Do you like your body?

Psychologist Mary Pipher has been asking young women this question for years. "When I speak to classes, I ask any woman in the audience who feels good about her body to come up afterward.... I have yet to have a woman come up" (Reviving Ophelia). The dissatisfaction, she says, comes from the culture we live in. We see the billboards and magazine ads and movie images, and feel that we don't measure up. But it goes back a lot further than the existence of modern media. It goes back to Eve.

Eve was created, body and soul, in the image of God. As John Calvin said, sparks of God's glory shine in our bodies (Institutes). Now "God is a spirit and doesn't have a body like men" (Catechism for Young Children). He doesn't need actual eyes to see or a mouth to speak, or arms and fingers to do his work, or legs to get about, but we need our bodies. We do need physical eyes to see and a mouth, lips, and tongue to speak and bones, muscles, and tendons, arms and legs, fingers and toes. We need every part of the body God has given us "to exercise the faculties of the soul," as Louis Berkhof put it. Our bodies are necessary to the image of God in us and part of the "very good" creation God made (Genesis 1:31).

So why is that we don't like our bodies very much? Well, the short answer is sin. When Eve took the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and ate it, she no longer felt comfortable with her own body. She wanted to cover it up, so she and Adam sewed fig leaves together and hid from God (Genesis 3:7-8). But Eve didn't just have a psychological problem now. On that day something also went wrong with her body. She began to die. From their sin in the garden has come all the subsequent pain and disease and problems of aging and death we face (Genesis 3:16-19). But happily for them and for us, God didn't leave them there. He came down and sought them and clothed them and redeemed them (Genesis 3:7-8, 15, 21).

He does the same for us. The Puritans called it "the glorious exchange." Our Savior Jesus Christ took our sins and gave us his righteousness. He took our death and gave us life. The redemption Jesus provides includes even our bodies! The Christian's goal is not to get rid of the body. On the last day, Jesus will transform these bodies to be like his glorious body (1 Corinthians 15:42-49). This is good news indeed!

In the meantime, we live in imperfect bodies, and "in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling" (2 Corinthians 5:2). We see our imperfections; we see our bodies changing and aging and "wasting away" (2 Corinthians 4:16). But that's not the whole story. The "inner man is being renewed day by day." So, as Paul says, "do not lose heart" (verse 16). Like your body! Thank God for this amazing and good gift! Just don't make it the most important part of you.