What does it mean that the body will be redeemed?

Question 5159.

Bodily redemption is the hope Paul is straining towards in Romans 8:23, and I think it is one of the most neglected promises in the whole of Christian teaching. We speak a great deal about the saving of the soul. We say far less about what God intends to do with the ageing, aching body you are carrying around this morning, which is odd, because Paul makes that body the object of a groaning hope rather than an embarrassment to be escaped.

So what is he actually promising? Not that the body will be discarded, and not that it will be replaced with something vaguely spiritual and misty. Something far better, and far stranger, is in view.

What Paul actually says about bodily redemption

The sentence runs like this: ‘And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.’ Notice that the redemption Paul is waiting for is not the forgiveness of his sins. That is already settled, and he has spent seven chapters saying so. What remains outstanding is his body. Bodily redemption is the unfinished part of a salvation that has genuinely begun.

The word behind redemption here is apolutrosis, a releasing secured by the payment of a price. Paul is not saying that God will improve our bodies. He is saying that our bodies have been bought, and that the day of collection is coming. That is a purchase language, and it is deliberate.

This matters because a great many Christians carry an unexamined assumption that the body is the disposable packaging of the real self. Paul will not allow it. The Spirit is called the firstfruits, which is harvest language: what God has begun in the inner person He fully intends to complete in the outer one.

Why the body needed redeeming at all

Genesis tells us that God formed a body first and then breathed life into it, and that the whole arrangement was pronounced very good. The body is not a concession to our weakness. It is part of the design. When I read the creation account I do not find a soul temporarily housed in matter; I find a person, made in the image of God, who is embodied by intention.

Then came the fall, and with it decay. Paul says elsewhere that the outer self is wasting away. Every hospital corridor and every funeral is evidence that something has gone wrong with a good thing. The need for bodily redemption is not a need to be rescued from the body, but a need for the body itself to be rescued from what sin brought into it.

This is why I have never had much time for the old idea, borrowed from Greek philosophy rather than Scripture, that salvation means the soul finally shaking off its physical prison. That is not Christianity. If you want the biblical view of the body as a good gift, I have written on whether the human body is good and on the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Groaning is not a failure of faith

Paul says we groan. He does not apologise for it, and he does not tell the Romans to stop. There is a strand of teaching that treats any expression of physical suffering as a lack of faith, and it does enormous damage to people who are genuinely ill. Paul groans, creation groans, and the Spirit Himself groans within us.

The groaning is precisely because we have the firstfruits. You do not ache for a harvest you have never tasted. The Christian who has been made alive in the spirit becomes more aware, not less, that the body has not yet caught up. Bodily redemption is future, and the gap between what we are and what we shall be is felt in the joints.

If you are living with chronic pain, or a diagnosis, or simply the slow arithmetic of getting older, this is one of the kindest sentences in the New Testament. Your groaning is not unbelief. It is the sound of someone who knows what is coming.

Adoption and bodily redemption belong together

Paul puts two things in apposition: adoption as sons, and the redemption of our bodies. In one sense adoption has already happened, because the pneuma of God has already made us children and bears witness with our spirit to that fact. In another sense adoption is still awaited. Both are true, and Paul holds them together without embarrassment.

What resolves the tension is the body. Legally the adoption is complete. Publicly, visibly, in the flesh, it is not yet displayed. The day of bodily redemption is the day the adoption becomes obvious to anyone with eyes. I have written more on the Spirit of adoption if you want to follow that thread further.

So when a believer dies, the person goes to be with the Lord, consciously and immediately. But that is not the end of the story, and it is not what Paul is waiting for here. He is waiting for the reunion of that person with a body fit for eternity.

What the redeemed body will actually be like

Paul answers this most fully in 1 Corinthians 15, where he contrasts the soma that is sown perishable with the one raised imperishable. He calls the present body a natural body, literally a soul-animated body, and the future one a spiritual body. That does not mean immaterial. It means a body adapted to the spirit rather than to the present order.

The clearest evidence is the risen Jesus Himself. He ate fish. He was touched. He carried the wounds. He was also unmistakably different, and people who had known Him for years did not always recognise Him at once. Whatever bodily redemption produces, it produces something recognisably continuous with what was buried. I have written on what Jesus’ resurrection body tells us about ours, and on the nature of the resurrection body.

Which means, and I say this carefully to anyone who has buried someone, that the person you loved is not finished. The grave holds a seed, not a full stop.

Why bodily redemption changes how you live now

If the body is going to be raised, then what you do with it matters. Paul argues exactly this way. He does not say your body is unimportant because it is temporary; he says your body belongs to the Lord because it will be raised. The doctrine of bodily redemption is the reason sexual sin is serious, the reason physical service is worth something, and the reason a cup of cold water given by a real hand counts.

It also reframes care of the body. You are not maintaining a machine that will be scrapped. You are looking after something God has bought and intends to keep. That guards against two errors at once: the contempt that treats the body as nothing, and the obsession that treats it as everything.

And it steadies you when the body fails. A believer facing dementia or paralysis is not watching the destruction of the self. They are watching the wearing out of a tent, and Paul says we have a building from God waiting.

What bodily redemption does not mean

It does not mean healing on demand now. The firstfruits are real, and I am a continuationist who believes God still heals, but Paul plainly did not expect every body to be mended in this age, or he would not have been groaning. Anyone promising you guaranteed physical wholeness before the resurrection is promising you something Romans 8 does not.

Nor does it mean that the body is the whole of you. Scripture speaks of spirits of just men made perfect, and of being absent from the body and present with the Lord. There is a genuine intermediate state, and soul sleep is not what Scripture teaches. Bodily redemption is the completion of that hope, not a denial of it.

And it does not mean a merit scheme. The price has been paid already. What remains is delivery, not earning.

So, now what?

Let me put it as directly as I can. If you are a believer, the body you are sitting in has been purchased and will be raised. Not replaced. Raised. That single sentence, if you let it settle, changes the way you face a mirror, a diagnosis, and a graveside.

So groan honestly. Do not let anyone tell you that a Christian must be cheerful about decay. But groan as someone waiting rather than someone doomed, because bodily redemption is not a wish, it is a promise attached to the same cross that dealt with your sin.

And if you have never come to Jesus at all, then this hope is not yet yours, and I would rather say that plainly than leave you comfortable. The invitation stands. What would it take for you to ask Him today?

And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Romans 8:23 (ESV)