Our Glorious Bodies

"Our Glorious Bodies"
1 Corinthians 6:13, 15, 19, 20


Why are we so often at war with our bodies?  “I hate my body!” I have heard more and more people say.  We get to choose a lot of things in life, but we don’t get to choose, for the most part, our bodies.  They are givens at birth.  Our body’s potential in terms of beauty, strength, agility, resistance to disease, and so on, is pretty much decided by heredity.  Many people would like to trade their body in on a new model, if that were possible.

I recently read a survey in a women’s magazine that found almost eighty percent of women dislike their bodies.  If not their whole body, at least parts of it.  And that five minutes into looking at a fashion magazine or catalogue, women start getting depressed, because of body image issues.

How often we may look in the mirror and think, “I wish I had a different face,” or, “I wish my eyes were a different shape or color,” or, “I hate the shape of my legs,” or, “I’m too big...too thin..too fat..too short.”  I for one, would like to be able to look in a mirror and just see my face.  All I get to see is a decapitated body.

Some people exercise their bodies to the point of punishment and others not at all.  Some take diet pills, or go on every sort of fad diet to “get rid of those unwanted pounds.”  When our bodies get ill or tired we blame them for letting us down.  When our bodies are healthy, we take them for granted.

Many of us carry around unhealed inner hurts about our bodies.  Perhaps our families and school friends teased or rejected us because we were hyperactive, slow in sports, clumsy with our hands, too tall, too short, too plump, or too skinny.  In this way, our bodies became a source of emotional and spiritual anxiety and insecurity.

Anthony Ewar penned a clever limerick about bodies.  He wrote:

As a beauty I’m not a great star
Others are handsomer by far;
But my face I don’t mind it
Because I’m behind it;
It’s the folks out front that I jar.

We spend a lifetime centered around the necessities of feeding, clothing, cleaning, and sheltering our bodies.  Almost every advertising dollar spent is aimed at our bodies in some way.  We spend more resource on pampering, tanning, protecting, sun screening, lotioning, feeding, primping, exercising, dressing, and adorning our bodies than on most other things.  And yet in spite of all that, our bodies remain a source of great anxiety, guilt, and frustration.  At times of bodily transitions, or when faced with life threatening or life altering illnesses, our bodies are seen as puzzling, even scary, out of control machines.

As Christians, we have a double sense of guilt because we don’t talk about bodies in church very often.  Even just hearing the word “bodies” in church makes us flinch or squirm a bit, doesn’t it?  And when we do, we usually hear the terms “sin” and “flesh” together, making the erroneous assumption that our bodies are somehow evil.  All that talk about sin and flesh causes us to think that our bodies are hinderances to our spiritual lives.  It is still too often implied, if not actually taught, that the body is, by its very nature, lower and inferior to the interior soul and spirit of a person.  That somehow, just having a body separates us from God.  We might think that if we didn’t have these bodies to lug around, we would be very spiritual beings.

But that is about as far from the truth as one can get.  The truth, if we are to know it, can be found first in a baby in a manger in Bethlehem.  Then later in the growing body of that baby named Jesus.  What we believe about that particular happening is called the Incarnation:  the awesome mystery of God in the flesh--God in a body.

A little girl came home with an “F” on her report card in the subject of spelling.  When her mother demanded an explanation, the little girl said, “Mommy, words fail me.”  And that’s where we might be in trying to understand or explain the Incarnation.  Mere words fail us as we try to grasp God in a body.  Nonetheless, the understanding of God in the flesh is pivotal to understanding the place and importance of our own bodies.

The belief about the Incarnation is what stands behind Paul’s words to the troublesome Corinthian Christians:  “...glorify God in your body.”  What the Corinthians had done was what we are guilty of doing today.  They split the person into two halves: body and soul, or body and spirit.  They over-spiritualized the one side and down-played their bodily side.

They got caught up in a form of Christianity called gnosticism.  The gnostics were part Christianity and part Greek philosophy.  They believed the spirit of a person is the most important, over against the body.  So they did everything they could to develop their spirituality at the expense or dismissal of their bodies.

They reasoned that if their bodies weren’t important to spiritual life then they could do anything they wanted with those bodies.  Gluttony and sexual immorality were all justified in the Corinthian church because all that had to do with bodies.  As long as their spirits were not tainted, it was party time.  You could go to church on Sunday with a clear conscience.  All this developed out of the misguided idea that God doesn’t quite care as much about our bodies as He does about our souls.  After all, which goes to heaven and which gets buried and left behind?

