Episode 2: God Made Bodies

Shannan Painter: Right now, whatever you’re doing, your body is putting the glory of God on display. Here’s Erin Davis.

Erin Davis: God invented your cells. He invented all of your body parts. God made your body. Everything God makes is good. Your body is good. 

Shannan: This is TheDeep Well with Erin Davis. I’m Shannan Painter. Erin’s in a series called “Embodied.” It’s so easy for language and ideas to slip into the Church that makes it sound like bodies are evil. 

But Erin is about to show us the truth. 

Erin: One of the very first things we teach our children when they are babies, when they’re still sitting in the high chair is that they have a body, and their body is good. Remember this game? I played it with all of my boys. Show me your eyes; there’s your eyes. Show me your nose; there’s your nose. This was my favorite. Show me your belly button; there’s your belly button.

And when they’d show it to us, we’d cheer and we’d clap. And in doing that, we are teaching our littlest ones to celebrate that God has given them a body and that that body is made up of wonderful parts. 

Actually, that is something that must be learned. 

My cousin Mandy is an optometrist. One little nugget she’s told me several times that I just love is, if you give a two-year-old a paper towel roll and you tell them to put it on their eye, every single one of them will put it in the center of their forehead. Because they’re just seeing one picture of their eyeballs. They don’t know that there’s two eyeballs in there. 

We have to learn how our bodies work and how they’re made. We have to learn how our bodies work, and the way they are made is good. 

A lot of us, I think, kind of have that two-year-old paper towel roll principle. We don’t really think a lot about our bodies. We don’t want to talk a lot about our bodies. We’ve forgotten the elementary doctrine that God made your body, and your body is good. 

There’s a lot of reasons for this; I probably won’t address all of them. But one of them is, we don’t as Christian women want to mimic the over sexualization of bodies that we see in the world. We don’t like that. It feels icky. So, we might minimize where the world maximizes. 

It’s also true that as we age, our bodies change in ways that are not exactly fun to talk about. And so, we might talk about our bodies less and less. We don’t want to worship our bodies as some sort of ultimate prize that defines us. We know our identity is found in Christ.

So, again, for these reasons and probably lots of other reasons, we tend to minimize our bodies. 

But I think there’s another layer to the reason that we get disconnected. Let’s go back to Paul’s writings for just a moment. This time, I want to just peak into 1 Timothy. Listen to 1 Timothy 4:8, 

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.

I want to tell you how I interpreted this single verse for decades. I thought what Paul meant here is, everyday, Erin, you have choice. You can take care of your body, or you can take care of your spirit. You’re a Christian; you better take care of your spirit because the body doesn’t really matter. 

This is why we must know and love our whole Bibles, and why we should be really careful about jumping to interpretation of Scripture and application of Scripture too quickly. Because right interpretation and right application can only follow good observation about what the text actually says.

So, let’s observe. Listen again to this verse. This time you’re only making observations. You’re not trying to think about how this applies to your life. “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.”

What did Paul actually say here? Well, he said bodily training is of some value. If you listen to the first episode, I want you to note that Paul wrote 1 Timothy after he wrote 1 Corinthians. First Corinthians is where he wrote that he disciplined his body as a means of glorifying God with everything he had. 

So, it would be silly to assume that Paul got old and soft here, and he changed his tune. In 1 Corinthians he’s saying, “I discipline my body that I might run the race well.” Here he’s saying that bodily training is of some value. It’s the same, he’s consistent. He’s saying that taking care of your body has some value. 

He’s also saying what we know as followers of Jesus, that ultimately, it’s temporary. You will never do enough crunches or ingest enough protein to keep you young and healthy. Outwardly, we are wasting away; that’s true. 

But I fear I’m not the only one who took Paul’s words and ran towards all manner of foolish and unhealthy decisions based on the belief that I stated in the first episode—body bad, spirit good.

It seems that we have forgotten, Church, that our Bibles begin with Genesis 1. They don’t begin with Genesis 3. 

Paul pre-Damascus road was a zealous Jew. He would certainly have known what was written in the first two chapters of the Torah. 

So, the things that Paul wrote later in the New Testament epistles were not forced from the truth we find here in the first book of the Bible. They are not separate from what he wrote here in 1 Timothy and in 1 Corinthians.

Genesis 3, of course, is the Fall of man. That is the chapter in Scripture where Satan slithered in as a serpent, hell-bent on destruction. He deceived the first image bearers of God to break the commandments of God. 

