Love God with Your Body

We have now covered how to love God with all our heart, soul and mind. The last command completes the realm of our being: with all our might or strength. This does not reference “putting our backs into it” so much as representing the physical nature of our being. We are basically made up of four areas; emotions, spirituality, mentality and physicality. We are called to love God with all of our physical being, but how?

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

What we do with our bodies matters. When we give our lives to Christ at salvation, we are literally giving Him ourselves, giving up our right to live as we please and do as we want. He owns us. We shouldn’t focus only on the spiritual part of our lives and ignore the rest. We need to be balanced and glorify with every part of ourselves.

Romans 6:1-7 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

Jesus died to give us freedom from the Law, but not in the way some suppose. He gave us freedom from bondage to the Law, from a works-based religion, not from obedience. We still need to obey, not to earn salvation, but to glorify God, out of love for Him. That is how we glorify God, through obedience. That is how we show love for Him. Continuing to sin is rejecting His sacrifice, the price He paid to free us from bondage to sin. We cannot say we love God if we continue to do what He commands that we don’t, if we do what we know He hates.

John 14:21 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.

This is how Jesus told His disciples to love Him; obedience. What changed from the Old Testament to the New is the motive behind obedience. Before Christ came, obedience was, in a sense, a requirement of good standing with God. I will not say a requirement for salvation because the Bible clearly says that Abraham was saved by his faith (as was everyone else), but that seems to be how most people interpreted the Law. It wasn’t until Jesus that it became clear the way of salvation had always been faith, a matter of the heart. Yet even Jesus said He did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. The purpose of the Law was always to show people their need for the Savior. Obedience shows love and respect for God.

What we do with our bodies matters to God. He wants us to honor Him with every part of our being. That is our ultimate created purpose whether we love Him or not. It is what we were made to do. Shouldn’t our love for Him make us want to honor Him?

How do you show God that you love Him? Does the way that you use and take care of your body show love for God and a desire to honor Him, a love for yourself, or disrespect for both?