Resurrection of the Body

By Fred Pruitt

Note: A brother wrote me recently regarding our physical bodies. I am surprised to find myself writing about some of these things lately, since in some sense they belong to the issues of Hebrews 6: 1-2, the elementary things. However, it is good sometimes to go over these elementary things as our sure foundation, because the clearer we are in our foundation, the more certain our house. Here is the somewhat edited exchange.

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Hi Fred,
I guess I’ll get to see you soon in Louisville? its getting very close now…
Just I got a question from an encounter I had recently, someone asked me why does the scripture say our bodies will be saved in the future,the main point from a union life stance is if our bodies are neutral vessels with no nature or power of its own, what are they being saved from?
It stumped me I just said I don’t know the answer,I thought maybe you could shed some light on it?
Regards ________

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Dear ____________,

It is very good to hear from you. I have been wondering how you have been doing. We are looking forward to seeing you again and all the rest in Louisville. It escapes my memory if I’ve ever heard that term, “saving the body, in relation to our salvation.” I’m not sure what he meant by that. Did he attach some scripture passage to it?

He may have meant the new bodies we inherit in the resurrection. As I understand it, this mortal body in which we live is born of the flesh and has a beginning and an end in this temporal world. It is not an imperishible body, and Paul says when we shed this body we have a new house, out of the heavens, as our body. This is mysterious to me. I imagine things about it, and we get a glimpse or two, but this is not something we can anticipate, since we are speaking of things, “exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think.” How could we then describe such a thing?

As for this one now, Paul says it is decaying, while the inward man is growing, but the Spirit quickens these mortal bodies. I think “quicken” means some sort of divine jolt maybe, and he keeps us going past if necessary the strengths of our bodies, since this is now His house in this world so He keeps it going until its course is run.

Always GLAD to hear from you,

fred

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Hi Fred,

Thanks for your reply its great to hear from you too…

Yes I should have sent you the scripture that was used, Romans 8v10 where it says our bodies are dead because of sin, and then 8v23  says our bodies will be redeemed in the future. His point is do you see our bodies are guilty that’s why they need to be saved…

I feel like its pointless anyway because all we can do is totally trust the Lord for total redemption, but just I’d like to hear how you understand those words in Romans 8?

Regards

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What I wrote you previously is based on Rom 8:10 and 8:23. Our bodies aren’t “saved” in the sense you are thinking, and I don’t know what that other person is meaning. Our bodies are just a shell, a house where we live.

In this life, this body is of this earth, earthly, and subject to the things of the earth. Before the fall some speculate that our bodies were of a different quality then, that even though they were born “naked,” still there was nothing in Paradise that could harm them. They had nothing to fear. They couldn’t stump their toes, fall off a cliff into a river, couldn’t break their bones, couldn’t feel either the ravages of heat nor the frigidness of cold. In other words, their bodies were impervious to the elements and the things of the world, because they were living in or surrounded by the Spirit Who protected them in their innocence.

But after the Fall our bodies lost that quality, and fell completely into this creation. In almost all ways our bodies were no different from the animals, except for this: every animal on earth is born with some “protection,” something built into their bodies that provides them protections of sorts from other animals or the elements – camouflage, thick fur, the ability to fly or run like the wind.

Man’s body has fewer of those natural protections, so whereas when they were “naked” in Paradise they were not even aware of it. (I think it was something other than just mere physical nakedness [see scriptures below]). But after they took the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they became self-aware of their “nakedness” (i.e., no longer “clothed upon” by the Spirit). And they found  lacked some basic protections against the elements that all the animals are born with. Therefore, the Lord God gave them “animal skins” to clothe them and provide what little protection they had.

(This is an aside, just a way to look at it for me, but I have to also mention here this. I had always seen a picture in my mind of Adam and Eve in kind of cave-man clothes, various animal skins draped about them. But one day it grew in me deeper than that. Paul below talks about not being naked. So Adam and Eve found themselves naked. Physically? I think not. At least not at first. They had been clothed with Spirit, manifesting perfectly in their perfect flesh in complete harmony, but now were clothed with flesh only and all the harmony died. When they left the Garden to go out into the world, they were no longer naked. They were clothed, in animal skins. The skins we’re in now.)

