Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." Luke24:39
In Graeco-Roman times, particularly under the the philosophical influence of Plato, the view was widely held that there was a qualitative divide between physical and spiritual. The body was seen as a prison for the soul and so the idea of a physical resurrection was unattractive to the thinkers of the day. (Have a look at Paul's Areopagus audience walking away when Paul mentions the resurrection in Acts 17.)
In the OT a much more integrated picture of reality emerges. Alan Hirsch notes that in the Pentateuch one verse will speak about approaching the temple while the next verse is about how to rescue your donkey that has fallen into a pit. In Old Testament thinking life is an integrated whole and all of life needs to be lived under God's rule.
The fact that Jesus has physically risen from the dead has profound implications for our theology and understanding of the Kingdom of God.
Yesterday I spoke of the division of sacred and secular and how this can lead us to be so heavenly minded that we can be of no earthly use. If Jesus rose physically then it means that our physical bodies matter. It means that it matters that we feed the hungry, that we clothe the naked. It means that I must look after my body and conserve creation, because although our bodies and creation are made new, we will still have them and the habits we learn now are the habits that we will take with us.
The early church was plagued by a heresy called Gnosticism, which, in one of its guises, suggested that because our bodies were temporary, Christians could do what they liked with their bodies (including sexual immorality and gluttony) because it didn't affect their spirits.
Recognising and embracing a physical resurrection (which the gnostics didn't) would make one think twice about these lifestyle choices.
In a nutshell then, Jesus' physical resurrection emphasises the redemption of ALL of life, not only a "spiritual" component. ALL of life has been bought back from the brokenness of sin. It's our job, then, to tackle hunger, pollution, addiction, abuse and all the things we might be tempted to avoid if we said "Oh but this physical stuff is only temporary!"
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Theo Groeneveld theo @ emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at emmdev[dot]blogspot[dot]com/
