The doctrine of creation tells you what you are: A body/soul unity. God made the body of Adam from the dust of the ground. It was a biodegradable corpse, but then into this corpse, he breathed the breath of life. So the life of Adam is a body/soul union. 

There is a good, better, best pattern to the Christian life. To be in Christ is good. To be with Christ is better, better by far. But even for those who are with Christ now, the best is yet to be.

I want to encourage you as we look together at what the Bible has to say about the story of the body, starting at creation and culminating in the resurrection body. We are going to look at four doctrines that take us through this narrative and teach us the importance of the body.

Creation: God Made us Body and Soul

The LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (Genesis 2:7).

The doctrine of creation tells you what you are: A body/soul unity. God made the body of Adam from the dust of the ground. It was a biodegradable corpse, but then into this corpse, he breathed the breath of life. So the life of Adam is a body/soul union.

This is the reason that the Bible sometimes speaks about death as an “enemy,” or as the “last enemy.”  Because death is the undoing of our nature. It is the tearing apart of what God has joined together.

You have a cell phone. But if it is not connected to a network, it is no longer a phone. It cannot fulfill the function for which it was made. The same can be said for the network. The fact that there is a cellular network is of no value to you if you do not have a phone. It is the joining of the two together that makes this wonderful gift of telecommunication possible.

God created your body as much as he created your soul. All that God has created is good. That is why he will not scrap it and start again. What God has made, he will redeem, and that means your body as well as your soul.

Fall: Sin Ruined us Body and Soul

Our bodies, as we experience them, are very different from the bodies that Adam and Eve experienced as they were created by God in the garden. They had no aging, no disease, no pain, and no death. All of that came with the entrance of sin into the world.

Sin has afflicted every area of our lives. That would include tooth decay, cholesterol that goes up, energy that goes down, skin that sags, bones that ache, eyes that need glasses, and hearing that declines.

We live with the trials of chemical imbalances in the body, and hormones flying around out of control. On top of that, a multitude of diseases, maladies, and conditions that afflict various people at various times during the course of their lives.

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