Glorifying God With Our Bodies Isn’t About What We Don’t Do

God made us for his glory. He created us “in his own image” (Gen. 1:27). We were made to reflect and display him, to be mobile monuments to God’s strength and beauty, not to be stationary statues. We’re living, breathing, speaking, working, moving images of God himself, going out into his created world to display his glory everywhere. He thought it best that his imagers not be fixed to the ground like trees and plants but instead have feet, legs, arms, and hands to move around, spread abroad, and fill the earth with his glory.

Without a doubt, God has his spectacular ways of glorifying himself through disability. But typically, some form of physical exertion becomes the occasion for imaging him in the world. To draw honor to him, we present our “bodies as a living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1). Next verse: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (v. 2)—that you might present your body “holy and acceptable to God” (v. 1).

Like King David and Christ himself, we receive the body God has prepared for us as our vessel for doing his will (Ps. 40:6–8; Heb. 10:5–7). And Christ “bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Pet. 2:24). The apostle Paul eagerly expected and hoped that “Christ will be honored in [his] body, whether by life or by death” (Phil. 1:20).

Wherever You Go

Glorifying God in our bodies isn’t mainly about what we avoid and don’t do with them. It’s far more about what we do with them—where we go with our feet, what we do with our hands to help others, and what we say with our mouths to give meaning to the acts of our bodies.

We’re living, breathing, speaking, working, moving images of God himself, going out into his created world to display his glory everywhere.

Consider Christ’s life, a story that presumes bodily exertion from beginning to end. He’s the climactic image of the invisible God (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15) who lived perfectly to the glory of his Father (John 17:4, 6, 26). Even a cursory reading of the Gospels makes plain that he didn’t live anything close to the sedentary life that entraps so many today. Apart from the obvious—no cars, trains, planes, screens, phones, modern medicines, or processed foods—Jesus walked essentially everywhere he went. He moved and spent most of his waking time on his feet, as did most working-class humans in the ancient world.

We see the same with Paul in Acts and in his letters. When he was traveling, a day’s journey would have been 20 to 25 miles (essentially walking a marathon). When not traveling, he would have easily walked five miles (about 10,000 steps) or more doing daily work as a builder or tentmaker.

And Jesus didn’t just move his feet but also his hands—lifting, cutting, tearing, pushing, holding, tugging. He worked construction for decades, growing up in the home of a tradesman. And though he was “a man of sorrows” (because of our sin) and “acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3), we get the impression again and again from the Gospels that he was deeply happy and emotionally stable—happy enough to bless others through tireless teaching and inconvenient healing, to promise rewards, to show compassion, and to control his righteous anger. At least such normal, daily actions meant his emotional health wasn’t encumbered by a sedentary lifestyle.

Whatever You Do

Let’s not pass over this too quickly: God made you for his glory. And our first calling as Christians is to glorify him, honor him, and make him look good in and through our lives.

This is what it means to be made in his image (Gen. 1:27). What does an image do? It images. It reflects. It displays. It makes visible. God made us to image him, reflect him, and display him in this created world. We’re meant to live in this creation as God himself would live if he were a creature in the world he made. And God himself did enter our world in creaturely, human form.

We’re meant to live in this creation as God himself would live if he were a creature in the world he made.

The second person of the eternal Godhead came as man—as Jesus of Nazareth. We’re in the image of God. Jesus is the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15). He was God himself among us (John 1:14). He lived his human life in fulfillment of God’s designs, perfectly glorifying him. And that’s our calling as Christians. Not to be Jesus. Not to be God as man. But to increasingly live up to the calling to live in God’s image as perfectly modeled and accomplished by Jesus. So, “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).

Again, glorifying God with our bodies isn’t mainly about what we don’t do. It’s easy to focus on unrighteous acts from which we should abstain, but glorifying God in our bodies is first and foremost a positive pursuit and opportunity. As in the parable of the talents, our bodies are gifts from him to grow and develop, not to bury and let languish.