Life to Your Mortal Bodies: Sermon on Romans 8:9-11

He didn't especially want to do it. But he knew he didn't have that much of a choice after all. The aging scholar stood in the study of the school he'd founded in Caesarea; scrolls and manuscripts piled around him, and his new stenographers sat nearby, waiting to take dictation. Origen was the leading Christian thinker of the mid-third century. No wonder he'd been chosen for such a thankless job. He'd been born and raised in Alexandria, the dazzling city above all Egypt; his father had been a literature professor who, as an outspoken believer, was beheaded in one of the persecutions. Origen made ends meet by getting a job in the church schools, and did his writing late at night. His genius proved itself.

It was in those early days as a young teacher that he'd managed to win back from heresy a wealthy young government official named Ambrose. Ah, Ambrose – it was his fault he had to do this now. Ambrose, now his patron and sponsor, was always commissioning one book after another, and pressed him into labor like the Egyptians did the Hebrews! “God's taskmaster,” Origen grumbled – feh! Well, in time, both of them left Alexandria – Ambrose retired as a deacon in Nicomedia, Origen went to the Holy Land – but Ambrose's money bankrolled this school Origen started there, so he had little choice but to heed his friend's requests.

Usually, Origen didn't much mind. He'd enjoyed writing the treatise on prayer, he'd had fun with commentaries, but this last project was another matter. A few years before Origen was born, an Alexandrian philosopher by the name of Celsus had written a scathing attack on Christianity – the most comprehensive one to date. The church had responded to this so-called True Word by saying... nothing. It had been ignored, but still had currency with leading pagans. It was a challenge no one had dared take up. Ambrose commissioned Origen to be the first to do it, over seventy years after its publication. Origen personally thought it better to let Celsus' book fade into obscurity, but he found its contents insulting enough to raise his ire, and Ambrose wouldn't let up 'til he followed through anyway, so... here he went. Origen gritted his teeth as he read.

Celsus had found a lot of things to criticize about the Christian faith, which he considered a dangerous and base superstition for unlettered simpletons, something no serious philosopher would ever take up. He slammed Jesus as a petty magician and fraud, invented contradictions left and right, sneered at fundamental truths, but the greatest target Celsus found was the Christians' hope for their future: this absurdity called bodily resurrection. Celsus found it nauseating. Celsus didn't get why Christians were so hung up on the body. It's irrational, he said, to be “so attached to the body” as to hope to get it back – after all, bodies are impure. It's absurd to, “on the one hand, make so much of the body as you do, to expect that the same body will rise again, as though it were the best and most precious part of us,” and yet on the other hand to willingly face martyrdom and torture that wrecks the body (C. Cels. 8.49).

Celsus fiercely lambasted the Christian idea as “absolutely the hope of worms.” After all, what other kind of creature would want a body back after it's been rotted? And what kind of body could be restored to its original condition after complete decay? The body at that point, Celsus thought, should just be tossed aside as “more worthless than dung,” being “full of things it isn't pretty to describe,” and no good and reasonable God would want anything to do with them. More than that, no good and reasonable God would act so “contrary to nature,” contrary to his own reason woven into the universe, as to reverse the natural process of decay he ordained. And surely no good and reasonable God would do a 'shameful' thing like giving everlasting life to a body (C. Cels. 5.14). The very idea is stupid and obscene!

That's what Origen heard as he read Celsus' book. Celsus had no room in his philosophy for resurrection of the body. Neither had many of the scoffers who'd faced Paul at Mars Hill. Neither did many of the other critics of Christianity in Origen's days and the centuries to come – they all focused in on this idea of bodily resurrection as a problem, as an absurdity. The path of least resistance would, of course, have been to say, “You're all so right, what a silly idea. There is no resurrection; when we die, our immortal souls just live forever in a celestial realm with God.” Which is what many professing Christians today believe, and what many pagans believed, but not, as it turns out, what the Bible teaches or what the Christians of Origen's day believed. So for all the pagan objections, still Christians gathered in catacombs, still Christians treated kindly the relics of martyrs, still Christians insisted that these very bodies were not bridges to be burned or temporary 'ornaments' for the soul, but crucial to God's plan for us – and for our future.

Where did they get ideas like that? How did early Greek- and Latin-speaking Christians get so out of step with sophisticated Greek and Roman culture? How have serious Christians today gotten so out of step with popular American culture? It was from reading passages like the one we read this morning, and many others. For the first generation of Christian writers, bearing witness of what they themselves had seen and heard, make clear that when God sent his Son into the world, it wasn't as a mirage but in a real human body, in real human flesh: “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” (1 John 4:2). The witnesses insisted that with their own hands they had touched the word of life (1 John 1:1-2). And so Jesus, the Christ, was really crucified and really died bodily – it was a real, tangible, material human body that died. And then, on the third day, “he was raised from the dead” (John 21:14). And what they meant was that his body – yes, the very same, numerically identical, material human body that had been pierced and scarred during the crucifixion – was restored to life – a new kind of life, but life all the same for that very same body of Jesus, so that Jesus was not playing pretend when he showed the disciples his mortal wounds, was not playing pretend when he ate supper with them, was not playing pretend when he let them touch him – it was the very same body.

