After having a discussion with someone during a Bible study last week, it got me thinking about the times when I have mistaken the meaning of a passage by reading into it my own beliefs through my own cultural lenses (i.e. White, Female, Middle-class, American, Western World, etc). I've been reading a couple of books lately that communicate just how much I do need to pay attention to how I read and study the Bible, being careful to learn the actual intended meaning of each passage. Being so far removed from the culture and happenings of the authors of the Bible, it is very important to learn about the context that the books of the Bible are written in. There are many specifics that we tend to overlook, such as original language/translation, culture, class structure, relationships between males and females, geography, etc. What the original hearers understood can be vastly different than what we understand the Scriptures to mean in various areas. If we are not careful to learn the context of what we read in the Bible, we can end up adding to the Scriptures or taking away from them, and in doing so, we end up misunderstanding God even more than we already do.
The first part of the 8th chapter in Romans brought up in conversation the idea that is prevalent in Western culture, that the spirit of a person is somehow more important or "higher" than the body. This comes from the Greek philosophy of Neo-Platonism. The idea that we should look down on the body and focus only on our souls or spirit, is actually not Biblical. In reality, both our bodies AND our souls are fallen, and both need to be redeemed by Jesus and what He did on the cross. In the life to come, we will be getting new spiritual bodies (1 Corinthians 15:35-49), not floating around like ethereal ghosts or becoming angels. Think about this: why would Jesus have bothered to heal those who were sick around Him if the body had not been important to Him and God the Father? And why would Jesus have bothered to come back to life in a body, still possessing the scars of His death, if the body is not important even now?
This philosophy even plagued the New Testament writers and churches when the Gnostics (http://carm.org/gnosticism) started preaching a false gospel, claiming that Jesus wasn't actually Divine and human, and that when He was resurrected from the dead, He did not have a physical body. This goes against all of the New Testament writings. The gospels say that Jesus is the Son of God and is one with Him. Jesus came to earth as a human, the Word wrapped in flesh (John 1:1-18). And after Jesus rose from the dead, He was seen by hundreds in a physical body, including Thomas who physically stuck his fingers into Jesus' wounds (http://www.biblegateway.com/resources/commentaries/IVP-NT/Luke/Resurrection-Jesus). Paul stresses in 1 Corinthians 15 that there were over 500 witnesses, including himself to the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and that if Jesus had not been resurrected in a body, there would be no reason to follow Christ (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20corinthians%2015&version=ESV).
If we start to ignore the importance of the body, we ignore what God created and called "good." He didn't say "Oh I'll create these guys in these disgusting bodies now, but eventually it'll work out how I'd rather it to be. They'll just be souls floating about in the clouds." I would encourage you to read or re-read the account of Creation in Genesis and see how God reacted to each of His creations 'in the flesh.' Now this is not to say that everything that happens with the body now is therefore to good. Like I said above, our bodies are fallen too. We experience pain, physical illness, disability, and eventually death in these bodies because of sin. But that doesn't mean that the body is therefore unimportant to God. We tend to lean in that direction, I think, because we want to come up with another explanation as to why God might not heal us or others we love. I can't say that I know the specific reasons as to why God doesn't heal when we would like Him to, and at other times does, but I will definitely say that it's not because He looks down on the body.
Here's the passage and a section from the IVP Bible New Testament commentary on the passage:
"Life in the Spirit
8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.[a] 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you[b] free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,[c] he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus[d] from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you." Romans 8:1-11 (ESV)
"8:1-11
People of the Spirit Versus People of the Flesh
In the Old Testament 'flesh' could designate any mortal creature but especially designated human beings. It connoted weakness and mortality, especially when contrasted with God and his Spirit (Genesis 6:3; Isaiah 31:3; cf. Psalm 78:39). By the New Testament period this connotation of weakness was extended to moral weakness, as in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and could be translated 'human susceptibility to sin,' or 'self-centeredness' as opposed to 'God-centeredness.' A life ruled by the flesh is a life dependent on finite human effort and resources, a selfish life as opposed to one directed by God's Spirit. Paul's use of 'flesh' and 'Spirit' refers to two spheres of existence -- in Adam or in Christ -- not to two natures in a person.
