I want to do something different with our time together this morning before we move into the next chapter of Genesis. There's one aspect of God's creation of mankind that hasn't really come up to this point. And what I want to talk about is what it means that God created man to be body and soul. There's a lot of bad theology out there on this topic. And I want to begin by asking you a question. How many of you have heard the following quote? Man does not have a soul, he is a soul. He has a body. Let me say that again. Man doesn't have a soul, he is a soul. Man has a body. Now, think for a minute. Is this what the Bible actually teaches? Is it true that we are really spirits who only temporarily inhabit a body? Is that right? Is the body only a shell for what really matters? The spirit? How about this quote? Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. Now, if you're a nerd like me, you know this is from Star Wars. And it reflects the mystical worldview of the Star Wars universe. Now, is the worldview of Star Wars the worldview of the Bible? No, and yet the earlier quote has more in common with the wisdom of Yoda than it does the wisdom of Jesus. However, I dare say that the vast majority of American Christians would agree with this idea. At the very least, like most Americans, we believe that the real you is the internal you, the internal subjective self. Additionally, Christians tend to believe that our bodies are fundamentally icky and corrupt, and we can't wait to get rid of them. They're the source of sin, after all, aren't they? As a result, many of us don't see the value of the body in general, and in particular, we really don't see the point of the resurrection, the resurrection of this body. Now on this last issue, I am going to point the finger at my fellow preachers who get their theology of the body wrong, and this is especially true when it comes to funerals. They talk about Christians becoming angels when they die. Or they suggest that Christians who die are already walking in their new body in heaven. These two things simply aren't true. You don't become angels when you die because an angel is a different kind of creature. Neither do you immediately get your new body. What the Bible teaches is that after death, you are a disembodied soul, a ghost. People who die become ghosts, and that idea is more right than it's wrong. Now, we could go a lot of wrong places from there, but that core idea is more right than it's wrong. Most tragically, you don't hear much about the resurrection at Christian funerals. At Christian funerals, pastors are so focused on providing immediate comfort that they miss God's ultimate comfort. They're focused so much on providing comfort in the fact that we go to heaven when we die, that we fail to mention the resurrection. Next funeral you go to, I want you to pay attention to whether the preacher says two things. See if he mentions Christ's resurrection from the dead at all, and see if he mentions the deceased's resurrection from the dead at all. So as a corrective to pervasive misunderstandings of the relation and the importance of body and soul, I want to address the importance of both body and soul today. Our three points will be as followed. First, God designed us to be body and soul. Second, sin affects body and soul. And third, Jesus redeems body and soul. So first, God designed us to be body and soul. And here we return to Genesis chapter two, verse seven, which I will read. Then the Lord God formed the man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." In this verse, Genesis tells us that God created man with a basic twofold nature, a twofold distinction. God creates man out of the basic stuff of the earth, literally the dirt and he fills that with the stuff of heaven, with the breath of God. He makes Adam's body out of dirt and he fills that body with a soul by breathing life into him. Man and man alone is created this way. Out of all the creatures of God's creation in heaven and on earth. Only man receives the breath of God from his very lips. Victor Hamilton notes, the Hebrew word used for the breath of life is never used of animals in the Bible. It is man and man alone who is recipient of the divine breath. Now divinely formed and inspired, he is a living person. Until God breathes into him, man is a lifeless corpse. Thus, people are not first souls who then inhabit a body. This isn't the Pixar movie Soul here, right, where souls are up there waiting for their body. No. Adam was a pile of dust until the breath of life filled his lungs. Likewise, neither are people reducible to their bodies because without the soul, without the breath of life, man lies dead. And so the body and soul belong together from the very start to the very end. The manner of Adam's special creation also speaks volumes about man's purpose on the earth. We think here of Genesis 1, 26-27, God made man in his own image, male and female he created them. He said, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and have dominion over the creatures. God created mankind in his own image as a combination of the dust of earth and the breath of heaven. And as such, man was made to be something of a bridge between the material and spiritual realms, to inhabit both the realm of God and the realm of creation. He was to be the image of God before all the earth, And he was to be the image of the earth before God. Adam's very name means ground. It means earth. None of the angels were created from the stuff of the earth. Their bodies are heavenly bodies, spiritual bodies, pure and simple. Now, I think angels and devils do have a form of physicality. To say that angels are spiritual beings or heavenly beings does not mean that they are intangible or immaterial. To say that they don't take up space or have the ability to physically interact with the material universe. However, angels