Your Body Matters
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
Dr. John Kleinig begins his book, “Wonderfully Made,” by observing:
The slogans on two sweatshirts worn by young women recently caught my
attention. The first was ‘My body! My choice!’ The second was, ‘Your body may
be a temple, but mine’s an amusement park.’ Both sum up how people now regard
their bodies. Since it belongs to them and only to them, they may do as they please
with it. Therefore, they use it for their own amusement in pursuit of physical pleasure
or themselves apart from God and any higher purpose in life. [i]
From conception to birth, life,
death, and resurrection, your bodies are of utmost importance. Through each
stage, your bodies matter, as does how you live in them, what you do with them,
and how you approach life and death. Today, with our text from 2 Corinthians
5:1-7, we’ll focus on the latter stages—life after death and the resurrection
of the body.
Life after death is one of the
greatest mysteries in the world, but there is no reason to make it more mysterious
than it should be. After all, unlike Buddha, Muhammad, Hindus, and New Age followers
who believe in reincarnation, only Jesus of Nazareth maintained continuity
between this life and the next by retaining His body and the continuity
of His person.[ii]
How do we know there is, in fact,
life after death? How do we know there is a great communion of the living dead?
It is not because we “feel” like it is so and not because we really “wish” it so,
but because one man, Jesus of Nazareth, actually died at the hands of professional
executioners. The same person rose from the dead three days later, and He both
told and showed us exactly what life after death is like. You could actually touch
it by touching Him.
With Jesus’ resurrection, the
mystery of life after death became much less mysterious. It moved from the
realm of conjecture, fantasy, and superstition to a reality grounded in our
human bodies! Our bodies and permanence of person are the things that maintain
continuity between this world and the next. Your body matters!
But that’s not the way most of
the world thinks. It’s not even the way most Christians think. People tend to
be heavily influenced by a couple of non-Christian philosophies. For example,
the Greeks thought of the soul being set free at death from every material
constraint, especially the prison-house of the human body. Many modern Christians
believe in this Neo-Platonic concept today, at least in practice, if not dogmatically.
Others, like Muslims, have so painted the next life in such physical terms,
with streets literally paved with gold and scores of virgins, that escaping from
this world in death means landing in a different one utterly dissimilar from
the apparently disposable version we live in now.
To be sure, Paul does not deal
with these misconceptions in our text. He had already given the Corinthians God’s
essential teaching on the nature of the heavenly life in his first epistle, and
it is as simple as this: What is true of Christ is true of those united to Him.
If He has been raised from the dead, then so shall we.
But in today’s text, Paul takes
us further in our understanding of death, resurrection, and eternal life by explaining
how “Heaven” is not merely the place we go to when we die but rather the place
where God has our future bodies already in store for us, as N.T. Wright
once put it. To illustrate this point, Paul uses a couple of word pictures to
explain that the “unseen” things are already present in this world but visible
only to those whose inner nature is being renewed by the Holy Spirit.
Paul underscores the preservation
of one’s personality in the next life. Individuality is retained in the body of
Christ, even in the life to come. You are still you. A person is not absorbed
into Nirvana with their individuality extinguished like a candle in the wind or
brought into the collective like the Borg in Star Trek. The departed in Christ are
the living dead, not bodies who have some instinctive movement like
zombies but alive in the truest sense of the word.
Paul says believers will receive new
bodies after death that are no longer strictly physical in nature but
spiritual. They will be spiritual bodies, with our transformed physical bodies
added to them as we rise from the earth in the general resurrection of the dead
on the Last Day. The point is the transformation of the body is empowered not
by our soulish energies but by the Holy Spirit of God Himself. Therefore, those
spiritual bodies will never decay or die but will always be glorious, just like
that of our Risen King Jesus.
However, this is hard to describe
because we have only one example—the firstfruits of the resurrection, Jesus Christ.
So, Paul constructs a couple of illustrations. First, Paul refers to the body
as a “house” or “tent.” He uses this picture to contrast “tent” life here as
life compared to the heavenly and eternal “house not made with hands.” Recall
how Jesus speaks of His body this way when He refers to a “temple not made with
hands in Mark 14:58. “Temple” and “house” are synonymous in this context because
the Jews called the Temple in Jerusalem the “House of God.” Tents represent the
insecurity and frailty of this bodily life. They are temporary and will be destroyed
when we die. But we Christians need not worry because permanent mansion-temples
await us in Heaven, and Heaven will ultimately be on the renewed Earth.
There, in Heaven, as the entire
communion of saints awaits the return of Christ to Earth and the physical
resurrection of our dead bodies, God rebuilds our lives securely and
permanently, but this time with a significant upgrade: Shiny, radiant bodies,
reflecting the glory of the Lord. It recalls and sheds new light on the words
of Jesus in John 14:2-3, “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places. If it
were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if
I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to Myself,
that where I am you may be also.”
