“May God the Father, who created this body; may God the Son, who by His blood redeemed this body; may God the Holy Spirit, who by Holy Baptism sanctified this body to be His temple, keep these remains to the day of the resurrection of all flesh.” These are the words I speak at the graveside of a Christian who has died, at the committal in the Service of Christian Burial.
At such a solemn and somber moment, those words proclaim these truths about the body of the believer. The Creator of heaven and earth has created your body. Jesus has bought your body with His blood. The Holy Spirit, through the water and Word of baptism, has made the body something holy. And so the body is not some leftover carcass that we toss aside. To the contrary, at the committal service, we give the body, we commit the body, back to God.
The body is yours. It is uniquely you. Yet, contrary to the mantra of our age, your body does not belong to you. Today, we say such phrases: “It’s my body. I’ll do whatever I want to with it.” And such thinking has even infected us within the Church, for such thinking is native to our culture. But God teaches us otherwise, to keep us from making an idol of our bodies and its fleshly wants.
Your body does not belong to you. You didn’t create yourself. Despite the medical advances of synthetic parts that replace worn-out limbs and organs, in the end, we cannot escape the reality that we are flesh, blood, and bones that will one day perish.
Oh, we may view the body as simply a container that houses our creative will. We may treat the body as an instrument of self-pleasure, as a means of seeking and receiving pleasure. And if our view of the body has devolved into such thinking, then it shouldn’t surprise us that once the pleasure-fulfilling ways of the flesh break down, we seek ways to relieve ourselves of such a burden.
And so enters someone helping another commit suicide. So enters acceptable euthanasia. If we can’t finally master the body and control disease or aging, we will end it at the time and place of our own choosing. After all, isn’t that the natural conclusion, if you think the body is your own to do whatever you want with it?
While we live in a pleasure-seeking age, we also have an anti-physical undercurrent of spirituality in our day. Now, the average person may let the pursuits of pleasure consume him. But for many who think they are spiritual, even Christians, they often think the body is something unimportant. The body is something we move beyond and transcend. Such is the irony of the times in which we live.
The Church of Corinth, to whom Paul wrote his letter, had somehow merged the pursuit of pleasure and spirituality into an unusual way of thinking. Never underestimate our sinful nature to be inventive when it comes to rationalize sinning. So, what were the “super-spiritual” Christians at Corinth doing?
They thought that something as fleshly, as bodily, as sex with another couldn’t affect their life in the Spirit. For them, the realms of the Spirit and the flesh were as different from each other as night and day. For them, Christian freedom, the freedom of the Spirit, meant they could live a life unhampered by physical boundaries or limits. Homosexual practice, prostitution, and even incest were fair game. After all, those were simply acts of the body, which had nothing to do with the life of the Spirit.
These so-called “super-spiritual” Christians thought that they could do whatever they wanted with their bodies. After all, as we heard in our Epistle reading, “food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both” (v 13). Perhaps, they mistakenly thought the Gospel was a message of freedom from the body–and so what you did with the body didn’t matter anyway.
So, what are we to do with the body? That’s a question that confronts us–not just when we die–but even here and now as we live in the body. And how did the Apostle Paul respond to the Corinthian’s distorted views of the body? He said, “Don’t you know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?” (v 15). It’s a matter of ownership. You can’t take your body, which belongs to Christ, and treat it as if you are the owner. You aren’t the owner. Jesus is. He bought it with His own blood. Even more, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus sent, has washed it clean in Holy Baptism.
The Holy Spirit joined you to Christ in baptism–both body and soul! So, if you are joined to Christ, then doing something sinful with your body is just as sinful as believing something sinful with your mind. What affects one, affects the other. That’s why “the body isn’t for sexual immorality but the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (v 13). Neither is your body meant for gluttony or drunkenness. Stewardship isn’t just about money. You are even to be faithful stewards of your body.
Yet, you are more than simply joined to Christ. You also belong to Him. Jesus bought you with the price of His own blood. He redeemed–not just your soul–but also your body. So, how does belonging to Christ change how you treat the body you have been given? It means that you want to bring glory and honor to God by what you do with your body. That’s your focus, not satisfying the sinful wishes of the flesh.
Paul goes on to say, “God raised the Lord [Jesus] and will also raise us up by his power” (v 14). Your body is so valuable to God that He will raise it up on the Last Day. God is not content only to save your soul. He is only satisfied when He saves you in body and soul. That’s why your body is not some expendable part that will matter little in eternity.
Your final salvation will be God joining body and soul together on the Last Day. The Church has been confessing that since the beginning. We will confess that in the Nicene Creed after the sermon. Then we will say, “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”
That’s why it makes no sense, treating your body as if it were some throw-away accessory. That’s why it makes no sense, living as if you only go around once. That’s walking by sight and not by faith. That’s walking according to your sinful nature and not according to Christ. That’s living as if no reality exists but the here and now.
Joined to Christ, you honor God in your body by striving for a holiness that reflects the eternal holiness your body will one day have. Since you’ve already been raised in your baptism to a new life in Christ, your life is to reflect that. And this is not only to be by what you believe, but also by what you do with the body you have been given.
Christ Jesus won’t have sin-driven sexuality defile and desecrate a body that belongs to Him. Christ Jesus won’t have you live in bondage to another lord, for He has made you His own.
He has freed [you], a lost and condemned creature, acquired and won [you] from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil. This was not with silver or gold, but with His holy and precious blood, and with His innocent suffering and death. All this He has done that [you] may be His own, live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead and lives and reigns to all eternity” (Small Catechism).
Your body is not something that God discards when you die. Your body, by simply being physical, is neither evil nor irrelevant. It will be raised again to live in glory with Christ for all eternity. Then, as now, it belongs to the Lord. That’s why the Apostle Paul tells us to “honor God with your body” (v 20). Your body is the temple of His Spirit, which awaits its destiny on the Last Day to be raised in the flesh for all eternity.
So, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual worship (Romans 12:1). Amen.