and the devil are not made out of the stuff of earth. They're not made out of dirt. They're made of different stuff, heavenly stuff. Likewise, none of the animals are filled with the stuff of heaven. Man alone of all the earthly creatures was created with the life of God within him. And as a result, man alone of all creatures on earth has the ability to love God, to converse with God, to talk with God, to worship God. As we sing in the song, it's your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise to you only. So when Scripture speaks of man's basic constitution, it speaks of mankind having a basic twofold makeup that's essentially and vitally one. It's less accurate to speak of man having a body and soul than it is to speak of man being an embodied soul or an ensouled body. Our body and soul are intimately connected. They're interlocked and they belong together. To have one without the other is to be dead. And importantly, they are both very good. It is in our body and soul together that we are commissioned, that Adam and Eve were commissioned in the garden to serve God, to represent God, and to glorify God. And we don't stop being God's image in body and soul when we become sinners. Now before we move to the next point, I need to speak to the mistaken idea that man has a threefold constitution of body, soul, and spirit. And I won't go into all the details of that position and where it comes from and who believes it. As we examine Scripture's use of the words soul and spirit, we realize they are synonyms. They're used to refer to the same thing, the internal nature of man, from two perspectives. I'll let theologian H.D. MacDonald explain it for me. He says, in the New Testament, both terms spirit and soul refer to man's inner nature over against the flesh or body, which refers to the outer aspect of man as existing in space and time. Spirit denotes life as having its origin in God, who is spirit. And soul denotes that same life as constituted in man as a creature. Spirit is the inner depth of man's being, the higher aspect of his personality. Soul expresses man's own special and distinctive individuality. The pneuma is man's non-material nature looking Godward. The psyche is that same nature of man looking earthward. Again, that's to say, soul and spirit are fundamentally two ways of talking about the same thing, not two different things. They refer to man's innermost element that connects him to God and to the spiritual realm. So God designed us to be body and soul. Second point, sin affects body and soul. As we've seen in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve's rebellious choice to eat the forbidden fruit immediately impacted the entirety of their existence. They died immediately upon disobeying God, yes? I've been trying to prove that point. They died immediately upon disobeying God. That is to say they died spiritually because clearly they didn't die physically. They became aware that they were naked. They grew ashamed and afraid of God and before one another. And that was the moment their spirits died. That doesn't mean their spirits stopped existing, does it? What we call, lost my place. Now, dead souls, dead spirits, are how and why we are born dead in our trespasses and sins. Likewise, in the curse and exile, Adam was condemned to a shortened existence. His body would also die, it would return to the dust. What we call death then is the separation of the soul from the body. Biblically speaking, death does not mean the cessation of conscious existence. Again, when Adam and Eve died in the garden, their souls didn't disappear, didn't decay. Otherwise, how can the soul or the spirit be dead? No, biblical death means the separation of the person from God who is life. I'll say that again. In God's eyes, death is the separation of the person from himself. Death is the separation of the person from God who is life. This deeper death, the separation of our life from God, then issues into another separation, the separation of the body and soul from one another. This is what we call death. What God has put together gets torn asunder when it's separated from God. Now we must recognize that when a person is dead, dies, both parts of that person are properly dead too. Let me explain by asking you a question. When a person dies and their body lies in the casket, is that body, is their body still that person? Is that your husband, your grandfather, your wife, your mother lying in the casket before you? Yes, it is. That corpse is the person you knew. They are dead. Don't let people give you false comfort by saying, that's not them anymore, they're in heaven. You tell them not to cheapen your grief, because that is them. and they are dead, and it hurts. Okay, how about their soul? Does the soul live on after death? Well, if we mean does the soul continue its existence after death, then the answer is yes. Yes, the soul continues on. The soul is immortal in the way that the body is not. But is a ghost truly alive? If we are disembodied spirits, are we alive? No. If our soul is not inhabiting our body, we're dead. Now, Christians who die are alive in the sense that our souls are in the presence of Christ. Our soul is connected to Christ, who is our life. But then the body of the believer is still united to Christ too. It awaits the resurrection of the body in and with Christ. This is why the New Testament speaks of believers being asleep, not really dead. However, in terms of ordinary mortality, the ordinary way we talk about general life after death, the soul of a person, if it's not in a body, that soul is a dead person. As long as the body and soul are divided, the whole person is dead. However, sin's effect on the body does not merely have to do with the experience of death or the soul. It also reveals itself in the corruption of the whole person. When scripture speaks of the constitutive