Perspectives#4. “Healthy body.”

If you live in a developed country, you are, as a rule, surrounded by supermarket food laced with salt and sugar. Add to this the readymade meals of the fast-food outlets, and you can safely assume that large swathes of the population are imbibing too much salt and sugar.

The number of men over fifty being greeted by their medical doctors as automatic candidates for high blood pressure and high cholesterol medication, confirms the obvious.

As one who previously ignored all warnings that my excessive diet and lack of exercise would inevitably conspire against me in my fifty-second year, my advice might best be met with jaundiced eye.

But don’t take my word for it, the scriptures speak on the subject of health.

Proverbs 25:15 speaks prophetically, if not impolitely to sugar excess: “If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it.”

We would hope that divine instruction would motivate a person to moderation, but it also seems that doctors, friends and family are just as easily ignored. Paul’s approach is an appeal to divine ownership and maintenance. “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” (1Cor.6:19).

Jesus took ownership of every aspect of your being, not just your soul, as some suggest. You were “bought with a price”—body, soul, and spirit—“so glorify God in your body” (1Cor.6:20).

Losing one’s faith over struggles with the flesh goes way beyond succumbing to immorality. The human body participates in all of the temptations that assault its senses. That is why Paul speaks of self-control: “I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified” (1Cor.9:27).

He tells the whole church to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom.12:1).

Your body is a dwelling place and an instrument of use by the Holy Spirit. Prepare it for best use.

John Staiger