A struggling pastor once reached out to his mentor during a difficult season of ministry.
Much had changed since they had last seen each other some years ago. The pastor’s family had grown, his ministry had expanded in scope, and there were many tangible reasons to be encouraged.
And yet, the pastor described himself as lacking motivation. He often woke up feeling sluggish. He was easily distracted during his sermon study and preparation. He was beginning to fear that he was burning out.
His mentor nodded along as he listened. He expressed his sympathy regarding how difficult family life and ministry can be. He asked many perceptive questions that explored some of the reasons why his friend might be feeling this way.
Finally, he believed he was ready to give his old friend some counsel:
“You need to lose thirty pounds.”
Does that sound “unspiritual” to you? Does it sound superficial, as if it doesn’t get to the root issues?
If you answered “yes, ” you may have forgotten what the Bible says about how much our bodies matter.
An Age of Confusion
It goes without saying that we live in an age of confusion when it comes to our bodies.
On the one hand, our culture says that our bodies don’t matter, which is why we can change our gender to conform to what we feel.
On the other hand, our culture says that our bodies do matter, which is why we should change our bodies to conform to what we feel.
Which is it?
The fact that we even have to ask the question demonstrates how lost and confused our culture has become.
And if we’re honest, we must admit that confusion has also seeped into the Church.
How many men show that they believe that their bodies mean everything by spending countless hours toning their bodies and excessively cultivating their diets while ignoring their spiritual and moral growth?
And how many men show that they believe that their bodies mean nothing by completely ignoring their physical health to the detriment of their lives and ministries?
An Age of Psychology
In his groundbreaking book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution, Carl Trueman skillfully explains the ideological foundations that made transgenderism (and confusion about the significance of our bodies) possible.
One of the book’s central insights is that this phenomenon can be traced back to the unbiblical idea that humans are essentially psychological beings.
According to this belief, our identity as human beings isn’t determined by God, ethnicity, family history, religious community, cultural expectations, or even our physical bodies. It is determined by what we think and feel. That is our supreme authority. That is the highest determining factor in forming our perception of who we are.
And if any external influence threatens to undermine that authority, we need to ignore it or overthrow it.
This has led to a proliferation of prescribed therapeutic remedies for many of our problems. For the troubled pastor in the scenario described earlier, we think, “He just needs to find his identity in Christ” or “Maybe he suffered some childhood trauma that always leaves him with a sense of fear when things are going well.”
Those may indeed be helpful areas to explore. But if this happens in isolation from considering what may also be happening in his body, then we are missing something significant.
An Age of Recovery
As believers and as men, we need to go through an age of recovering what the Bible teaches about our bodies. We need to rediscover the reality that our bodies are not incidental to human nature. They are essential to who we are as image-bearers of God.
How do we know this?
We know this because God Himself fashioned the first human body from the dust (Genesis 2:7-8). God continues to knit new human beings together in their mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13). God uses the bodies of His redeemed people as His Holy Temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). God calls us to steward our bodies with care and self-discipline (e.g. Proverbs 23:1-3; Romans 12:1; 1 Corinthians 9:27; etc.). God will one day raise up the bodies of all who have died in an act of physical resurrection (John 5:28-29). These are profound biblical truths.
But the most profound truth of all is this:
Christ came into the world with a human body (John 1:14), Christ rose from the dead with a human body (John 20:27), and Christ ascended to Heaven, where He lives forevermore with a human body (Acts 1:9).
This is why a man’s body matters. Our bodies matter enough that God’s Son took a human body for Himself: first in His incarnation, then in His resurrection, and forevermore in His glorification.
Recovering these truths will bring clarity to our cultural confusion, restore respect for the human body, and help us care better for one another, body and soul.
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