elements of mankind with respect to our sin nature, it is vital that we recognize that the body itself is never identified with sin. The body itself is never identified with sin. The body is not evil. Rather, the body is corrupted by sin, and so is the soul. For instance, when Paul speaks of the body as corrupted by sin and producing corruption in our lives, he doesn't use the word body generally. He uses the word flesh. He talks of the sinful flesh and how we can present our bodies as instruments of sin. Likewise, when the Scripture speaks of the soul, the spirit as corrupted in sin and producing corruption in our lives, it refers not to the soul or the spirit per se, but to the heart. Sin is something separate from the body and from the soul, yet it reigns in the heart and in the flesh of those who are outside of Christ. Consider these passages that talk about the corruption of our body or our flesh. These are all Paul, Romans 6, 12 through 13. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body. to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. Galatians 5, 17 through 21, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you wanted to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. Ephesians 2, one through three. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. And we were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. Note in these passages that the corrupt body, the sinful flesh, is a willing instrument for sinful lusts and desires. On this side of the Garden of Eden, we are physically, even biochemically, predisposed and driven to engage in sinful activities with our bodies. There are material, biochemical reasons that people commit sexual sins. That people have short tempers and are murderous. That people get addicted to this substance or that drink. The body itself is corrupt and prone to sin. Not because the body is bad, but because that's what the fall has done to us in our bodies. Likewise, Scripture has this to say about the soul, the spirit, the heart. And it's important to recognize that The word heart in scripture rarely refers to the pumping organ in our chest. It refers to the internal core of who a person is. And in the Psalms, there are plenty of places that put heart and soul, heart and spirit in parallel. So create in me a new heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. David's saying it's the same thing. So then Genesis 6-5 says, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Matthew 12, 34 and 35, Jesus says, you brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. He says in Mark 7, 18 through 23, do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach and is expelled? And he said, what comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and they defile a person. Romans 2, 5, because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. It's important to see in the New Testament that while the sinful flesh is what executes our sinful desires and there are physical drives that lead us into sin, the sinful desires themselves begin in the heart and the soul. They begin with who we are on the inside, not on the outside. The very activities that Paul calls the works of the flesh, Jesus describes as coming from the heart of man, coming from within. And so, sin flows not from the body, sin flows from the heart, from the sinful soul making the body a willing instrument of sin. Thus for the unregenerate, The person who's not born again, the soul is just as much a problem as is the body. It's the source of the problem. Sin reigns in both. Consequently, both need to be redeemed or both will be judged. That brings us to the third point. Jesus redeems both body and soul. Since God created mankind to worship Him and serve Him as a wholly integrated human being made of body and soul, and since both body and soul are corrupted by sin and dead in sin, it therefore follows that in redemption, God is committed to the redemption not only of the soul, but also of the body. This is precisely what we find in the gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord. In particular, we find God's redemptive purposes for our bodies and souls both revealed in Christ's incarnation and in his resurrection. Let's talk about Christ's incarnation. We confess that when Jesus was incarnated in the womb of the Virgin Mary, Jesus took to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul. His divine spiritual essence, the Spirit of the Son of God, didn't take the place of the human soul in Jesus. Jesus had a real human soul. The Son of God added to himself a full, true human nature as an embodied soul, soul and body properly conjoined. Likewise, Jesus's body didn't just appear to be human, didn't appear to be physical. Jesus really was human and physical. His body was and is made of the same stuff that you and I are, matter, cells, DNA. And if you deny that idea, if you deny the idea that Jesus Christ came in real human flesh, then the Apostle John says that you are fundamentally an antichrist. So yes, this is important. Here's the proof from the New Testament that Jesus Christ came as a true embodied human being. John 1.14, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Colossians 2.9, for in him the whole fullness of God dwells bodily. 1 Peter 2.24, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. Hebrews 10.10, and by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. 