It is my point of view that John 3:16 is speaking of the physical body. God so loved the world He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him would not suffer the loss of his body but would be able to gain immortality in the body at His coming. In other words, John 3:16 is speaking of what happens to us at the time of the resurrection from the dead.

Before you decide whether I am right or wrong, you better take a look at what I have to say further. You may be surprised at what the Scripture actually states. Christian thinking has been heavily influenced by the philosophy of Gnosticism causing us to emphasize the salvation of our spiritual nature and overlook the redemption of the physical body—that for which the Apostle Paul groaned.

The renewal of life in the body, that is, the resurrection from the dead, is vastly more important from a scriptural standpoint than is demonstrated in today's Christian teaching. It seems Gnosticism, a philosophy that ignores the body in favor of the salvation of the spiritual nature of man, a philosophy that has contaminated Christian thinking from the first century, is very much alive today. We see evidences of Gnosticism in the idea that we are saved by grace apart from our behavior, and also in the unscriptural teaching of the pre-tribulation "rapture" of the believers. The concept that we are to leave our flesh and rise in our spirit to the heavens is Gnosticism, not biblical Christianity.

Gnosticism will always reject any idea of the salvation of the physical body of the believer, and it probably was this philosophy that the Apostle Paul was resisting in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians.

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? (I Corinthians 15:12—NIV)

It would be Gnostics who would claim there is no resurrection of the dead.

You may notice that the modern teaching of the "rapture" usually says very little about the resurrection of the body or ignores it altogether.

Notice the following:

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. (I Thessalonians 4:16—NIV)

The expression "the dead in Christ will rise first" does not mean rise into the air, it means to be raised from the dead and stand on their feet on the earth. I think it is the influence of Gnosticism that causes the believers of today to disregard the fact that before we can be caught up into the air to meet the Lord we must first be raised from the dead.

It is being raised from the dead, the restoring of life to our flesh and bones, that marks the conquering of the last enemy. Being caught up to meet the Lord in the air (not in Heaven!) is merely an act of Kingdom power, not the consummation of redemption as is true of the resurrection.

To be continued.