Presenting Our Bodies

In Romans 12, Paul exhorts believers to present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, which is our spiritual act of worship.  He also says that we should not be conformed to the pattern of this world but that we should be transformed by the renewal of our mind.  Furthermore, our bodies are God's temples to be used to glorify Him (1 Cor. 6:19-20).  There is a basic principle at play here: we belong to God, body included.

Therefore, we should take care of our bodies, understanding that we are stewards of the resources that God has entrusted to us.  This is worship.  We are consciously declaring praise to He whom we belong to by honoring the gifts that He has given, i.e. taking care of our bodies.  As a result, when we exercise regularly, we do it to Him; when we are nutritionally responsible, it honors Him; when we abstain from hedonistic activities, we are praising His name.  The Greatest Commandment speaks to this, that we are to love God with every part of ourselves (Matt. 22:37).

Additionally, our bodies are to be instruments of righteousness.  This means that our bodies themselves are to be consecrated, set apart for His purposes.  This is why it is so important to care for our bodies.  If our bodies are gifts from God, how we treat are bodies correlates to what we think of the Lord.  When we neglect caring for our bodies, we are in fact neglecting God.  When we take care of our bodies, we are honoring the Lord.

An important distinction should be made here in regards to motivation.  If the motivation for caring for our bodies is self-serving, as in, because we want to exalt ourselves, then we are sinning.  The only motivation for caring for our bodies should be worship.  God does want us to care for our bodies because it is proof through action that we worship and praise Him.  This means that we should be diligent and responsible in stewarding our bodies: regular physical activity and responsible nutritional eating habits.  The beauty of the Lord's design is that when we are responsible stewards in this respect, we will feel better biologically. 

We should exercise regularly, and we should watch what we eat, but not because it makes us look or feel good.  Rather, we should care for our bodies because God can more effectively use people who are physically capable than those that are not.  For instance, if we are to serve our communities, we need to be physically ready at all times to do that.  The Lord desires us to worship Him in body, mind, and soul, with all of our strength.  One major way to do that is by caring for our bodies in order to present them to the Lord.