While God is sovereign over every aspect of our lives—including the precise number of breaths we will take—He has created our bodies to generally perform better and for longer with a balanced diet and regular exercise. The better we take care of our bodies through diet and exercise (as well as things like sleep, hygiene, and proper preventative medical care), the longer they will generally last. We will therefore have more energy and ability to serve the Lord actively for far longer.
Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.
-1 Timothy 4:7-10, ESV
The new year is fast approaching, so the season for resolutions is upon us. Some of the most common involve losing weight and starting to exercise. As a result, what I call the “resolution rabble” overwhelms gyms across the country before dying off as most people lose motivation and quit. People similarly begin diets with great discipline but likewise lose motivation and go back to old habits. The shape stays a bit round and the pounds stay on. On the other side, diet and exercise can become an obsession, leading to faithful devotees to various exercise routines, products, diets, and practices. How should we look at this biblically? What does Scripture say about fitness and health that can guide us to actually accomplish those resolutions?
A Greater Purpose for Health and Fitness
Arguably the biggest reason health and fitness resolutions fail is a lack of vision and purpose. Why “get in shape”? Why lose weight? Without this, people quit at the first sign of adversity. As part of the futility resulting from the Fall (Genesis 3:18, Romans 8:20), diet and exercise both require effort for quite a while before seeing any results, which leads to frustration that could cause us to quit. Only a purpose much larger than ourselves and our pleasure can overcome the frustration of seemingly fruitless pain. Scripture clearly defines that purpose: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). As the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism states, our primary purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That must be the motivation behind everything we do, including our approach to diet and exercise. We want to get in shape in order to glorify God. We want to lose the weight in order to glorify God. That is the purpose that can turn a resolution that is easily cast aside into a strong habit that produces real results.
Two Wrong Approaches
This naturally leads to two extremes that must be avoided. The first is to over-spiritualize diet and exercise. We can come to see particular diets, like the “Daniel Diet”, as paths to righteousness and their opposites as defiling the temple of the Holy Spirit. Scripture clearly teaches that since the Holy Spirit indwells believers, we are His temple, which is a major motivation to glorify God in how we treat our bodies: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Yet Jesus made it very clear that we do not desecrate that temple through what we eat or drink: “There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him” (Mark 7:15). He therefore declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19). Only in sexual immorality does a man sin against his own body (1 Corinthians 6:18) so only sexual immorality desecrates our bodies in which the Holy Spirit dwells.[1] Junk food, alcohol, and tobacco cannot do that, so diet and exercise are not the path to righteousness. The same can be said of any attempt to avoid sin through bodily severity:
If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
-Colossians 2:20-23, ESV
No matter how severely we treat our bodies, those habits will not stop the indulgence of the flesh. Remember, self-control is a fruit given by the Holy Spirit through the vehicle of faith, not by bodily deprivation. We must not over-spiritualize diet and exercise and therefore overemphasize the importance of our physical bodies.
The opposite error is to disregard diet and exercise entirely. I have heard people cite Proverbs 28:1 as an excuse for avoiding exercise: “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion”. They also shun any semblance of dieting by pointing out that in the Mosaic Law the fat was holy to the LORD (Leviticus 3:16). They may not sinfully over-indulge in food, alcohol, and smoking, but they partake of these things enough to negatively affect their bodies. In rightly avoiding the error of over-spiritualizing the body, they under-spiritualize it. First, they are clearly committing the cardinal sin of bible study by taking these verses out of context. They ignore the many proverbs against laziness (Proverbs 6:6-11, 13:4, 19:24, 21:25) and gluttony (Proverbs 23:2,21, 25:16,27) and the ceremonial aspects of laws regarding fat. This, like the “cultural cop-out”, is an attempt to make the Bible say what we want in order to support our desires rather than subordinating our desires to the Bible.
Stewardship and Self-Control
Instead, the concept of stewardship is prevalent throughout Scripture. As we saw with tithing, all we have ultimately belongs to God. He entrusts it to us and then charges us to take care of it for His glory. That includes our bodies. In commanding husbands to follow the example of Christ with the Church by nourishing and cherishing their wives as their own bodies (Ephesians 5:28-29), he is assuming that we love our own bodies by nourishing and cherishing them. We must care for ourselves physically, but taking care of ourselves physically must not supersede our pursuit of godliness.
If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.
-1 Timothy 4:6-10, ESV