Paul compares “tent” bodies to
heavenly “temples” to say that the present aging, sickly, hurting body will be
exchanged for a better one. Moreover, he says this to underscore the point that
being embodied (having a body) matters to God and is a vital part of His
redemption of our total persons and the world, and how that should matter
deeply for us Christians. We will have bodies, spiritual-physical bodies,
beginning first with the spiritual body prepared for us in Heaven, which your loved
ones who have departed in the faith are already enjoying. We will be clothed
with the Holy Spirit in divine glory, fit to inhabit a transformed resurrection
body. The dead in Christ are just one step ahead of us. They are wearing those
glorious white robes spoken of in Revelation while we wait to be further
clothed.
The picture of “tents” and “houses”
switches to the idea of the body as “clothing.” To pass from this world to the
next is like taking off and putting on clothes. The Christian hope for the
future is not about becoming disembodied but about being re-embodied,
not de-humanized but through the resurrection re-humanized. Thus,
we will not be “naked” before God or one another. Therefore, the resurrection
of the body maintains some continuity to the present body but is quite
different in other respects. So, the future is all about the resurrection of
the body and the life everlasting through embodied life. Your body matters.
Since we belong to the risen Lord
Jesus, we may now view our bodies in the light of their resurrection from the
dead. That mystery changes everything for us. It turns a dark, dismal picture
of our earthly life into a bright, joyful sight. Yet it remains a mystery
because it is hidden from our natural sight. The mystery of our resurrection
from the dead has to do with what no human eye has ever seen, no human ear has
ever heard, and no human mind has ever imagined (1 Corinthians 2:6-12). It is
disclosed to us in faith through God’s Word and the Holy Spirit.
Unlike us, the Bible does not
usually speak about the resurrection from “the dead” but about the resurrection
of “corpses.” Nevertheless, both terms are commonly misunderstood as the
reconstitution of our present bodies with all their present characteristics,
their revival, and resuscitation in their earthly form. Yet the resurrection of
the body differs radically from the resuscitation of a dead person, such as the
daughter of Jairus in Mark 5:35-43, the widow’s son in Luke 7:11-17, or Lazarus
in John 11:1-44. Restored to their former state of life, they were doomed to
die again. But, unlike them with their dead bodies, the resurrection of the
body has to do with its transformation into a new state of being, like the
change of a grub into a butterfly or a lump of carbon into a diamond.
Jesus Himself best exemplifies
that transformation by His appearance to His disciples after His resurrection.
Even though His body was no longer subject to the limitations of time, space,
and matter, He appeared to them visibly in a locked room, walked with them,
stood in their midst, spoke with them, ate with them, and allowed them to touch
Him. There was nothing ghostly about Him (like 24:37-39).
Jesus describes the result of
that transformation in His controversy with the Sadducees about the resurrection
of the body. In Luke 20:36, He asserts that when people are raised from the
dead, they will be like the angels as sons of God; they will have the same status
and relationship with God the Father and Jesus and will be immortal creatures
like the angels. We will be the same person but with a changed, glorified body.
Contrary to common belief, we
will not be raised as disembodied souls. That would be a dreadful prospect, for
our survival as ghosts would be even worse than the worst kind of human life on
earth. An existence as a ghost is no life, for ghosts are diminished entities,
homeless souls that haunt the realm of the living without enjoying life at all.
We will also not be raised with the same bodies we have here on Earth. That,
too, would be a horrible prospect, for we will be raised from the dead with
splendid bodies that have been completely changed. Even our scars, if they
remain with us, like the scars of Jesus (Luke 24:40; John 20:20, 27), will be
transfigured and transformed.
Jesus will remake us; He will “transform
our lowly [bodies] to be like His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). Yet those
bodies will not be alien to us. They will still be recognizable as our bodies—even
more recognizable than now—for our resurrected bodies will perfectly match our
redeemed souls. We will recognize ourselves and each other as the people we once
were before we died. Only then will we be fully at home with ourselves and others
in their bodies.
The natural body must be changed
before it can enter into its inheritance. It cannot inherit eternal life with
God in heaven dressed in its corrupted, mortal state. So God undresses it by
putting it to sleep in death. Then He wakes it up from the sleep of death and
clothes it with the robes it needs for life with Him in heaven, the robes of
incorruption and immortality. He clothes it with the same royal, priestly robe
that His victorious Son wears as He celebrates His victory over death
(Revelation 1:13). By clothing the resurrected body with incorruption and immortality,
He transforms it and frees it from the grip of death through Jesus Christ. They
thereby share in Christ’s victory over death. He not only conquers death for
them; He swallows up death by overwhelming it with life. By clothing the
resurrected body with Christ’s incorruption and immortality, God gives
believers victory through the Lord Jesus Christ, the victor over sin and death.
So, even though death conquers
our natural bodies, the spiritual body that God provides for you will
completely conquer death at your resurrection from the dead. Then you will have
eyes to see Him face to face, ears to hear His voice clearly without
distortion, lips to glorify Him in harmony with the angels, and bodies to adore
Him perfectly. Then the heavenly promise in Revelation 21:4 will be fulfilled:
“Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain
anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Amen
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are
from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All
rights reserved.
[i] John Kleinig, “Wonderfully Made: A Protestant Theology
of the Body.” Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press 2021), 2.
[ii] Epistle: 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 (11-17) (Pentecost 3:
Series B). https://www.1517.org/articles/epistle-2-corinthians-51-10-11-17-pentecost-3-series-b
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