“I don’t deny… that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say… it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, to remind men that they are not dead yet.”

Thanks to Jay Davis for sending this splendid quote by G.K. Chesterton in response to yesterday’s Catch about Neil Young and inspiration. It has led me to some thoughts about our life now “in the flesh” and how difficult it is for Christians to embrace being human and living for something other than another world.

Jesus didn’t go around cursing his flesh all the time. He sanctified it by the way he lived. He came not to negate life, but to live it. Jesus was connected to the Spirit of God and to his own humanity at the same time, and he found no conflict. If Jesus Christ was not fully human, then we cannot be fully saved and there is no ultimate hope for our humanity but to discard it completely and try something else. This is not what Jesus did. There is no “something else.” This skin I live in is it for me, and it is what Jesus came to redeem.

This remarkable fact is echoed many times throughout Scripture: Jesus Christ came in the flesh; Job declared that “in my flesh I will see God”; a man and wife become one flesh in marriage; and Paul declared that the life he lives in the flesh he lives by faith in the Son of God. These are arresting statements when you consider how much it has been taught that “in the flesh” was synonymous with sinning.

In truth, when the Bible talks about the negative aspects of the flesh, it is referring to the weaker element in human nature – the unregenerate state of man, the lower, fallen nature. It is not talking about skin. Flesh as a principle to live under is wrong; flesh as the skin I live in is right. It’s the body I’ve been given that will be raised with Christ. It’s the very image of God that I bear along with every other human being who’s ever lived on this earth. It’s the mortal body that can be given life through the Spirit. The flesh is me, and should I choose to have it so, it can become the very temple of the Holy Spirit of God.

This is me. This is all me. Grab me; pinch me. This flesh is me. This spirit is me. When I sin, it’s me sinning. When I glorify God, it’s me glorifying. It’s me here and I am choosing all the time what I am going to do with me. I am responsible. Cut my heart open and you won’t find a throne room with a miniature devil and angel playing musical chairs, you will find a heart beating for whom it wants to beat.