We need a good theology of body
"Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul." (3 John 2)
Paul Tripp in his forward for the book, What God has to Say About Our Bodies by Sam Allberry writes this: “I have been bothered that an over-spiritualization of the gospel would leave us with a Christian culture that is body ignoring, if not body negative. It has worried me that we would come to see people as disembodied hearts. A gospel for souls that excludes or overlooks bodies is not the gospel of Scripture. The gospel without a theology of the body is a truncated, inadequate gospel. A church that doesn’t have a robust gospel theology of the body will be unprepared to meet this generation’s philosophical, psychological, sociological, scientific, and media challenges.”
This Sunday, I will be preaching from Genesis 2 about the body as an important part of being created in the image of God. I don’t know about you, but I have not thought carefully or seriously about my body as a significant part of my identity as a human being. So much emphasis has been on the spirit and the heart (in many ways, rightly so) that I have neglected my body to the detriment of not just physical health, but also spiritual health. In fact, the fact that we tend to dichotomize our spiritual life from physical life itself is an unbiblical way of thinking. (More on that in the coming weeks). We are animated bodies; we are embodied souls. We cannot and should not separate our body and soul, our body and spirit. What God has put together, let no man put asunder!
If you want to go deeper into the topic, I suggest that you check out Sam Allberry’s book, What God has to say about Our Bodies: How the Gospel is Good News for Our Physical Selves. Another book that I found helpful is Michael Beates’ Disability & the Gospel: How God Uses Our Brokenness to Display His Grace. If you have any good resources on the topic you would like to recommend, please let me know.
If you have questions about the sermon, or from your reading of Genesis 1-3, please reach out to me at charles.lee@newhopefellowship.ca. I would love to connect with you and talk about identity, theology, faith, culture, and life!
I look forward to seeing you and delving into God’s word this Sunday together to learn about what it means to be a human being created in the image of God, especially with our body.
By the way, if you have been joining only online for the past little while, please know that your bodily presence in our Sunday gathering actually matters! So if you are able to get out of the house, please come out and join us for in-person service!
Well, since I began with 3 John 2, let me end with 3 John 13: “I had much to write to you, but I would rather not write with pen and ink [or computer]. I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face.” (Yes, it’s actually in the Bible!)