Christianity is a spiritual religion, right? Then here’s a question for you. Why did Jesus come in human flesh? Wouldn’t you have expected God to show up in some kind of spirit body instead, when He came to be with us?

God in the Flesh: Impossible?

For some people the whole idea of God in the flesh seems absolutely impossible. For Muslims it’s an insult to God: He would never descend to do that!

There were some people in the first centuries after Christ who thought spirit was good and matter was evil, so Jesus certainly couldn’t have been God in the flesh. They lived close enough to the events to know that He looked like one of us, but since that was impossible (or so they thought), He must have only seemed like He was in a human body.

That’s not Christianity; in fact, the apostle John dealt severely with early versions of that view:

For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. (2 John 7; see also 1 John 4:1-3)

That’s not Christianity, either. Not in the same solar system, not even in the same galaxy as Christianity.

Then there was a belief I heard being spoken in some movie I saw years ago (I don’t remember the movie’s name). A female character, supposedly a Christian leader, offered herself to a male character for an evening of illicit physical entertainment together. He was shocked: “Aren’t you a religious person?!” he wondered. She answered (as I recall it), “My religion is a religion of the spirit, so what happens to my body has nothing to do with it.”

That’s not Christianity. Not in the same solar system, not even in the same galaxy as Christianity.

The Most Physical Religion on Earth

Of course Christianity is a religion of the spirit: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth,” as Jesus says in John 4:24. So far so good, then. At the same time, though, Christianity is absolutely the most physical religion you’ll find anywhere on earth.

Its story begins with a very physical creation (Genesis 1) that God kept calling “very good.” It moves forward with the story of God interacting with people in real time, on real land, in real historical happenings. It comes to a climax when God himself takes on physical form, on that first Christmas morning.

It continues that way even today, as — amazingly! — God calls us to offer our bodies as living and holy sacrifices to God, as a spiritual service of worship. (Romans 12:1 -2) Our physical bodies and our spiritual worship aren’t disconnected; in fact, they have everything to do with each other. Now, some Bibles translate the word “spiritual” there as “reasonable;” but that just adds the mental/rational aspect of life to the spiritual aspect. It doesn’t take away the spiritual side of things.

So in other words, our spiritual lives don’t happen apart from our physical lives. And God didn’t just come in some spiritual body. He came in the flesh. He showed us what it looks like to love God and follow His ways, while living in these earthly bodies we own. Then He took our sins to the Cross in His body, dying for us as one of us.

It’s Okay To Be Human

Frankly, that’s one thing I love about the Christian religion. It says it’s okay to be human. It’s okay to appreciate the goodness of good food, of beauty, of rest and sport and relaxation, of work, of all the good things we can experience in the flesh.

At the same time Christianity recognizes we’ve got real problems to solve in the flesh. We sin. We get injured and sick. We age and we die. But in Jesus Christ there’s an answer to all of that, starting with the fact that He Himself came in the flesh that first Christmas morning.

God takes our humanness seriously, both the good and the bad, so we can, too. He came in the flesh, so it’s okay to be us in the flesh. But we’re sure going to want to follow Him as the One who can solve our problems in the flesh.