Care For Your Body
I was introduced to exercise through sport. Later in life it became my profession, and when that season ended it became a hobby. When one of my Christian friends learns of my love for exercise they sometimes respond with Proverbs 28:1, “The wicked flee when no one pursues…” Of course this is just a humorous, good natured, tongue-in-cheek, reaction to how I use my free time. Nonetheless, Christians ought to care for their bodies with exercise being a way to do that.
The Bible gives at least four reasons we should care for our bodies through exercise. First, God created Adam and Eve with bodies. The Genesis creation account reaches a climax with the creation of two, embodied human beings who are male and female (Gen. 1:26-31; 2:4-25). In their embodied humanity Adam and Eve are created by God to bear His image (Gen. 1:27). The account concludes like this: “And God saw everything that we had made, and behold, it was very good.” So we must conclude that the human body, created by God, is not an inconvenience, but an essential good.
Second, God called Adam and Eve to lovingly care for creation, which includes the human body. Moses writes, “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living that moves on the earth.’” This is what theologians have called the Creation Mandate. Humans, created out of the overflow of God’s love, are to join God in caring and filling the earth with life. Since the human body is an essential and good part of creation it follows that it should be cared for too.
Third, God joined himself to a human body. Genesis 1 reveals that God is simple. He is One, and yet latently reveals diversity in God. For example, in Genesis 1:1-2 is God, the Word of God, and the Spirit of God. Then in Genesis 1:26 the reader witnesses the internal deliberation of the Godhead: “Let us make man in our image…” What is whispered throughout the Old Testament is undeniably and fully affirmed in the New Testament: God is Father, Son, and Spirit. Further, in love the eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ, joined himself to a fully human body through the Virgin Mary by the power of the Spirit.
During his earthly ministry Jesus shows us what it’s like to be truly human. Jesus cared for his body and the bodies of others. He ate, drank, and took rest. He healed blind eyes, repaired paralyzed limbs, and raised dead bodies. The Incarnation unequivocally declares that God loves and cares for our bodies. Our bodies and the bodies of our neighbors matter to God. The human body shouldn’t be marred, desecrated, abused, neglected, ignored, or lied to. Rather, we ought to join God and lovingly care for our bodies. God’s love for embodied humans, like us, is so great that Jesus laid down his own body.
Finally, God will redeem human bodies. Though our bodies are good they are nonetheless plagued by breakdown. Adam and Eve rejected God’s life and love, and so every human with them and after them has done the same. This rejection is what Christians call sin and the consequence is death. God said to Adam and Eve, “By the sweat of our face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Every ache and pain is a reminder that our bodies are decaying and death approaches. However, there is hope for broken-down bodies because of an angelic announcement in an empty tomb to a group of embodied women: “He is Risen.”
The fact of Jesus’s embodied resurrection (he can eat and be touched by others) means that those who trust in Him by faith will also be raised from the dead with new, glorified, immortal bodies that can also eat and be touched. Paul writes, “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, than shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting” (1 Cor. 15:52-55)? Until then we should care for our bodies to the end knowing that, in Christ, it will be raised up.
