Living as Jesus’ Body
Our culture is obsessed with human bodies (like the photos we see at the checkout at the grocery store). As the church, however, we can overcorrect and focus exclusively on the spiritual aspects of life. But while faith is something internal, it always works itself out in our actions. So we need to focus on people as a unified whole, both spiritual and physical.
Because the gospel is universal, it needs to be communicated across cultures. The first time this happened the message was taken out of Jewish culture (with its assumptions) and communicated in a Hellenistic cultural context. However, the Hellenist worldview had some assumptions that didn’t line up with the Hebrew ones. The most important for our purposes is that while the Hebrew view of physical creation is good (God created the physical world to be good, although it is corrupted by sin) Greeks understood the physical world to be negative. They assumed we would be shedding our physical bodies to live as spirits. So they also reasoned that what we do with our bodies doesn’t matter all that much. As a result, some Christians were justifying using prostitutes.
Paul attacks their understanding. After all, Jesus’ resurrection, which serves as a preview of our own, was to a new physical body. Our bodies are not destined to be destroyed but renewed. And since our hope of resurrection is grounded in his resurrection, our bodies belong to him. They meant to serve as an extension of his body in the world. Together we make up a body for Jesus, so our actions with our bodies are a matter of private concern. Sexual immorality is a sin against the whole body of Christ, of which we are all a part.
But the implications of Paul’s theology of the resurrection go beyond our sexual ethics. They impact every area of our lives. God’s intended design for human beings is to live in physical bodies. While those bodies have limitations, they also give us opportunities to love and serve one another.
I require food, water, and shelter. Without them, I will die. Tragically, we see this happen all the time when malnutrition claims the lives of children in famine-stricken lands. But our needs provide an opportunity for us to learn interdependence. When I have abundance and you lack, I can share with you. When you have abundance and I lack, you can share with me. This knits us together in a relationship of interdependent love. And when we consider that God is the giver of all good gifts, we understand that he provides us with the abundance we can share. So we are meant to live dependent on God and interdependent on one another. If we do this, we experience love and belonging.
Another limitation of having a body is only being able to be in one place at a time. Life would be so much easier if this weren’t the case. However, being limited to being in one place allows me to be present with a single person or a group of people. So, for example, I can love my wife by being present with her in a way that means I must not be present (in the same way) with others. My choice to be with her exclusively, allows me to communicate love to her. When I am present to someone, giving them my undivided attention, I show them that I value them and that I stand in solidarity with them. Jesus does this when he lays hands on a lepper or a blind man, or when he stops to listen to the woman who has been bleeding for years (Matthew 5:25-34). Jesus shows us that God is present to the lowest and the lost. That he stands in solidarity with them.
Christians need to do the same. If we are an extension of Jesus’ body in the world, then our calling is to stand in solidarity with the least and the lost as he did. So what we do with our bodies matters, because our bodies belong to the Lord.
