.
This article was originally delivered as a paper at the 2024 Banner of Truth Ministers’ Conference, and is published here with the permission of the Banner of Truth.