And it doesn’t seem to matter what I’m teaching on, I always seem to gravitate back toward what happened there at the Fall. I can always see something new it. And in this context, in this series, as we consider Genesis 3 again, a good question for us to ask is: Where did Adam and Eve feel the shockwaves of their sin first? In their bodies. Listen to Genesis 3:8, 

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

From the moment, maybe the nanosecond that sin entered the world, our bodies became a source of shame. If we keep reading in Genesis 3, we get to the curse, and again we see the impact of sin happens in our bodies. 

In verse 16, because of her sin, Eve would experience painful childbirth. Few things shape a woman’s view of her body more than this reality. 

Verses 17–18 describe Adam’s punishment. Work would be hard on Adam’s body from that moment on. He would have to earn his living by the sweat of his brow, something he had never experienced before. 

Verse 19 describes the most devastating part of the curse, and how do we experience it? In our bodies. 

By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.

Because of the lie of the enemy, because Eve and Adam disobeyed God, because humanity has fallen from the perfect shalom creation God intended for us to have, our bodies won’t last forever anymore. That was God’s intention, but sin broke that intention. We are weak, and eventually, no matter how fast we can run or how hard we try, death is going to overtake us. Every one of our bodies will fail and will be buried. All of that is true. All of it matters. 

And all of it is why we need the redemption of Jesus so desperately, but it is far from the whole story. 

Let’s flip back just a page or two to Genesis 1, and ask some questions that might be new to you. What were Adam and Eve like before the Fall? More specifically, did they have bodies before they sinned? Or were they just spirits, floating around in the garden and their bodies became a punishment for their sins, some sort of constant jail cell? 

Well, Listen to Genesis 1:27–31, this is before they sinned. 

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.” 

“And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. 

A few observations, Adam and Eve and their assignment from the beginning was to display His rule in the world that He has made. They had another assignment. They were supposed to be fruitful and multiply. I’m sorry for pointing out the obvious, but this requires bodies. And they were supposed to eat, they were supposed to eat the fruit that they saw. Well, eating also requires bodies. It requires a mouth; it requires a digestive tract. 

Later in Genesis 2, Adam talks about his bones and his flesh, before the Fall. So, from the very beginning God made mankind to display His image, and from the very beginning God made mankind with bodies. 

Don’t miss Genesis 1:31, “And God saw everything that he had made” including Adam and Eve, in their bodies, “and behold, it was very good.”

We can boil this down to three statements, 

• God made your body.
• Everything God makes is good.
• Your body is good. 

C.S. Lewis, don’t you love C.S. Lewis? He wrote this in Mere Christianity, 

There is no good in trying to be more spiritual than God. [Although I would say, I’ve probably attempted it. He wrote,] God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That’s why He uses material things like bread and wine to put new life into us. We may think it rather crude and unspiritual. God does not. He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

Give it to us C.S. Lewis. 

God invented your cells. He invented your cardiovascular system. He invented your digestive tract. He invented your skin cells. He invented all of your body parts. So again I’ll say, God made your body. Everything God makes is good. Your body is good.

It’s true, our bodies have been forever changed by sin, but there are no Genesis 3 consequences without Genesis 1:4. God intended His creation to be embodied. Not as a plan B, not as a scramble after sin entered the world, but from the very beginning. 

And here’s one reason why this matters so much, in light of the cultural moment we’re living in. The beating heart of the transgender movement is that your body is irrelevant to who you are. 

It’s built on the idea that girl body parts doesn’t mean that you’re a girl. And boy body parts don’t mean you’re a boy. Your body parts don’t matter at all. They have nothing to teach you about your identity. And they certainly don’t have anything to teach you about God. 

In other words, your body has no meaning. It’s what you think, what you feel, that determines your identity. And as Christians, we resist this thinking. As Christians in 2023, as I’m recording this, we are deeply grieved by watching image bearers of God, made in His image, loved by Him, seek to find their values in surgeries and hormone therapies because we know ultimately that cannot change their value to God. It does not shift His desire that they would find their identity in Him.

But isn’t it interesting that at the same time we’re observing the slow-motion car crash happen in front of us. We live as if our bodies have nothing to teach us about who we are. We live as if our bodies are inconsequential, and they really aren’t what God wants to use to teach us about who He is and who He made us to be. 

Who are we, after all? 

