Glorify God in Your Body - GBC Bulletin Column #27

In Walter Miller’s post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, one character says to another, ‘You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.’ A similar sentiment - almost identical in wording - frequently makes the rounds among professing Christians on social networking sites, apocryphally attributed to C. S. Lewis. Expressed within it is an implied inferiority of material physicality, a definition of the human being that views bodily flesh as merely the frail and fleeting shell that houses who and what we really are. The early church actually had to contend with such a view in the Gnostic heresy, which taught that all material things are inherently evil.

Far from denigrating the body, however, or putting it at the bottom of some philosophical scale of gradation, the Bible presents us with a somewhat different view of the body as a constituent, vital part of the human being. This is especially clear in the writings of Paul. For him, the whole of humanity awaits ‘the redemption of our bodies’ (Rom. 8:23). The foundation of Paul’s doctrine of Christ, who brings redemption, is the incarnation: Christ took up a human body, ‘being born in the likeness of men’ (Phil. 2:7). The apostolic proclamation of Christ crucified emphasises the reality of his bodily death, which of course necessitated a bodily resurrection (1 Cor.15).

It is by grace through faith in the bodily slain and resurrected Christ, then, that people in the wholeness of their being are restored and saved.Thus Paul wrote to the church in Corinth that they were ‘bought with a price. So glorify God in your body’ (1 Cor. 6:20). In the context of the same letter and its sequel, he really does mean that God should be glorified in everything associated with our body: from our sex life (1 Cor. 5, 6:12-7:40), to the what/when/where/why/and how of food and drink (1 Cor. 8, 10), to the way that we suffer and die (2 Cor. 4:6-18). Paul’s objective was that “with full courage now as always Christ will be honoured in my body, whether by life or by death” (Phil. 1:20) and he would have us take up the same way of life, imitating him as he is imitating Christ (1 Cor. 11:1).

Why does this matter? Because denying the body an important place in the human-being runs the risk of also denying the good news of Christ’s bodily incarnation, suffering, death, and resurrection, and the believer’s hope of bodily resurrection and eternal life. This news does not assure us of only spiritual justification, detached from the way we live our embodied lives. It also promises transformation in life and godliness according to the Holy Spirit’s power in the individual and the church. As Christians, a more biblical view of the body should embolden us in fulfilling both the mission of proclaiming Christ and making disciples and the ministry of living out our faith and caring for the needy people all around us, proclaiming Christ’s message and practicing Christ’s love, so that the human person in its totality, materially and spiritually, might be changed.

This was printed in the worship bulletin of Grace Baptist Church (Wood Green) on 27 October 2013