“Glorify God in your body.”  It would have been a radical statement for the Christians at Corinth to hear.  It’s a radical statement for our society as well, especially as we get more and more over-spiritual about people’s souls and disregard their bodies.

The Christian teaching of Paul is that the two--body and soul--are inseparable.  The body and spirit of a person work in tandem, rather than in opposition to each other.  Both are integral to displaying the presence, work, and glory of God.

The main reason we can say that is because of the Incarnation.  Through the Incarnation, God chose to work his plan of salvation.  It is vital that we recognize that God did his reconciling, transforming, saving work in a body--the body of Jesus.  And that God continues that work through our bodies.

We might think, “Why didn’t God just send the angelic visitation; or in some loud, booming voice heard round the world, tell everyone they are now loved and saved.”  (“Hey; Yo; People; This is God.  I’m OK, You’re OK.  All’s good.  I love you.  That’s all you need to know.  Ta Ta.”)  Just think of it:  No Jesus.  Just Good News without a person.  That certainly would have been a more “heavenly” or “spiritual” way of making salvation known to the world.

Instead, God chose to come in a body.  There are many reasons why, but I think one of the most important, was to show that there is something inherently good--even spiritual-- and useful to God about our bodies.  If our bodies were so unspiritual, then God wouldn’t have chosen to come in one.  He would have found another way.

The Incarnation, the birth of Jesus, Christmas, is important for us and our bodies because that’s how God decided to do his work amongst us.  As Paul said, “...your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God…”  That’s what Jesus’ body was.  A sanctuary of God’s Holy Spirit.  Paul went on to say that, “...your bodies are members of Christ...Yet the body is..for the Lord; and the Lord is for the body.”  The Lord thinks our bodies are important.  Our bodies have to think the Lord is important.  Thus we have to realize that our bodies are important to God, because that is how God has decided to come at us--through a body.  “Therefore glorify God in your body.”

Think of this.  It is our bodies, even more than this sanctuary, or any other church building anywhere in the world, which is the place where God is best worshipped, where ministry starts and moves out from.  This is a theme that Paul develops throughout his letters.  To the Christians in Rome, he wrote, “I beg you my brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1)  Notice Paul didn’t write that we are to give God our souls as an act of worship, but our bodies.  Not some sanctuary, but our bodies.

To the Philippian Christians Paul wrote:

...it is my eager expectation and hope that I shall not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my BODY, whether by life or by death.  (Philippians 1:20)

Paul is echoing the story in Genesis where it says about Adam and Eve, “...they were naked and unashamed.”  Paul wants that same sense about his faith.  He wants to be able to stand before God, in his body, and “...not be at all ashamed.”  Paul wants to feel like he’s given his total self, body and soul, over to God so that “...Christ will be honored…”.

If it is our mission to reach out to God and others from our bodies, then maybe the first act from God towards us is to help us be reconciled to our own bodies.  Has that ever occurred to you--to be reconciled to your own body.  That is, we may need to be healed of our dislike and disgust of our bodies.  Is it possible that God finds his beginning place of reconciliation and transformation in the world is first within our own attitudes about our bodily selves?

This doesn’t mean that we are to begin idolizing our bodies or obey every physical impulse, or abandon attempts to improve the health of our bodies.  Nor does it mean that we may never have to compel--or even sacrifice--our bodies out of our love for others.  What it does mean is letting go of unloving, and therefore, un-Godly attitudes about our bodies.  God can’t work through self-hate.  And if the surveys I mentioned at the start are correct, there is a lot of self-hate out there related to our bodies.

But Paul will allow none of that.  He says an emphatic “NO!” to this sort of religious dualism of bodily self-hate and over-spiritualized soulism.  God’s coming in a body, Jesus, is a confirmation of our bodies, of our very humanity.  It is as if God were saying, through the Incarnation, “The way for you to become a whole person is not to reject or hate the body I have created and identified with, but to plunge deeper into it, and serve me with your whole body and soul.”  It means that God can and is working in and through every area of your bodily humanity.

The way we relate to our bodies profoundly influences the way we relate to God, to each other, to prayer, and to all of life.  That is why our bodies are important to God, and all of Biblical, Christian teaching.  That is why Paul said, “Glorify God in your bodies.”