Not everyone gets that. If Jehovah's Witnesses knock on your door, and you press them on the question, you'll find out they don't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. They don't believe in immaterial souls, so they think people are totally annihilated when they die. So when they talk about the 'resurrection' of Jesus, they think he was somehow re-created by God as an angel, and that what the disciples saw was not a real tangible human body at all, but a 'spirit being' in temporary human likeness. They say they believe in the 'resurrection,' but they don't believe in what the word actually means. They don't believe the body that was in the tomb was raised. But that's exactly what real Christians believe, because it's exactly what really happened that Sunday.

Celsus would scoff. He thought the report of Jesus alive again could be traced back to “a hysterical female” who shouldn't be believed and a bunch of liars who thought they'd impress their friends with the story (C. Cels. 2.55). But that doesn't hold water. Jesus is risen, Jesus is alive! And when we say that he's risen, what we mean is that he – body and spirit, the whole soul, the whole embodied human self – is alive in a real human body, numerically the same body that was born to Mary in Bethlehem, numerically the same body that touched the skin of lepers and the eyes of the blind and the tongues of the speechless, numerically the same body that broke the bread and passed the cup, numerically the same body that was pinned to the cross with Roman nails – yes, the same material human body is alive.

What happened? We read: “God raised him from the dead” (Acts 13:30). And that changes everything. God cannot be known the same way before and after he does something like that. For the people of Israel, when the God they knew did something so radical, it changed the way they talked about him. After the exodus, they had to talk about him in new ways: “Yahweh, your God, [who] brought you out of [Egypt] with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 5:15). And the same way, when we've looked at the cross and then looked to Jesus risen from the dead, we can't be content with the same way of understanding God. He's redefined himself by what he's done for and through and in Jesus. And now we understand him as a God of Resurrection. Now we know him as “the One who raised Jesus from the dead” – Paul repeats that title twice (Romans 8:11). Now, the first thing that should come to our mind when we pick out the real God from all the fakes and frauds is this: the real God is the one we can fairly call 'Jesus-Raiser.' That is the defining act of God in the world. That is who our God is: Jesus-Raiser, Christ-Raiser, God of Resurrection, “the One who raised Jesus from the dead.”

How? We hear a few things. “God raised the Lord … by his power” (1 Corinthians 6:14). “Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father” (Romans 6:5). And now we hear that the resurrection had a lot to do with the Holy Spirit: the Spirit is described in today's passage as the agency through which the Father raised the Son from the dead (Romans 8:9-11). And this same Spirit is active in believers. Paul does not say that the Spirit is active in believers who get it all right. Paul does not say that the Spirit is active in believers who do X and Y and Z. Paul does not say the Spirit is active in special elite 'super-Christians.' Paul says that the Spirit is for all Christians, all believers.

“Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ” – that is, God's Spirit, which is the same as Christ's Spirit, because the Son is one with the Father – “does not belong to him” (Romans 8:9). You cannot be in Christ without receiving the Spirit; nor can you receive the Spirit if you aren't in Christ. What follows is that, if you are a believer, the Spirit is in you – you don't have to doubt it! Paul writes elsewhere that “no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). If you can confess and submit to Jesus as Lord, if you can receive and believe the apostolic faith, it's because the Spirit of God is in you, making that possible. Without the Spirit, no one can confess him, belong to him, have their identity and their self wrapped up with him. No one without the Spirit can have their life “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).

What's more, it's true that our bodies are dead. Even now, before we die, there's something already dead about them – they're mortal, they're sickly, they're always slowly dying off. Why? Paul writes, “The body is dead because of sin” (Romans 8:10). That whole process is because of sin's infection, sin's grip, sin's diseasing and damning presence. That's the reason Paul had to lament that Israel, like everybody else in the world, lived in a “body of death” (Romans 7:24). “The wages of sin is death,” he said (Romans 3:23). Even James tells us, “Sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death” (James 1:15). But there's more to the story.

Paul goes on to write, “If Christ is in you..., the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Romans 8:10). That is, if you are connected to Jesus, it happened through the Spirit. If Christ is present in your existence, that means the Spirit is in you, is in your very body, owing to the righteousness and faithfulness of Jesus. And the Spirit of God is no lifeless thing, no tame thing! The Spirit of God is lively! The Spirit of God is exciting! The Spirit of God is wild! The Spirit of God fell with tongues of fire (Acts 2:3-4)! The Spirit goes wherever the Spirit wants – beyond our prediction, beyond our expectation, beyond our control – “the Spirit blows where he wishes, and you hear his sound, but you don't know where he comes from or where he's going” (John 3:8). Don't be fooled by the Spirit's tendency to whisper, because the Spirit is alive, the Spirit is lively, the Spirit is life in you.

