R.C. Sproul

That does not mean that we are saying I believe in the resurrection of the body of Jesus.

That's also in the creed.

I mean, the church does believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus, but what that phrase, I believe in the resurrection of the body, points to is the church's confession that we believe that our bodies will be raised.

In other words, at the heart of Judeo-Christian theology is a notion that when God creates man, He creates him soul and body, and when He redeems man, He redeems him soul and body.

There's a tremendous amount of literature in the Bible that is devoted to concerns to man's physical welfare.

Now I stress that because there's been enormous influence in the history of Christianity where alien strands of thought have invaded the church and have tried to communicate the idea that there's something evil about anything physical.

and that it's somehow beneath the dignity of God or of Christian religion to be concerned about man's material welfare.

But the Jesus who walked along the shores of Galilee and was clothed in a human body was very much concerned about people who were hungry being fed, and people who were without shelter being covered, and people who were thirsty being given to drink.

Yes, he was concerned about their eternal souls.

but He was also concerned about their bodies.

And so from beginning to end, we see that to be a creature in the image of God is to have our bodies included in it, because for me to conform to the will of God and to display His character, His holiness, requires that my body is involved in this process.

I mean, there have been people who say, if I say my prayers and maintain a contemplative dimension in my life for six hours a day, I can do anything with my body the rest of the day because who cares?

All God cares about is the soul.

You can't even a cursory reading of the New Testament sees that so much of the law of God is directed to how we use our bodies.

And so even though God does not have a body, and our bodies are not part of the image in the sense that we are revealing to the world that God is physical, but because what it means to be in the image of God ultimately is to mirror and reflect the character of God, we do that mirroring, we do that reflecting,

We do the works of obedience with our bodies as well as our souls.

So in that dimension, the body is an integral part of what it means to be in the image of God.

Now, what happens historically so often is that the physical suffers a severe devaluation among religious people.

One of the most ancient of heresies, which antedated Christianity, of course, came in through Manichaeism and through various forms of Oriental thought, Oriental dualism, and even Plato, Plato's concept of the Greeks.

Plato, for example, developed a philosophy called the theory of ideas.