Salvation Happens In The Body
It sure seems like sickness (in general) has captured my attention as of late. I’ve experienced sickness on my birthday a month ago, some of my friends in the men’s OCWC group are sick, church members are absent due to various health challenges, and I have a close family member that is in the hospital as I write this. Our bodies are wonderfully and fearfully made but are susceptible to various and sundry diseases. Bodies are central to the Christian story. Creation inaugurates bodies that are good, but the consequences of the fall are written on our bodies–our bodies will sweat as we labor in the fields, our bodies will hurt as we bear children, and, most centrally, our bodies will die. If the fall is written on the body, salvation happens in the body too. The kingdom of God is transmitted through Jesus’s body and is sustained in Christ’s Body, the church. Through the bodily suffering of Christ on the cross and the bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead, we are saved. Bodies are not just mirrors in which we see the consequence of the fall; they are also, in one theologian’s phrase, “where God has chosen to find us in our fallenness.” – Lauren Winner
We find this encouragement in 1Peter, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.
When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” 1Peter 2:21-24
Be encouraged that when the time comes, this mortal body will be redeemed, because of what Christ went through in his body for us, Pastor Larry
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