God is spirit and He created us for His pleasure, to commune with Him and to enjoy Him forever on Earth. This communion is possible because we human beings are spirit too. But What if I told you we can’t enjoy God without our body? What if I told you we’re always supposed to have a body? What if I told you our body is just as important as our spirit? You’d probably call me a heretic! Or, you might accuse me of trying to make the ultimate case for spending even more time and money on feeding, dressing, clothing, and pampering our body! Well, I’m neither a heretic nor a hedonist. But I do believe we need to take care of our body in ways that enable our spirit to thrive in relationship with God.
King Hezekiah, when terminally ill, understood this truth:
People in the grave can’t praise you.
Dead people can’t sing praise to you.
Those who go down to the grave
can’t hope for you to be faithful to them.
It is those who are alive who praise you.
And that’s what I’m doing today.
Parents tell their children
about how faithful you are (Isaiah 38:18-19).
His Body for Ours
One of the great joys of Jesus Christ’s life is that He restored to the body the honor and potential that it had upon creation. When God created the human being, He announced that this creature was good (Genesis 1:31) and gave him the capacity and authority to care for the rest of creation. Later, disobedience stripped the human of his exalted position and attached shame to the body (Genesis 2:25-3:10). But O the joy of the Incarnation when the eternal God Himself took on human existence and showed us what it means to live a dignified life that is in harmony with God, with one’s self, and with one’s neighbor on Earth! O the joy of the Resurrection when the eternal God submitted Himself to crucifixion, overpowered death and, in a new act of creation, returned to the human body the power to live forever! Now, through belief in Jesus Christ—the eternal God on Earth–we can become the man and woman we were created to be and enjoy union with our Maker once again.
Our Body for His
Through Christ’s sacrifice all things have been reconciled to Him. “God has brought all things back to Himself again—things on earth and things in heaven. God made peace through the blood of Christ’s death on the cross” (Colossians 1:20). We are able to make peace with our body by accepting the Father’s love offering in Jesus. If we accept the Father’s gift, then we accept the newness of life that He gives us. According to Rabbi Shraga Freedman, author of Living Kiddush Hashem, the acceptance of this gift means we also demonstrate the “Oneness of Hashem”—that our Maker is One of all. Rabbi Shraga further states that when “we subjugate our bodies and their physical drives to our souls,” we unite the “two in service of Hashem,” showing a “deep-rooted desire to make [our] entire physical beings ‘one’ with Hashem.”
Becoming One with God
It should be every believer’s desire to make their body one with God. In order to accomplish this oneness, we have to let go of the body-shaming that has become so prevalent in our culture. This body-shaming is also seen in certain church teachings that promote the body as evil. A reconciled body is not evil. But, of equal concern, we have to stop treating a reconciled body as if it has not been reconciled to its Maker. Remember Paul’s question we all know so well: Do you not know your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? We can say it in our sleep, but what does it mean to you and me? We also have to respect the human body, especially one that has been reconciled to Christ, as sacred. A woman’s body is to be revered, and so is a man’s body. To look at the body in any other way is to dishonor God, for our body is Christ’s body.
We present our body as a sacrifice, bringing its appetites for certain pleasures under control. What’s a sacrifice unless you have to give up something? What have you given up? Do you spoil your body, giving it what it always wants? Do you give it all the cake it wants or the entire bag of chips? Do you allow it to stay in bed late rather than getting up to exercise? Or do you sit there at your desk working all day? Do you allow yourself to take in any movie ignoring the fact that images are extremely powerful? Do you allow any kind of thoughts to run roughshod in the garden of your mind? Do you choose not to give your body nutritious food even as an adult knowing what is right? Because we are spirit beings who can exist on Earth only with a body, if we want to continue to exist on this earth, we’d better take heed to our body—what we eat, what we drink, what we wear, where we live, where we work, what we think, how we live!
It is now time for God’s people to demonstrate that He is the God of One by bringing our body, mind, and spirit to the work of the kingdom. It is in our body that we carry out God’s will. We are here to be examples of God’s kingdom on Earth: that only One King will rule and rule over all! He is Lord over our entire being—body, mind, and spirit; and we must choose to love Him with our entire being—all our heart, all our mind, all our strength, and all our soul; and with each breath we take, we will praise His name forever. This is the oneness that God desires of us, that we will be made one and whole.
The body is not more important than the spirit; it is just as important as the spirit. Once the body is reconciled it becomes sanctified—set apart for the work of the kingdom. It becomes one with Jesus Christ’s body and, in that way, it is spiritual and will be resurrected like Christ’s body. This is the hope of glory: that we too will live again eternally.
