Glorify God with Your Body

By God’s design, we are physical beings in a physical world. Before sin entered the world, God made us to reflect his image in human bodies, and he called what he had made very good. Then came the rebellion in Eden and two terrible consequences for our bodies. First, under the curse of sin, our bodies became subject to sickness and death. Second, our broken relationship with God led to a disintegration of self, through which our bodies became increasingly disconnected from our souls. Since then, every person in every age has struggled to understand, “What am I to do with my body?”

One trend through the ages has been the undervaluing of the human body. Again and again, people have become convinced that all that really matters is spiritual; the physical universe is either unimportant, or evil. Because Christianity is a religion of hoping in things unseen, there is always a danger of erring in this way. We see it in the early church period, when the destructive heresy of Gnosticism reinterpreted Christianity as a way of escaping one’s (evil) body. We see it in Catholic and Orthodox teaching requiring certain religious professionals to refrain from marriage for the sake of holiness. We see it throughout Evangelicalism in habits that downplay physical health, beauty, art, and aesthetics.

The opposite trend has also been prevalent in every generation: namely, the overvaluing of the human body. We become preoccupied with our bodies in such a way that little else matters. Western culture today is obsessed in this way, and the church often mirrors the culture. Sexual addictions, the use of pornography, and eating disorders are narcissistic consequences of a culture in which the body is greatly overvalued. Often we see this trend occurring in a generation reacting to parents who undervalued the body, e.g. professing Christians who practice sexual license in reaction to a frigid previous generation.

In the fullness of time, our heavenly Father sent his Son to become a physical being for the physical world. He was put to death, so that our bodies might be set free from the curse of death. He was resurrected bodily, as a foretaste of the re-integration of all of God’s people’s souls with their incorruptible bodies. Now as the incarnate, resurrected Lord, Jesus intercedes for us at the Father’s right hand. We trust in him for the salvation of our bodies and our souls.

Writing on the topic of sexual immorality, Paul asks, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Cor 6:19) Apart from God’s Spirit, we will continually misuse our bodies, either valuing them too much or too little. With God’s Spirit indwelling us, we enjoy renewed communion with him, and a life of physical and spiritual wholeness as we follow his lead.

Today in prayer, begin with the Collect of the Day (below). Give thanks for your body, and ask the Lord to fill you with his Holy Spirit. Confess to him any sins of undervaluing or overvaluing your body. Make a commitment to the Lord that you will glorify him with your body. Then finish with the Lord’s Prayer.