THE SPIRITUAL BODY

According to Genesis, God, when creating man, made his body from the dust of the earth and "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”, making him a "living being" (2.7). Thus, the human being is, mysteriously, a synthesis of matter and spirit. Blase Pascal had already reflected on this complexity: "Man is in himself the most prodigious object of nature, since he can not conceive what it is to be a body and what it is to be spirit and still less in what way a body can be united to a spirit".

No one has ever been able to explain this mystery of how "a body can be joined to a spirit." However, this union was compromised in the Fall, when man decided to depart from his Creator. The human being, who only exists in this union, who is only happy in this synthesis, came to see its disintegration. Now, if the body becomes ill, the spirit falls; if the spirit suffers, diseases arise in the body. If these diseases progress to death, the synthesis falls apart. This is the greatest of all human fears: to die and to have the spirit separate from the body that will decompose.

The Apostle Paul revealed this dread, writing to the Corinthians. In a complex text, he speaks of the fear of dying and of being just spirit without body. It is true that our earthly body that we have causes us to suffer, but we would not like to think of dying and then having any body (2Co 5,3,4). This is the situation of those who do not believe in God and do not trust the sacrifice of Christ. But as for those who wait on the Son of God, the Apostle revealed that there is prepared for them a new body, a "spiritual body", which they will receive in the resurrection of the dead (2 Corinthians 5: 1).

The Apostle spoke about this body: "If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body... I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God... Listen, I tell you a mystery: we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye... the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality... then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory”, Christ's victory on the cross (1 Cor 15 .44-54).

Death, that evil that afflicts mankind, will be destroyed in the resurrection of the dead, when those who hope in Christ will have their spirits made alive and their bodies transformed. For, according to Paul, it is God's will that those who trust in him should be "conformed to the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29). In a letter to the Philippians, he said: our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, ²¹ who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body" (3.20,21). This is the hope of Christians and the message of the gospel of Christ.

Antônio Maia – M.Div.

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