Tag: body as sacred

Whole Person Love (1 Thessalonians 4:1-12)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.

It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.

Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. (New International Version)

Everyone intuitively knows that love is supremely important. Yet, what some may not realize is that love is designed to effect the entire person – body, mind, emotions, and spirit.

Love is spiritual. It involves receiving love from a spiritual source and using it to give love to others. (Matthew 22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31)

Love is emotional. It is a matter of the heart and must felt deeply. (1 Peter 1:22, 4:8)

Love is thoughtful. The human brain requires love in order to mentally mature and operate with efficiency. (Philippians 2:2; 1 Peter 3:8)

Love is physical. The body is our means of putting hands and feet to love. (1 John 3:17-18)

A true Christian spirituality is an embodied spirituality which puts both mental and emotional energy into loving God and one another.

Consider for a moment some of the things you have done today… For me, I arose early, had a workout, ate breakfast, showered, went to work, etc. Yeah, typical stuff we are familiar with. These things I just mentioned all have to do with the body – and those things are good and holy.

Sometimes we may get a misguided notion that purity and holiness only has to do with activities that take place in a church building; or special works like serving at a homeless shelter; or, that the meeting of physical needs is merely a means to reach the soul.

Yet, there is neither a secular/sacred dichotomy nor a dualism of body and soul anywhere in Holy Scripture. Love demands the whole person, not part of the person.

We in the western world have inherited a long tradition of Platonic thinking. It undergirds a lot about how we think of the body. Plato (c.427-327 B.C.E.) embraced a dualistic nature of people – an existence of body and soul in which the spirit is trapped within physical flesh. Plato considered the soul to be the true nature of a person and tended to denigrate the body as an earthen vessel which will eventually be discarded. Our physical existence was nothing more than a necessary evil for Plato.

The problem with Plato’s anthropology is that it fails to discern the holistic nature of body and soul and the need for integrity with these human dimensions. Historically, Plato’s view has tended to come out sideways through lack of care for the body and seeing bodily actions as insignificant.

Thus, sexual immorality is common with a dualistic idea because our physical selves are less significant, temporary, and disposable. In all fairness to Plato, he did not encourage misuse of the body or sexual immorality, yet his philosophy opened-up to generations of people in neglecting their own bodies and inflicting harm on other bodies.

When we exalt the soul as supreme over the body, we are living out platonic thought, and not biblical love.

All of life is sacramental – the body is sacred, and, so, ought to be treated as holy – with great care and careful attention to breath, movement, exercise, eating, sleeping, playing, and, yes, even sex. The body is to be celebrated as our means of glorifying God on this earth.

And, at the end of the age when Christ returns, we will be reunited with our bodies to live forever as embodied creatures. So, what we do with our bodies now matters to God.

Inattention to the body God has given us will inevitably lead to a lack of boundaries in which others are open to violate us and we are unaware of violating others. We end up running roughshod over each other, spiritually and physically.

In other words, disregard for the body creates a disregard for love. An embodied and grounded spirituality helps us clarify what holiness and sanctification looks like in relationships and everyday life.

God has called us to holiness in all of life, in every physical activity we do. We have been designed by our Creator to walk the road of purity and peace. 

The way in which we use our minds, wills, emotions, and bodies – aligned and in agreement with the whole person – are of much interest and great concern and interest to almighty God. 

God cares about:

  • Food and whether I eat to his glory and give thanks; or, whether I have no interest in those that are hungry but just stuff as many groceries as I can in my distended stomach. 
  • Rest and Sabbath; or whether I compulsively work every waking moment of my life. 
  • Vocal chords and the content of my conversations with my family and friends – whether I am using my tongue for encouraging and building-up others, or whether it is slanderous, gossipy, and unhelpful.

Everything in all creation belongs to God – including me, you, and everything we do. God cares about all of life’s activities and leisure time because God is the Lord of Love.  

Whether tying our shoes or teaching a Sunday School class, it is all to be done with a sense of holiness and connection to the God that makes it all possible. 