1 John 4, 2 and 3, by this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. Now think for a minute. Think for a minute just how important the doctrine of the incarnation makes your body. Jesus himself, the son of God who lived in perfection in heaven, in pure spiritual essence and ecstasy, he was willing to take to himself a real mortal human body with real mortal limitations like yours and like mine. Why? What does that say about the importance of the body? Is God concerned about you in your body? Now let's talk about the resurrection. When Jesus Christ died, He didn't remain dead, did He? Did Jesus stay dead? No. He was raised from the dead. Now, if the body were unimportant to God's purposes, if the body were a prison for the soul, then even if Jesus came in the flesh, why would he come back to a body? If the goal is to be disembodied, if the goal is to be spiritually one with God, why would Jesus re-inhabit the same body he died in? But that's precisely what happened. If the incarnation were not proof enough that our physical nature is just as important as our spiritual nature, the resurrection puts the nail in that coffin. In fact, the resurrection of Christ Jesus and our own resurrection is so important to the Christian faith that without it, the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. 1 Corinthians 15, 12 through 22 says, now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? And here he's talking about no resurrection of the dead for you and me. If we say there's no need for you and me to be raised from the dead, how can we say that Jesus is raised from the dead? He continues, but if there's no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it's true that the dead aren't raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ, he means dead, but note he doesn't say dead, he said fallen asleep in Christ, they've perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. And the privilege of singing in Handel's Messiah while I was in college, the whole thing through. And one of my favorite there is just the, There's this very mournful, as in all, Adam all die, period, where you just, it's just very minor key, very low, and then you get to the even so in Christ, shall all be made alive, even so in Christ, shall all be made alive, even so in Christ, shall all be made alive. And it's beautiful. Here's the main point of my sermon, my friends. Our bodies are redeemed by and will be redeemed by the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in his body. Therefore, the body is just as important to God's purposes as is your soul. Consequently, as the work of Jesus is applied to the believer, At the moment of regeneration, their heart is given new life. The soul is reconnected to the life of God and the spirit becomes alive with Christ. The soul is resurrected by being born again. However, the body is still dead because of sin. The regenerate soul for the believer, the life-filled soul is conjoined to a corrupt flesh, a sinful flesh. This is why there's a conflict in the Christian life between the flesh and the spirit, between the external man and the internal man, between the old man and the new man. The body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. The Christian's walk then comes to reflect the words of Jesus to his sleeping disciples. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And this conflict will remain with us until Christ Jesus returns and resurrects these mortal sinful bodies into immortal, holy, heavenly bodies. In the meantime, we must commit ourselves to the process of sanctification in body and soul. Second Corinthians 7.1 says, since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. Hebrews 10.21 says, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Romans 8, 12 and 13 says, so then brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. Romans 6, 17, and 18. But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. Romans 12, one and two. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God. to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Indeed, just as sin has corrupted both body and soul, We see that in Christ, both body and soul are capable of serving and glorifying God. Indeed, for you, Christian, locus number one, site number one where you worship and serve and glorify God is in and with your body. If you're not worshiping and serving and glorifying God in and with your body, it doesn't matter where else you're doing it. The body is not ancillary to our worship. It doesn't take a back seat. It is the prime instrument in which we worship and glorify God. And this is where we'll conclude things. Because it's vitally important that you understand, my friends, that what you do with your body matters. If you are in Christ Jesus, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. It is the prime location in which you worship and serve God so much so that you are commanded to glorify God in your body because you were bought with a price. This has great consequences for every element of life. It has consequences for what you do with your body when you die. It has consequences for the question of tattoos and piercings. It has consequences for your sexuality. It has consequences for how you eat and how you exercise and what you put into your body for fun. It has consequences for the topics of abortion and euthanasia and homosexuality and issues of transgenderism and transsexuality. It has consequences for how we treat other people. In short, your relations with your body and with your soul matters very much to God. Likewise, your relationships with the bodies and souls of the people around you matter very much to God. If you're not willing to admit and address the ways in which you sin against your own body and in which you sin against the bodies of others, then you're not following Christ in a holistic manner. Neither are you following Christ fully if you do not think about caring for your own soul and the souls of those around you. It is the whole person for whom Christ died, not just one part of you. Thank you for listening to this sermon from River Community Church in Prairieville, Louisiana, where you will always find biblical preaching, meaningful worship, and the equipping of disciples. For more information on River Community Church and its ministries, please visit rivercommunity.org.