'Flesh' per se is not evil in the New Testament writings; Christ 'became flesh' (John 1:14), thought not 'sinful flesh' (Romans 8:3). (The NIV translation 'sinful nature' can be misleading, because some people today think of spirit and flesh as two natures within a person where as 'Spirit' here is God's Spirit -- it is not a special part of a person but the power of God's presence. Romans 7:15-25 describes a struggle of two aspects of human personality -- reason and passions -- trying to fulfill divine morality by human effort; but this struggle is not in view here, where people either live that struggle by the flesh or accept God's gift of righteousness by the Spirit. The radical bifurcation of a human being into a morally upright 'spiritual' part versus an immoral 'bodily' part is a Neo-Platonic idea foreign to Paul. It was first introduced into the interpretation of the New Testament by Gnostics and would not have been the natural interpretation to Jewish readers or to Gentile Christians who knew about the Spirit.)
But flesh, mere bodily existence and human strength, is mortal and inadequate to stand against sin (which abuses bodily members that could have been harnessed instead by the Spirit). Although the term is used flexibly in the Bible, in one sense we are flesh (especially in the Old Testament use of the term); the problem is not that people are flesh but that they live life their own way instead of by God's power and grace. The New Testament does sometimes distinguish the human body from the soul, but this distinction is not the point of the contrast between walking according to the flesh and walking according to the Spirit (8:4).
The Spirit especially anointed God's people to prophesy in the Old Testament but also endowed them with power to do other things. Here, as in the Dead Sea Scrolls and occasionally in the Old Testament, the Spirit enables a person to live rightly (see especially Ezekiel 36:27). In Judaism, the Spirit indicated God's presence; here the Spirit communicates the very presence, power and character of Christ.
8:1-4. Paul's point here is that whether the law brings life or death depends on whether it is written in one's heart by the Spirit (Ezekiel 36:27) or practiced as an external standard of righteousness, which is unattainable by human effort (cf. 3:27;9:31-32, 10:6-8)
8:5-8. Philosophers often urged people to set their minds on eternal things rather than on the transitory affairs of this world. Philo condemned those whose minds were taken up with the matters of the body and its pleasures. Philosophers divided humanity into the enlightened and the foolish; Judaism divided humanity into Israel and the Gentiles. Paul here divides humanity into two classes: those who have the Spirit (Christians) and those left to their own devices.
Some people believed that inspiration came only when the human mind was emptied, as in some Eastern mysticism. But Paul speaks of the 'mind of the Spirit' as well as the 'mind of the flesh.' Instead of opposing reason and inspiration, he contrasts reasoning that is merely human (and thus susceptible to sin) with reasoning that is directed by God's inspiration.
8:9. Most Jewish people did not claim to have the Spirit; they believed that the Spirit would be made available only in the time of the end. After the Messiah had come, all those who were truly God's people would have the Spirit working in them (cf. Isaiah 44:3; 59:21; Ezekiel 29:29).
8:10. Jewish people in this period usually distinguished soul and body, just as the Greeks did, although for Jews the division actually functioned only at death. (Some Jewish writers were more influenced by Greek categories than others.) But Paul does not say here that the (human) 'spirit is alive' (NIV, NASB); literally he claims that the 'Spirit is life' (KJV, NRSV, TEV). Thus he means that the body was still under death's sentence, but the Spirit who indwells believers would ultimately resurrect their bodies (8:11).
8:11. Jewish people believed that God would raise the dead at the end of the age. Paul modifies this teaching only by one step: God has already raised Jesus, and this event is a sure sign that the rest of the resurrection will happen someday. " pgs 428-429
-Craig S. Keener
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