Steward Your Body for the Glory of God
Physical Life Is a Gift
The fact that God has made us physical means that attending to our physical life is not unspiritual; our bodies are not unspiritual. Paul talks in Ephesians 5 about how we're not meant to hate our bodies, but to look after them and to feed them. He says in his letter to Timothy that physical training is of some value. He says godliness is of value for all things, but physical training still of some value.
So the care we take of our bodies in terms of what we feed our bodies and how we physically train our bodies. These are not unspiritual things. These are actually things we should be interested in as God's people. We've got more reason to steward our physical health well than someone who doesn't believe in God because we believe our physical life is a gift from God.
What God Has to Say about Our Bodies
Sam Allberry
The Bible has a lot to say about the body. Organized around three categories—creation, fall, redemption—this book by Sam Allberry provides readers with a balanced theology of the body as they seek to glorify God in everything they do.
Paul wants us, as he says in Romans, to offer our bodies as a sacrifice to God, to be a living sacrifice to him—which means that we need to look after our bodies along the way. So actually, the Bible has a lot to say about what we eat and how we eat—at times, when it's appropriate not to eat—who we should eat with, and sometimes even who we should not eat with. It has much to say about our own physical training and discipline.
We've got more reason to steward our physical health well than someone who doesn't believe in God because we believe our physical life is a gift from God.
Paul talks in 1 Corinthians 9 about disciplining his body, not because it's this bad thing that needs to be punished, but because it's a useful thing that needs to be stewarded and trained. So we should, as Christians, because we're Christians, be concerned with our health—not in a way that makes health ultimate, but simply because we want to care for our bodies well so that we can use them to serve God to the maximum.
Sam Allberry is the author of What God Has to Say about Our Bodies: How the Gospel is Good News for Our Physical Selves.
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