And if the Spirit is life in you, if the Spirit is in your body, that changes everything about what you should expect – not just during the dash on your tombstone, but whether your tombstone is a permanent record to begin with. The trouble is, our pop theology falls so short of the biblical vision. Let's face it, what do we usually expect? How does that song go? “When we all get to heaven, / what a day of rejoicing that will be...” Except, the Bible says very little about Christians 'going to heaven when they die.' Oh, there are hints here and there about that, but the immediate fate of believers who are 'absent from the body' just doesn't interest the prophets and apostles very much. The focus isn't on life after death, but more on what one theologian nicknamed “life after life after death.” So why does our pop theology, why does our folk belief, focus so much on what the Bible is mostly silent on, and ignore so much of what the Bible screams?

The focus of the Christian hope is not about 'going to heaven when we die.' The focus of the Christian hope is about what happens after that. Paul didn't entirely look forward to 'going to heaven' – sure, he looked forward to being in the Lord's presence, but being “away from the body” would be like being “unclothed,” like being “found naked,” he lamented (2 Corinthians 5:3-8). The real good stuff, the best stuff, happens when we don't have to choose between being “at home in the body” and “at home with the Lord” – the day will come, Paul tells us, when we get both. To be at home in the body and with the Lord – that's the goal of resurrection. That's what we're ready for, what we're waiting for.

If God were to snatch our souls to heaven, and let that be the end of the story, it would mean that death has won. It would mean that either God switched to Plan B and settled for that, or that this whole good creation was just a weird tangent in the first place. And God refuses to endorse that kind of nonsense. God's aim has always been, and still is, embodied humans living in his presence in a good creation. God has not changed his mind. And the resurrection of Jesus is a promise that he never will.

And so Paul can write about how important our bodies are. It matters what we do with them. Some people in first-century Corinth thought it didn't matter what we did with our bodies, that everything was okay, that they didn't much count. Paul shoots back, “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Corinthians 6:13). Our bodies were meant to be devoted to Jesus, to be in his power, under his Lordship. But more startling is Paul's message that the Lord is 'for the body' – he came exactly to redeem our bodies, not just our inner selves or 'souls.' The Lord became human for our bodies. Paul goes on to say, “God raised the Lord” – bodily – “and will also raise us up” – again, bodily – “by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members,” body parts, “of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 6:14-15). “So,” Paul concludes, “glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20) – because our bodies matter to God, and even when the body dies because of sin, God isn't finished with it. Not a chance.

That's why Paul talks about the hope we actually have – not the hope of escaping the body, which Celsus could have swallowed, but the hope of the body being redeemed and restored in resurrection. At some point in the future, at the return of Christ, the cemetery outside this church building will become a very exciting place. I'd buy tickets to see that! It will be an exciting place, because when “the Lord himself will descend from heaven,” then “the dead in Christ will rise” to meet him and welcome him in (1 Thessalonians 4:16). The dead in Christ in this cemetery will get up alive out of the ground, out of their graves, better than ever!

That's what we're looking for. “We await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Philippians 3:20-21). The same 'lowly body' that we walk around in now, will be transformed; it will be changed. It will be numerically identical – the same body – but in the same way that a seed is numerically identical with the tree that grows from it. The tree and the seed it sprouted from are two stages of the same thing, but very different in character. Just so, “what you sow is not the body that is to be,” not in quality, but “a bare kernel” compared to what the body will be like in resurrection glory (1 Corinthians 15:37). Living here and now, our bodies are lowly – they're perishable, dishonorable, weak, and powered by the human soul – but when raised, they'll be imperishable, glorious, powerful, and powered by God's Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). We'll have the best of both worlds – at home in an imperishable body and with an undying Lord, whom we can see and know face-to-face – the very face you have, and the very face he has.

And the reason you can have that hope is because “the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:10-11). That's such an exciting thought! God, the same God of Resurrection who raised Jesus Christ to a new kind of bodily life, will do the exact same thing for you – because what God does for Christ is what God has in store for all whom Christ stands for, all who are tied to him by the Spirit.

And so God will “give life to your mortal bodies” (Romans 8:11). Did you get that? The very same body, the very same material, human body that walked in here this morning, the very same mortal body whose mortal hand shook the mortal hand of a friend you saw here last Sunday with your mortal eyes – that's the very same mortal body, with mortal hand and mortal eyes, to which God will give resurrection life as an immortal body with immortal hands and immortal eyes! There's no getting around it, there's no fair way to twist and contort this scripture to say anything less.