Christian spirituality is an embodied spirituality. So, let us engage in all kinds of good loving works for the benefit of the body, whether little or large, with the time and talents God has graciously given us. 

Lord God, I belong to you – set apart and sanctified so that I may always walk in holiness and please you in everything I do. Help my life today to reflect the purity you have given me through your Son, the Lord Jesus.  May he be glorified through me now and always.  Amen.

1 Corinthians 6:12-20 – An Embodied Spirituality

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

Welcome, friends! The body is important. Our physical bodies are the vehicle to accomplishing the will of God in the church and the world. Click the videos below and let us discover the connection between the spirit and the body…

1 Corinthians 6:12-20
This Body Is Your Temple by Matt and Joanna Black

Go forth into the world in peace;
be of good courage;
hold fast that which is good;
render to no one evil for evil;
strengthen the fainthearted;
support the weak;
help the afflicted;
honor everyone;
love and serve the Lord in body, mind, and spirit,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit;
and the blessing of God almighty,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
be among you and remain with you always. Amen.

A Christian View of the Body

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
“Don’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, The Message).
 
           

 

 
            You probably already know you should lose weight, or stop smoking, or get in shape, or have better sleep hygiene, and generally take much better care of your body.  I am not here to add to the burden.  Rather, I am here to bring out a very important point:  Our bodies are the vehicle given to us to glorify God.  In other words, our spirituality is really quite embodied.
 
            One of the reasons we fail our bodies is that we do not always make the biblical connection of seeing our physical selves as important as other things – as if care of the body is somehow optional to the Christian life.  The major reason Paul brought up a discussion about the body was because Corinth was a Greek city thoroughly imbibed with a Platonic philosophy of life.  At the core of Plato’s view of humanity was that the immaterial and the spiritual were of higher value than the body.  For Plato, the body is a necessary evil.  He referred to our souls being imprisoned within the flesh.  When we die the soul is released and is freed from its bodily jail.
 
            Western civilization has been significantly influenced, even today, by Plato’s view of humanity.  But that is not the biblical view of the body.  Instead of being a prison, the body is a temple, a sacred place which is no better or no worse than the soul.  When we die, Paul made it clear to the Corinthians at the end of his letter to them that we will not be disembodied souls, but will experience a bodily resurrection at the end of the age.  Eternity will be spent existing in a renewed body free from sin, but nonetheless a real body.
 
            If it is true that the body is sacred, and that we cannot glorify God apart from our bodies, then it is of great spiritual importance that we steward our bodies just like we would steward any other physical material possession we own.  We have bought into Platonic philosophy, for example, when we treat our cars better than we treat our bodies.  If a warning light comes on in our cars, we get it checked out by the mechanic.  He fixes the problem and tells us what we need to do to prevent it from happening again, and we listen to him.  But when warning lights go off in our bodies, we ignore them until our bodies literally break down and we have to go to the doctor.  And even then, the doctor tells us to do something, and we don’t do it.  We do not even think of ignoring the advice of our mechanic, and yet we do it with our doctor.  Why in the world would we do that?  We function in such a wrongheaded way because we need to listen carefully to the biblical wisdom that we glorify God on this earth through using our bodies. 
 
            If we do not have time or priority for sleep, exercise, and eating well, then we do not have time for God because God has given us our bodies and he expects us to care for them and use them well.  I look at my body the same way I look at borrowing something from another person:  I return it in the best condition I can.  When God takes me home someday, I don’t want it to be because I did not take care of my body and hastened my own death.
 
            People often give up on their best laid plans for physical health because it is disconnected from the rest of their lives.  What I am insisting is that care of the body is as important as anything we do in the spiritual realm because our bodies belong to God.  The church, rather than ignoring proper care of the body, really ought to be at the forefront of promoting physical fitness and health by stopping the insanity of bifurcating body and soul. 
 

 

            I am not my own, but belong – body and soul, in life and in death – to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.  We are holistic beings, created by God to glorify him in the church and the world.  Let’s uphold this by taking care to be responsible with how we treat and use our bodies.  After all, it is a spiritual issue.