Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 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.
- Philippians 3:20-21

“I believe in … the resurrection of the body”
- from The Apostles’ Creed

As Jesus was, so we will also be.

At the end of the Gospels and the beginning of the book of Acts, we see Jesus in his resurrected body. He was recognizably Jesus, still carrying the scars from his crucifixion. But he was also transformed.

When Jesus ascended into heaven, his resurrected body didn’t fall back to earth, like some space-shuttle-booster-rocket that had already done it’s job. No, he kept his body. Even today, Jesus sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty, mysteriously, in a fully human body.

The Apostles’ Creed was initially written to counter the ancient belief that matter was evil. Ancient Gnosticism and the Marcionite community wanted to strip Jesus of his physical body and claim that he lived his life as a disembodied spirit or, at least, cast aside his body after his resurrection and moved into what they claimed was a purer, spiritual form.

This discomfort with bodies continues into our own day and age. Many of us feel uncomfortable in our bodies. We’d like to change and tweak and heal them. We’re embarrassed by them. They cause us shame.

But a day is coming when we will be raised to new life with Christ. And on that day, we will be transformed … all of us, including our bodies. God will not remove our bodies, but will instead perfect them.

Take some time today to thank God for the body he’s given you and to ask him to help you anticipate the resurrection of the body that is to come.