So, except for our minds, we were born the weakest animals on the planet, physically, and had to use our wits to keep ourselves alive. What is happening now is this: the creation of which our bodies are now part, is being replaced by the new creation, though we do not yet see all of it.

Therefore, we recognize that this “mortal” body in which we live, because of the curse of “sin” which affected the body and made it mortal and susceptible to the elements, bacteria, etc., this body cannot go into the new creation. It has to either be cast off in death, rot and putrify as all bodies do, or “changed” somehow from this “vile” body as Paul calls it,

“For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:

Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.” (Phil 3:20,21)

So the body is not “saved,” but “changed,” in the Resurrection. The body has no independent life of its own, as you said. It works after the fashion of the spirit who indwells it. The devil used to own us and use our bodies. Now Christ has come and replaced him as owner and new operator. This has come about fully in our spirits, and works perfectly through this current “weak” vessel of soul and body, using our faculties formerly dominated by Satan, i.e., but now under new management. When you received Christ you also brought your physical body along with you, and in that sense it was “saved” as your house to live in while still in this world. God does not promise that body immortality, but that He quickens it, i.e., gives it extra jolts of spirit life, to accomplish the tasks He gives us.

Listen to what Paul says about it:

“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven:

If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.

For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.

Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.

Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:

(For we walk by faith, not by sight:)

We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” (2 Cor 5:1-8)

Now Paul got along right well in the body during his day. But at some point it gets used up; it’s the way of the mortal body. Paul says we “spend and are spent” for you. He’s all out. Nothing left at the end. It’s all gone and used up in the glory of God. Therefore, this is a wonderful body in the hands of the Lord, despite its fleshly shortcomings, and He uses it completely and purposely for His glory and ours in any condition the body may be in.

This is the secret of the saints. To understand that in weakness are we strong. Whether vital and energetic, or weak and bedridden, what is that to the Lord? It is the same Lord in all.

Those who cannot see Him in mighty power in the weak and helpless who nonetheless speak the words of God, are not likely to see Him as He is in the victorious and strong. Until we see Him All in all, we are unable to fully see Him in ourselves. And when we see Him All in all IN us, we see Him All in all in all. We miss half (and the very important half) of God, if we exclude all “negative” things (as perceived by the minds of men) as being purposed by the Lord. It is not the physical at all, but the Spirit in the physical! To not see that God could appear in sickness or depression, adverse circumstances, etc., is to not be empty before the Lord, but instead to say, “Lord, I’ll believe it is You when You send the good things, but cannot believe it is You if it is something that appears ‘bad’.” Therefore, we have given conditions to the Lord in our faith, and according to our faith, so it is.

Nevertheless, we do not live there, since we now know we live as expressions of Him, we live by His Life, and not our “separate” own life, and we have and live from the mind of Christ, expressing through our human agencies in word and deed. We do see God in Christ, All and in all, so then we come down to a trust of the Spirit’s usage of every part of ourselves. “We are dead, and our life is hid in Christ in God,” and that is the life we now live. Our bodies as well as our whole selves are no longer our own, but were bought with the price of the precious blood and broken body of Jesus. Now as this is the eternal case, the life we now live in the flesh (in our mortal bodies) we live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved us, and gave Himself for us.

So that’s it. Yes, there will be a new body. It is part of the package. But since while on this side we cannot have a clear view exactly what that means, what we do know today is that this mortal body is more than enough and a perfectly fitted vessel to carry the Water of Life around, watering wherever we go in our bodies.

Whatever that brother meant, I think as you concluded, we still live in the daily realm of “I, yet not I, but Christ,” and He only leads and guides and walks in us in His own way, which has now become ours, spirit, soul, AND body. Right now, today, in this mortal body, which carries around in it the “dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus would be manifest in our mortal flesh.”

As in all things in Christ, it’s win-win. Win “now” because He is the Perfect One perfectly using our perfectly prepared vessels of spirit, soul and body in this current world, and it is “win later” because the “yet to come” is past understanding.

But in the moment we are content to be in the body, because it is beneficial to those who are ours by the Spirit’s heart.

Let me know how that sits with you.

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Fred,

Yes I like what you’ve wrote, and I’m glad I asked because your response has expanded my understanding of something that has always being mysterious topic for me….

Kind Regards ______