Our bodies are part of God’s “very good” creation.
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
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 air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” . . . God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
We get peculiar and mixed messages about our bodies from the culture. These messages can keep us from living fully and fruitfully. But Scripture gives us a better way to think about our bodies. The creation account in Genesis shows us that God created us as embodied beings. Our bodies are part of God’s “very good” creation. Yes, sin messes things up. But the basic goodness of our bodies remains, and this is both good and important news.
I’ve been reflecting on how we as Christians should think about our bodies.
We get such peculiar and mixed messages about our bodies from the culture. On the one hand, there’s a widespread tendency that we could call the worship of the body. We idolize a certain kind of physical beauty. We admire those whose bodies count as beautiful, even though we realize that what we see has often been digitally doctored. Reality is often not what it seems. Yet, many of us evaluate our bodies according to the unrealistic standards of the media, ending up with shame and self-condemnation.
On the other hand, besides worshiping the body, we often act in ways that are hurtful to our bodies, choosing to do things that are dishonoring if not destructive to them. We tend to eat foods that aren’t good for our health, often excessively. Many of us take substances into our bodies that can be harmful. The Addiction Center estimates that 21 million people in the United States have at least one chemical addiction (not including food or other addictions).
I could go on, but I think you get the point. In light of all the mixed messages we’re getting all the time, we desperately need a biblical perspective on our bodies. We need to see our bodies as God sees us, to value them as God values them. When we do, we’ll be on the right track for stewarding well and wisely the gift of our bodies.
Today, I want to lay a foundation for our thinking about our bodies. Actually, it would be more accurate to say I want to identify the foundation already laid for us by God. I’m talking about what we learn from the creation account in Genesis. There, God created the physical world. The pinnacle of God’s creation was humanity, the beings created in God’s own image (Genesis 1:27-28). This image was embodied. It took shape in human bodies. Genesis 2 provides a bit more insight into the nature of human life. We are a combination of the physical (dust of the ground) and the spirit (the breath of life; see Genesis 2:7).
The biblical account does not teach that the spiritual part of us is somehow more important or more valuable than the physical part. Rather, who we are as beings combining dust and breath is all part of God’s creation. In Genesis 1, after creating all things, including human beings, God “saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Genesis 1:28).
Now, when sin enters the picture, beginning in Genesis 3, the goodness of all things gets messed up, including the goodness of our bodies. We know all about this, not only from the Bible but also from our own experience. Nevertheless, it’s crucial that we recognize the fundamental value and goodness of our bodies. They are not unimportant, as some religions would claim. Nor are our bodies basically evil, as some philosophers have argued. Though we do not deny the negative impact of sin on our bodies, we who are taught by Scripture continue to affirm the basic, underlying goodness of embodied life.
So, though we should worship bodies, whether, for their beauty or any other reason, we do esteem them as something created by God. In fact, we could rightly think of our bodies as one of God’s good gifts to us.
The Incarnation of the Word of God strongly affirms the fundamental goodness of creation, including human bodies.
While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
The same God who created all things—including our bodies—as good is the God who came to dwell among us as an embodied person. Jesus, fully God and fully human, entered the world through birth, just like the rest of us. The Incarnation of the Word of God strongly affirms the fundamental goodness of creation, including human bodies. Though corrupted by sin, the basic goodness of our bodies remains.
In Genesis 1-2, in the creation accounts. There we see that God created us as embodied beings and that what God created was “very good” (Genesis 1:31).
Though sin ends up messing up the goodness of God’s creation, including our bodies, it does not erase the basic truth of the original goodness of our bodies.
God chose to overcome the problem of sin in a way that reinforces the goodness of embodied human life. God did not wipe out creation and start again. God did not reveal secret truth that allows us to escape from our embodied reality. God did not shout from the heavens whatever we would need to be saved. Rather, God chose to enter the world as an incarnate human being.
Though Christians believe that Jesus’s conception was miraculous, we recognize that his birth happened in the usual way (Luke 2:6-7). At least that’s true with regard to the physical process. His birth in a stable was obviously unusual. But God chose to enter this world in the way all human beings since Adam and Eve enter it, by being born of a woman. That fact in and of itself says something powerful about the value of embodied human life.
What Luke describes in a story, John’s gospel describes theologically. In John 1:14 we read, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
The divine Word of God, the Word through which God created all things, the Word that was with God and was God (John 1:1-3), that very Word was born in a stable in Bethlehem. That Word became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:14).
Theologians explain that the Incarnation (the technical term for the Word made flesh) was necessary in order for Jesus to save humanity by dying on the cross in our place.
I believe that is true, thanks be to God! But the Incarnation tells us more than that Jesus can be our Savior. It also makes a powerful statement about the fundamental goodness of human embodiment. God chose to be born as a human baby. God chose to become fully human (though Jesus was also fully God). God chose to take on a body, a real, tangible, vulnerable human body.
We do not have a gnostic savior, an unembodied spirit-being that tells us the secret to salvation. Rather, we have a Savior who was a true human being. According to Hebrews, Jesus “had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect” so that he might serve our faithful high priest (Hebrews 2:17). Though Jesus did not sin, he nevertheless is able to “sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15). He knows what it’s like to be human, to be an embodied being.
The combination of the creation and the Incarnation packs a powerful theological punch.
This combination reveals the fundamental value and goodness of our bodies. And it causes us to wonder how we might experience the goodness today, in spite of the ravages of sin.
If you have accepted God’s grace through Christ, then your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. God, through the Spirit, dwells within you.
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.
