I think a conversation I had the other morning is beginning to hatch into a small epiphany. Nothing really new or insightful...just a firmer grasp on a truth I'd always taken for granted. It has to do with the extent and reach of the Gospel; that is, God's grace is transforming more than just our souls and our minds. He's redeeming our bodies as well. Anyway, there's a lot to unpack here...so here's my elementary attempt at beginning that process.

In and of itself, the body isn't bad. After he created man, for the first time in the creation account God qualifies the goodness of what he had made by saying it is "very good". David recognized the goodness of God's handiwork and he sang, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." In a world surrounded by death, it's ironic that these fearfully and wonderfully made bodies were not designed to experience it. Death, in a very real sense, is an unnatural phenomenon. Only when sin entered the picture did physical and spiritual death enter. Only after their rebellion were Adam and Eve condemned to be returned to the dust from which they were created. Because both our bodies and souls were slayed by the Fall, each of us stands in desperate need of both bodily and spiritual resurrection.

Which is why it is of eternal significance that Christ's finished work has purchased and redeemed both our soul and our body . He experienced death and abandonment both physically and spiritually. And His resurrection in body and spirt guarantees our spiritual and bodily resurrection. In his commentary on Romans, John Stott writes, "Christ's resurrection is the pledge and pattern of ours."

He redeemed our souls at Calvary. He will redeem our bodies when He comes in final victory. In the mean time though, we experience the consequences of the fall in very real ways. Our bodies are bound to decay, disease, and exhaustion. As Martin Lloyd Jones says, "The moment we enter into this world and begin to live, we also begin to die. Your first breath is one of the last you will ever take...the principle of decay, leading to death, is in every one of us."

But Paul declares a radical reality at Romans 8: 11. He says, "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you." Stott records Bishop Handley Moule's reaction to this verse: "Wonderful is this deep characteristic of Scripture: its Gospel for the body. In Christ, the body is seen to be something far different from the mere clog, or prison, or chrysalis, of the soul. It is its destined implement, may we not say its mighty wings in prospect, for the life of glory."

Stott himself continues, "Resurrection includes transformation, the raising and changing of our body into a new and glorious vehicle for our personality, and its liberation from all frailty, disease, pain, decay, and death. It is not that the spirit is to be freed from the body--as many, under the influence of the Greek way of thinking, have held--but rather that the Spirit will give life to the body" (227).

This is beautiful...and I think it would take a lifetime to really begin unpacking all of the implications. God's transforming love penetrates everything... literally everything...from our soul to our sense of humor, from our intellect to our self image, from our desires to our fingernails. Such is the perfect potency of the Redeemer's blood; everything He touches He restores to the way it was in Eden. So nothing in me or you falls outside the bounds of His restoration and redemption--Nothing! How radical would our living be if we dared to believe even a mustard seed's worth of this truth? Soli Deo Gloria!