Our Bodies and Eternity
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?
You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.
So glorify God in your body.”
– 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
When God made Adam and Eve, he gave them physical bodies. In these physical bodies, they dwelled in the garden, communed with each other and creation, and engaged the abiding presence of the Lord. It was also with their physical bodies that they sinned. Often in Christian circles, we can have an accidentally low view of the physical body. Why? Well, so often it reminds us of our sin, dysfunction, and creaturely limitations. Sleep wrong and have a stiff neck? Yep, you are reminded that your physical body is limited. Presidential fitness tests at school? Yep, you are reminded that even though you want to do 100 pullups, 1 or 2 isn’t half bad. Because our bodies so frequently remind us of what’s wrong in our world, we can be left to think that our bodies really don’t matter. However, that is not the case in the Bible. In fact, the Bible tells us that our bodies actually matter a great deal!
Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, told them that their bodies were a temple of the Holy Spirit and that they were to glorify God with their bodies. Wow, that is a high calling! Especially in light of the culture of Corinth, where the sexual gratification via temple prostitutes was a prominent part of Corinthian religious worship. In fact, 400 years before Paul writes his letter, Corinth had gained such a reputation for sexual vice that Aristophanes (ca. 450–385 b.c.) coined the verb korinthiazō (= to act like a Corinthian, i.e., to commit fornication).[1] Again, a very different view than what Paul teaches the Corinthian believers about the significance of their bodies.
Ok, so we hear Paul’s words and understand that our physical bodies do indeed matter here and now. They aren’t accidental, but God gave them to us purposefully. And that they are to be instruments of righteousness. But what about in eternity? Surely our bodies won’t matter then, right?
Actually, they will matter a great deal in eternity. Why? Because God will give us glorified physical bodies in the age to come. Here is an excerpt from the EFCA’s expanded primer on our statement of faith regarding our glorified physical bodies.
“The eternal nature of our destiny is affirmed in our conviction that physical death is not the end of our existence. Our lives are not simply absorbed as a drop into “the eternal ocean of being,” nor do we simply “live on in the hearts of those we love,” as many suppose. The Bible affirms that every human being will assume an eternal form in which we maintain our unique personal and bodily existence. This is described as our resurrection from the dead.
In the Old Testament the doctrine of the resurrection was most clearly articulated in the Book of Daniel: “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2; cf. also Job. 19:25-27; Isa. 26:19). Jesus, too, affirmed that all will rise from the dead: “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear [the Son’s] voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned” (John 5:28-29; also Matt. 22:23-32). Paul echoed this conviction: “there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked” (Acts 24:15).
The nature of the resurrection body is a great mystery, and Paul’s teaching on the subject is focused on the new bodies of those united to Christ, leaving us with less clarity regarding those raised apart from Christ. For believers, the resurrection body will be like that of Jesus (Phil. 3:20-21), with a significant physical discontinuity with our present body of flesh (cf. 1 Cor. 15:50) but maintaining a continuity of personal identity. Paul uses the image of a seed that is buried and then re-emerges from the ground in a new form, becoming a “spiritual body,” glorious and imperishable (1 Cor. 15:35-49).
The Bible describes our future state as the resurrection of the body rather than simply the immortality of the soul. This recognizes that God the Creator is not abandoning his creation, but redeeming it. In addition, as bodily creatures we will maintain our ability to represent God in his redeemed created order, displaying his glory. Though death cannot separate the believer from Christ (Rom. 8:38-39), and after death we can be assured of being in his presence (cf. Phil. 1:21-23), our salvation will not be complete until we are raised bodily when Christ returns. Human beings are created as embodied (i.e., with a physical body) souls, and Christ’s own incarnation demonstrates the dignity of our embodied existence. Our future bodily resurrection further affirms this reality.
Physical death is not the end of our existence, for all human beings will be raised bodily. Yet physical death does mark the end of our ability to make a response to God in faith. At death our eternal destiny is fixed, for, as we read in Hebrews, “people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Heb. 9:27; cf. also Luke 16:26)”.[2]
Our physical bodies matter.
They matter to God.
They matter to our community as we are to act justly with them.
And they matter in the light of eternity. In fact, what we do with our bodies now is, in part, a preparation for what we will do with them in eternity.
How does that change your view of your physical body?
[1] Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987), 2.
[2] EFCA. Evangelical Convictions, 2nd Edition (pp. 301-303). (Function). Kindle Edition.