I Believe God Has Made Me and All Creatures

By Rev. Rick Serina

Gnosticism is a popular buzz word in religious circles these days. Walk through the religion section at any bookstore or watch a special about Christianity on the History Channel or PBS and you are likely to find some reference to this Gnosticism. But what is it?

Gnosticism, broadly speaking, was a variety of religions present in the Ancient Near East from the period of the Gospels through the third century. Though there were numerous versions, all shared a few features in common. First, Gnostics believed that the material world was a mistake, brought about by a massive cataclysm in the heavens. Second, they believed that God wanted nothing to do with the material world, with the bodies inhabiting the material world, and with the activities of the material world. Third, they believed that Jesus could not be divine if He was also human, precisely because God would not debase Himself in a material world. Fourth, they believed that the material world, including the physical bodies of humans, was incapable of salvation and so there was no resurrection of the flesh on the Last Day.

One would like to think these views are relics of the past, but that is not necessarily the case. No pastor worth his salt would claim outright that the creation was a mistake, that God wants nothing to do with His creation, that Jesus was not fully divine and fully human, or that there is no bodily resurrection to come. But listen closely to funeral sermons, and you might be shocked to hear how prevalent a form of Gnosticism is within American churches.

You might hear something like what follows. A preacher gets in the pulpit when Aunt Freda dies and says that she is in a better place because she no longer suffers in the body but lives with Jesus. So far, so good; this squares with Philippians 1:22–23 and 2 Corinthians 5:8.

But the preacher goes on to say that this body in the casket has held Aunt Freda back her entire life, and now she is flying in the sky forever with the angels and will never be trapped in her body again. Worse still, he says that the same destiny awaits you for heaven is a place where we no longer need our flesh, where we live without bodies, and where we float around like ghosts.

This is Gnosticism. Anyone who claims that our bodies are inherently bad and that God will not raise our bodies to live with Him in heaven is a Gnostic.

Gnosticism is a heresy because its teachings deny fundamental truths of the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions. Gnosticism tells us that the world is a mistake, but we know that the world was perfect in its creation; yet by succumbing to the temptation of the devil, we have subjected the world to sin.

Gnosticism tells us that God wants nothing to do with the world, but we know that God loves His creation, that He preserves it still, and that He gives us all we need to support this body and life. Gnosticism tells us that Jesus was not truly human and divine, but we know that Jesus is the second person of the Holy Trinity and the eternal Son of God, who took flesh and was born of a virgin, that He might suffer, die, and rise again in that flesh to redeem our sins.

Gnosticism tells us that God does not save our bodies, but we know that the Lord who rose again on the third day will return in glory to raise our mortal bodies from the dirt and grant us an everlasting salvation in those bodies, free from sin, death, and the Devil forever.

What would Gnosticism look like in your life? The easiest way to identify Gnosticism is how you deal with the bodies God has given you and those around you. If a body is something to harm out of anger, if a body is something to use for illicit sex, if a body is something to abuse with drugs, then you are thinking like a Gnostic. But if you protect the living bodies of the unborn and the aged, if you feed and clothe the bodies of the poor and sick, if you honor the bodies of the opposite sex with pure thoughts and pure actions, if you use your body to honor God in worship with bended knees and confessing tongues, then you are thinking like a Christian.

The modern Gnostic wants you to believe that this world and everything in it is wicked and corrupt because it is material. That can’t be true though. If it were, then our Lord would not have taken bread and wine on the night He was betrayed and blessed it and broke it and given His promise that He would add His body and blood to those ordinary and simple, created and material elements whenever we gather around the altar. Yet He has, and every time you kneel before the table of the Lord and receive His flesh and blood beneath that bread and wine, you confess that the Gnostics are wrong.

Rev. Rick Serina is pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Albany,Texas. He can be reached at rick.serina@gmail.com.