Your Body Matters

Image source here

Psalm 139 (especially vv.13-16) shows that your body matters, if God took such great pains to form you like He has. And Christian, even more than that, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit so honor God with your body (1 Corinthians 6:12-20). God didn’t have to give us a body, but He did.

Why did God give us a body? Because that is where the practical aspects of our faith get worked out. See, if your faith only stays in your heart, or only stays in the church building on Sundays, then you may not really have faith. What you are doing with the rest of your life (your hands, your mouth, your mind, your eyes, your stomach, your genitals), if it is not “from faith” then it is all dead works (Romans 14:23). It brings you no benefit and brings no glory to the God who created you.

Your body matters, because it is where your faith is made evident. You can’t show love to someone without “doing” something to show them, even if it is as small as opening the door for them. You can’t reveal the fruit of the Spirit like patience without not blowing up on that coworker who messed up. Your body--because God intricately formed it as the vessel through which He would reveal His image to the world--matters.

So we must discipline our bodies and our lives to reflect what Jesus said as part of the Great Commission, “teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20). Our goal must be to train our bodies in the Holy Spirit’s power to obey God’s Word at all times and in every way. That’s one way we rejoice in God’s creativity, by living according to the way He intended us to live with our bodies.

(HT: Dallas Willard in The Spirit of the Disciplines)