Maybe, during the last year, last few years, last decade or so, you had to lay a spouse or a parent or a child or a friend to rest. They believed, they trusted in Jesus, they had the Spirit of God at work in their life, but then their body died. You comfort yourself that they're with the Lord in heaven. That's true – Jesus said we could be with him where he's going, because his Father's house there has many hotel rooms to spend the night (John 14:2-3). But it gets so much better. It gets better because God has promised to give life to their mortal body! Heaven isn't where they get glorified; body and spirit will be glorified together, right back here, at the return of Christ!

Those hands you held – you'll hold them again! Those eyes you gazed into – you'll gaze into them again! Those vocal cords that made the voice you loved to hear – they'll vibrate again, you'll hear it again! That brain's synapses will fire again, those lungs will breathe again, that skin will be warm to the touch again. And there will then be no more Alzheimer's, no more Parkinson's, no more cardiac disease, no more cerebral palsy. That's a big promise! But it's God's promise, to “give life to [their] mortal bodies.” God is not done with them.

Nor is God done with you. Unless Jesus comes back first, each one of us will one day take a leave of absence from these bodies. And these bodies will either, like the early Jews and Christians did, be buried in the earth, or, like their pagan neighbors did, be cremated. In either case, if the Spirit of God dwelled in your body, the Spirit of God is not done with your body. And no matter what sicknesses your body suffered from, no matter what aches and pains your body had, no matter how you die or how your body is handled once you've set it aside, God is not done with it, and neither are you. He will give life to your mortal body.

Your tombstone will not be your permanent record. Your body will be alive a lot longer than it'll be dead. Your tombstone will mark a temporary blip, a brief hiatus or pause in your life. If I get struck by lightning this afternoon, the dates on my tombstone should not just read “1988 – 2018,” as if that's the whole story. There should be a comma, followed by “Christ's Return – Infinity.” That would be the whole story for this body of mine. And the same will be true for you. That's what you can count on. And whatever aches, whatever hurts, whatever doesn't work right now, whatever's subject to death and weakness now, will be life and health and glory and power in the resurrection! You can bank on that!

It may sound crazy, but the best days for your body are the ones ahead of you, not the ones behind you. Even on the day they lower your casket in the ground, even a century later, the best days for that body and for you as an embodied human person are the ones ahead, not the ones behind. Celsus would call that crazy, insane, stupid – and Celsus would be wrong! Because Celsus didn't account for God's Spirit. Celsus thought things could be boxed up in nature as he knew it. But God's Spirit blows wherever it wishes (John 3:8). Celsus thought our bodies were worthless. But God not only made them for a reason, he put his Spirit in them for a reason. Celsus thought our bodies would be too impure and weak to make a permanent home. He didn't count on, he forgot to read about, how they'll be raised incorruptible, immortal, imperishable, raised in glory and power, governed by the Spirit in place of the old rulebook. And what's beyond the power of nature to achieve is hardly out of the reach of God's “mighty hand and outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 21:5) – because this God is the God of Exodus, this God is the God of Redemption, this God is the God of Resurrection, this God has a Spirit of Life to give!

This really is our hope in Jesus Christ. Our hope is not to fly away to the sweet by-and-by, way beyond the blue. That's cheap. Our hope is so much better, so much brighter, so much fuller. Our hope is for the Spirit to give life to these very same now-mortal bodies and, in raising them up, to make them as new and powerful and glorious as the one Jesus will have forever. And then, being at home both in the restored body and with our embodied Lord Jesus, we'll really have a home for good – all of us, body and spirit. It isn't a prison; it's home.

So however much the specifics weren't clear to him, Origen couldn't, wouldn't be cowed by Celsus' invective and sneering mockery. Origen refused to give up this hope for his martyred dad, or himself, or any other Spirit-indwelt believer. And neither should we. When Origen answered Celsus, he stuck by the same thing he wrote when he commented on today's passage: that real believers, Christ's people, “know that they are going to be made alive and resurrected from the dead in the likeness of Christ through the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead in a similar manner … For if the Spirit of Christ dwells in you, it seems necessary that to the Spirit his own dwelling-place should be given back and the temple restored” (Commentary on Romans 6.13.6).

Like Paul said, “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God” (1 Corinthians 6:19). And that Spirit is wild, that Spirit is burning, that Spirit is life – life now and life for his temple forever! So the Christ-raising God will indeed “give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you,” in the temple he's building from you (Romans 8:11). That's when we'll “sing and shout the victory!” Yield today to the wild Spirit of God, yield today to the life-giving Spirit of Christ, yield today to the unpredictable and untameable Holy Spirit, and remember that, because he claimed you (body and spirit), no funeral can ever say he's done with you (body and spirit)! Remember your hope of resurrection, look to the risen “man Christ Jesus” in his glorified body (1 Timothy 2:5), and look forward to being like him (1 John 3:2) – at home!