BCP- Epistle- The body is not bad- it just does not save

The Corinthians reading grabbed me again. In the working out of grace (for me this week it was the working out of a sermon for Homiletics) a word search had me looking at the Greek word for spirit. The dictionary explaining the Greek talked of spirit as relating to wind and air. I thought of the breath of God preceeding the creation and God "breathing" life into the clay of adam. In the NT there is the spirit which greets Jesus at his Baptism and Jesus breathing his last on the cross.

The spirit is also that which Jesus grants to the disciples. The spirit is that which continues on after the body passes away. Today's epistle talks of discipline and controlling the body. It connected for me with the description of spirit because in the dictionary it talked of Pauls understanding of body and spirit. We are called to pursue the spirit and things of the spirit because it is this that will go on after death. By ignoring the things of the spirit (God, faith, prayer) and only aligning ourself with the body we are aligning ourselves with that which will die. It's not that the body is bad. We need it. It needs to be taken care of. It helps with our spiritual path. The problem is that it simply does not last. So to spend all our time on protecting the body (money, food, pleasure, etc) will produce only a limited existence. Maybe this was what Jesus means when at judgement He may say "I knew you not".