Glorify God With Your Body

“For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”    1 Cor 6:20

I’ve heard the whole “your body is a Temple” idea a hundred times. Jesus lives inside of me and likes a clean house… I get it. But when I read the next verse, verse 20, I was suddenly hit with a fresh perspective. “Glorify God in your body.” My body glorifies God. In my mind, I suddenly saw my body as a living offering of worship to the Father, rather than a dirty room I had to pretend to  clean.

I don’t know exactly why this is so profound to me, but there is something incredible about the thought that my body glorifies my King. It’s like I’m His favorite piece of artwork, and He loves showing me off – like I’m  the greatest blog He ever wrote, and He loves sharing me across His social network channels and watching the likes and delighted comments role in. As I start to imagine His pleasure in me, body, soul, and spirit, I begin to love myself unlike I ever have before.

I’ve been engaged for just over a week now, and as my thoughts turn toward marriage, I begin to be more and more aware of how important my body is. I could never hope to adequately express my love to my future wife without it. As I examine my life, I see how frequently I recognize God through His subtle touch upon my physical body. I see how often I am reminded of my spiritual status based on how I’m treating the physical portion of me.

It’s amazing how we’ve been trained to despise our bodies by the remnants of gnostic thinking, where anything in the physical realm hinders us from embracing the divine. This is so far from the Biblical truth. God created the world and “it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). What sin perverted, grace has restored, and we no longer should despise what God has called clean.

Even on a personal level, body image may be a more talked about issue among women, but guys struggle with it just as much. We want to look good, and we often find it hard to love ourselves and our bodies when we see something less than ideal in the mirror. Ask God to show you what He sees. If you want to change the way you look – if you want to get stronger, more cut, thicker, thinner, etc. – do it! But you can make the journey from a place of self-love and acceptance rather than pressure and fear.

I free you to love your body, to treasure it, and to present it to God as glorifying worship and to your spouse as a pure and powerful gift of love.

How do you see your body? Do you love yourself? Have you every considered how powerful a gift your body is?