Here’s an amazing thought. If you have accepted God’s grace through Christ, then your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. God, through the Spirit, dwells within you. Therefore, you have the opportunity to glorify God with your body. May it be so, Lord!
In the Greco-Roman world, the gods had temples. They were the places where the gods were worshiped. They were considered to be the gods’ dwelling places on earth. One generalization concerning all religions of the ancient world is almost always accurate: Religions had temples.
Except for Christianity. The first Christians stuck out like a bunch of sore thumbs because they did not build and worship in temples. This confused the Roman Empire. They couldn’t figure out if Christianity was a religion, a philosophical movement, or something else altogether. It made Rome rather nervous, in fact. It’s true the first Christians didn’t have buildings they identified as temples. But, in a sense, they did have temples. In 1 Corinthians 3:16, for example, the Apostle Paul refers to the Christian community in Corinth as “God’s temple” in which “God’s Spirit” dwells. The Christians in Corinth didn’t build a temple because, well, when they gathered, they were a temple.
In 1 Corinthians 6:19, Paul uses similar language but in a different way. He writes: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” In this case, the “temple” is not the community of Christians, but the body of each individual Christian. Because God’s Spirit lives within each believer in Jesus, each one could be considered a holy temple.
Why did Paul talk about human bodies in such a surprising and body-valuing way? Because many Christian men in Corinth were having sexual relations with prostitutes, much as they had done before believing in Jesus. Discreet prostitution was common in Corinthian society, even among married men. One defense of such behavior was the familiar Greek understanding that the body really doesn’t matter. Spirit was everything for the Greeks. Body, not so much.
So Christians in Corinth would defend their engagement with prostitutes, arguing that what they did with their bodies really didn’t matter. Paul, on the contrary, argued that their bodies really did matter. They were temples of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, he said to the Corinthians, “For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20). Yes, the Corinthian Christians should glorify God in their common life as the body of Christ. And, yes, each individual believer should glorify God in his or her body by acting according to God’s righteousness. Having sex with prostitutes was not an acceptable use of one’s body and was not glorifying to God.
It’s striking that Paul doesn’t only give the prohibition: Don’t visit prostitutes. Rather, he calls the Corinthians to something positive, something wonderful: Glorify God in your body. What you do with your body, Paul says, actually matters a great deal. You can choose to glorify God or to dishonor God with your body. Because you belong to God through the death of Jesus Christ, you should choose to glorify God, not just with your mind, not just with your heart, but also with your body.
Glorifying God with your body isn’t only a matter of participating in Christian gatherings, praying regularly, and doing other actions we associate with Christian piety. Rather, you can glorify God with your body in all you do, if it is consistent with God’s will and offered to the Lord. You can glorify God by doing honest work, making good products, feeding the poor, and embracing your children.
In these and so many other ways, you can use your body as a means of worshiping God.
Worship, rightly understood, is a moment-by-moment choice to live for God and God’s glory.
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Focus
Because of God’s mercy poured out in our lives, we’re to offer all that we are to God in response. What we do with our bodies can be, in fact, our “spiritual worship.” Worship doesn’t happen only in church. Worship, rightly understood, is a moment-by-moment choice to live for God and God’s glory.
The passage from Scripture comes at a dramatic place in Paul’s letter to the Romans. He has just spent eleven long chapters showing how the righteous God makes us righteous in Christ. He ends his exposition by exulting: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:33-36). Now, a first-time reader of Romans might think this is a suitable end to the letter. But, in fact, Paul has much more to say. In chapters 12-16 he’s going to answer the question: “So, in light of all these glorious truths about God’s grace, how are we to live?”
The answer to that question begins in a striking way: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (12:1). Notice that we are to live, not in order to earn anything from God, but “by the mercies of God” (12:1). This phrase summarizes all that has gone before in Romans. The grandness of God’s mercy and grace has been demonstrated through God’s work in Jesus Christ. So, now, in light of all this, Paul says, “Here’s how to live.”
We begin by presenting our “bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [our] spiritual worship” (12:1). Most religions in the ancient world included literal sacrifices for the gods. Our sacrifice as Christians is different, however. We are not to sacrifice our bodies by taking our lives in a literal way. Rather, we offer our bodies as a “living sacrifice.” Our worship of God involves using the bodies he has given us in ways that honor him. Just as in the Old Testament God was pleased with the right sacrifices, so in the era of the New Testament God will be pleased when we live fully for God’s purposes and glory.
Notice that your body is not incidental, irrelevant, or evil. In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit through which you are to glorify God. Now, in Romans 12:1, your body in action is a sacrifice offered to God. What you do with your body makes a world of difference to God.
When Paul talks about offering our bodies as a living sacrifice, he’s not thinking only or even mainly about what we do that is obviously “religious.” To be sure, we present our bodies to God in corporate worship, in our personal devotions, in times of prayer, and in acts of charity. But that’s not the end of it. In fact, it’s just the beginning. Through our spiritual practices, we learn to offer our whole selves to God in all we do. As it says in Ephesians, we’re to live for the praise of God’s glory, not just occasionally, but in every moment of every day (Ephesians 1:11-14, 2:10).
Our translation refers to presenting of our bodies to God as our “spiritual worship” (12:1, NRSV). Other translations have “proper worship” (NIV), “priestly service” (CEB), or “reasonable service” (KJV). The underlying Greek phrase could be rendered by any of these options. The point is basically the same no matter which one you choose. It is through your embodied living, through the things you do and say each day, that you can worship God. Worship doesn’t happen only on Sundays. It is meant to be a daily, even a moment-by-moment activity. And it happens, not only in your heart, but also through your body, and not just in church, but in every place where you are.
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