Beloved,
Our bodies are not a divine afterthought. The human body actually preceded the human soul in creation: “then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” God formed Adam’s material body from the dirt. The verb “formed” is used elsewhere of a potter skillfully shaping clay into a piece of pottery. God constructed an incredibly intricate body with bones, organs, veins, ligaments, muscles, fat, skin, and hair. Never had there been a pot like this! Then, after this wonderful work of physical formation, the divine breath (think, the Holy Spirit) entered through the body’s nasal cavity to create Adam’s soul. The physical preceded the spiritual, and the physical depended upon the spiritual (being a lifeless corpse without it).
We are psychosomatic (soul-body) unities, and try as we might, we cannot divorce our spirituality from our physicality. We began to think about this last week, considering how the treatment of our bodies is often directly connected to the health of our souls. We cannot expect to thrive spiritually while willfully neglecting and mistreating our bodies. Improved physical health relieved my soul of the dark cloud of depression, enabling me to better serve God and others.
But what about when our physical health cannot be improved? Are the physical decay, disease, and disability that come with living in a fallen world destined to negatively impact our souls? God forbid! As many of you can testify from personal experience, it is in the furnace of bodily affliction that Christ has done some of His best work in your soul. The apostle summarizes it well: “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). The soul can flourish even as the body flounders.
Some might say this disproves the psychosomatic unity thesis. You could imagine the argument going something like this: “If the body and soul are so intertwined, then it would not be possible for the one to flourish while the other flounders.” But that is an overly simplistic way of thinking. Not every spiritual malady has a negative physical cause, and not every physical malady has a negative spiritual effect. I would actually turn the argument on its head and say that it is precisely because the apostle was a psychosomatic unity that his soul could flourish even as his body floundered. Why would I say that? Because Paul’s soul was simply responding to the sermon preached by his suffering body. His outer self was communicating a two-point message to his inner self that led to spiritual renewal. It is a sermon our souls need too!
The first point is this: you have no reason to be haughty. Paul bookends his comment in 2 Corinthians 4:16 with two analogies of our fallen flesh-and-blood physicality—ordinary jars of clay (4:7) and weather-beaten tents (5:2). Both were commonplace in the first century. Clay jars were as disposable as Tupperware containers today, but far less durable. Camping was not a cool hobby in the ancient world; it was a necessary way of life for some and far from glamorous. In my pride, I want a body likened to stainless steel. But God ordains for me to inhabit a fragile, clay-like vessel. In my pride, I desire a body that looks and feels like a Manhattan mansion. But God wills for my soul to inhabit an unimpressive and uncomfortable tent. Oh, how good this is for my soul! For if the inner self is really listening to the sermon preached by the outer self, it will grow in humility and dependence upon the Lord. It will learn “that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (4:7). It is just because of the connection between body and soul that a weak body can be a means of cultivating a humble soul by God’s grace.
Then there is the second point: you are not yet home. If you spend any time in the world of biohacking, you know that many people live as if this life is all there is. They obsess over physical health (we’ll think about the temptation to body worship in the upcoming weeks), some even making it their life’s ambition to beat the grave. They spend so much time and money seeking to avoid death that they actually fail to live! But God, in His mercy, ordains physical suffering to turn our eyes away from this cursed world and toward the glory to come.
- “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen” (4:16-17).
- “For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling” (5:2).
A Manhattan-mansion of a body would be too comfortable. It would tempt our souls to forget that our hope is not in this present age but in the age to come. But in God’s mercy our weak and suffering bodies beckon our souls to gaze heavenward. It is a beckoning that presupposes an intimate union between body and soul.
So we need to avoid being overly simplistic in our thinking. We must do our best to care for our bodies as stewards, recognizing that neglect here can have negative spiritual consequences. But we must also trust and submit to the God who often afflicts us physically to grow us spiritually. Both depend upon the anthropological claim that we are psychosomatic unities indeed!
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Nick