“Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me.” -Hebrews 10:5
As I was walking the beach today I began to think about Jesus walking the earth in His physical body, and I wondered, “What kind of experience was it for Jesus to live in a human body? How did it feel for Him? What was His body experience like??”
Surely in many ways it was different than mine. There was never a moment that He did not treat His body as the Temple of the Living God. His body was always holy, always clean, always pure and always used in the way that God intended.
We’re told in Romans to offer our bodies as a “living sacrifice”. This is exactly what Jesus did. Even to the point of death on a cross. It wasn’t enough for Jesus to come to the Earth and just be willing in His spirit to do the Father’s will. God prepared for Him a body and He used it to live out the will of God. It shouldn’t surprise us that we’re called to do the same thing!
“Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” – 1 John 2:6
The Apostle Paul talked about his body being a tent, but he also talked about it being the Temple of the Living God.
A Tent and a Temple
Before Jesus came to reveal Himself to me I lived my entire life as if my body were only a tent. There was nothing sacred about it to me and I often lived in ways through my body that gave evidence that I only saw it as a tent. But when Jesus saved me my body became a temple. My body went from a tent to a temple! It became a sacred place for me to live in, and for the Holy Spirit to live in too.
Life in a temple is a completely different experience than life in a tent!
When Jesus said that He came to give us life, and He came to give it more abundantly, I have to believe that part of that is the fact that I am now living life through a temple instead of a tent. My body has been consecrated, set apart for God, and I am able to experience life the way that Jesus experienced life through His body.
When I think of the physical body of the Lord Jesus Christ I am struck by His absolute purity.
The body of Jesus was untainted. It was marked by the holiness of God!
Clothed in the Holiness of God
It’s hard to put into words what a gift the holiness of God is to us! This cleaness, this purity, this sacred setting apart by God, is what makes us sensitive to experience life in its fullest.
It’s not just the pure in heart who see God and experience life in its ultimate fullness- It is those who see their body as a temple, and not simply as a tent, who enter into life at it’s highest level.
Understanding that my body is a temple should cause me to treat and use my body in a way that is holy and honorable to God.
The Significance of My Body
My body is not an insignificant part of who I am. It was not an afterthought of God that I was given a body.
The church has often focused on the importance of the spirit of man to the exclusion of the importance of his physical body. If you look at the scripture, however, you will see that although we are told that we consist of spirit, soul and body all of these function as an integrated whole. We were never meant to dissect ourselves into three pieces! When Jesus said that the Father seeks those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth He was not implying that we only connect with God by our spirits. We were created in such a way that every part of us is meant to be used in the worship of our God!
I was created by God to connect with Him and the world around me through my spirit, soul, and body.
Jesus used His eyes to look up into the heavens when He prayed. He used His mouth to cry out to God in praise and anguish of heart. He used his feet to walk from city to city and his legs to climb up a mountain with Peter, James and John when He met with His Father. He used His hands to heal people. His body was what was nailed to a cross and crucified for you and me!
A holy heart, needs a holy body, to live life in its fullness. Jesus showed us what life in the body is supposed to look like.
Our bodies are so significant, in fact, that a major tenant of the Christian faith is the resurrection of the body.
“It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.” – 1 Corinthians 15:44
When we get to heaven we expect to use our glorified bodies in ways that bring honor to God.
In heaven will will not love God in our hearts while being disobedient to Him with our bodies!
And so it should be while we live on the Earth.
I should not be doing one thing with my spirit and a completely different thing with my body!
My body and my spirit should agree in the holiness of God. God made my body a temple. He did not simply redeem my spirit, but He made my body a temple, and He says, “Walk as Jesus walked”.
What an amazing gift God has given me in making my body a temple. I can truly “lift holy hands in prayer”! I can do as scripture says and “touch no unclean thing”! My inner man is able to use my physical eyes and look through them unclouded free from the cataracts of sin! Oh, what a glory it is! What an inexpressible gift that my body is the Temple of the Living God and not merely a tent!