We’re beloved children, made by God, in the image of God, with bodies as part of His very good plan.

I’ll tell you a point where this really hit home for me. We have four sons, who I’m obsessed with, I talk about them every time I teach. Three of the four of the boys have serious kidney issues. Our oldest son Eli has the most severe kidney issues. And so, we’ve spent hours and hours and hours in the office of a Christian pediatric urologist who has answered my many “why” questions. 

And one day after boy number three was diagnosed with a similar issue and tears were rolling down my face and I was saying, “Why, why does this keep happening? Why are my boys made this way?” And that talented and precious physician, who I know loves the Lord and walks by the Spirit, sat me down for a crash course in fetal development. 

Now, I can’t remember the numbers, because I don’t do numbers, I do words. But he said “Erin, on day so and so, a baby’s bladder is formed.” And then he said, “A few days late on day so and so, that baby’s kidney is formed and what’s so amazing . . .” He’s so excited, and he says, “What’s so amazing is that their kidneys are formed of a completely different type of tissue.” And then he said, “On day so and so (and it’s the same for every baby) that kidney shoots up ureters, and they come up out of that tiny baby’s body and they attach to the bladder.” And then he said, “Erin, it’s a miracle that any of us gets hooked up right, a miracle.”

He was right. 

Now, some of my boys didn’t get “hooked up” right, so to speak. That doesn’t mean God made a mistake. It just means that we live in bodies warped by the Fall. Man, am I grateful for doctors, like Dr. Copeland, who have operated on those tiny boy’s bodies and have been able to give them the health that they needed. 

But he’s right. It is a miracle. Your body is a miracle. Every second your body produces twenty-five million new cells. I don’t know how many that means during this podcast series, but it’s a lot. There’s somewhere between sixty and one hundred thousand miles of blood vessels in your body. There are enough to wrap around the globe three times. 

Pound per pound, your bones are stronger than steel. A block of bone that’s the size of a match box can support up to 18,000 pounds of weight. This is Genesis 1 stuff. Your body is made by God. It’s a witness of His goodness in a world that desperately needs to know that God made all of this, and God is good, and it’s for His glory, not for your comfort. 

One way you can live counter-culturally, even in this crazy moment, it’s by operating as if your body matters. It’s by recognizing it for what it is. It’s a living, breathing object lesson about who God is and what He made you.

Can I take us to one more passage that I think we might need the Spirit’s help to see with fresh eyes? It’s Mark 12:28–31. This is an interaction with Jesus.

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?”

And he says to Jesus, “Hey Jesus, You’ve got a lot of commandments; God has a lot of commandments. Which one matters the most?”

Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

The great commandment is essential for you to fulfill the great commission. And the great commandment is this: love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. 

You know what I think we’ve taken that to mean? Really, really, really love God like a whole lot. 

What if Jesus was being more practical? What if Him saying love God with all your heart, He did mean love God with all your motions? What if Him saying love God with all your soul, He meant love God with your spirit? What if Him saying love God with all of your mind, He meant love God with your thoughts? And what if Him saying love God with all your strength, He meant love God with your body?

And then He said the second is like it: love your neighbor. How do we love our neighbor? People have been debating that for a long time. First of all, who is our neighbor? And then, what does it mean to love our neighbor? 

Does it mean that we just send well wishes for them into the air, and happy thoughts, even occasional prayers? Is that loving your neighbor? Maybe it’s not unloving, but I think what Jesus was also teaching us is that we move towards our neighbors with our bodies. We hug them. We rake their leaves. We cross the street for a conversation. We make a coffee date with a friend who is wrestling, with our bodies.

Our Genesis 1 theology is that God made our bodies, and our bodies are good. And from that starting point, that moves us to love God in the ways we use our bodies, and to love others in the same way. 

So, when was the last time you thanked God for your body? 

I think we need the same game we taught our children. Thank You, God, for my eyes. Thank You, God, for my hands. Thank You, God, for my legs. Thank You, God, that I have a heart in my chest and that it is still beating. Thank You, God, that my lungs are filled with air that You made. Thank You, God, for my finger nails that protect me. Thank You, God, for my vocal cords that I can use to praise You and tell other people about You. Thank You, for my arms that I can use to hug people and to raise and praise You. Thank You, God, for my toes to keep me balanced. 

We could go on and on and on and on and on.

But the principle of Genesis 1, is “Thank You, God, because You are good.” Amen. 

Shannan: After listening to Erin, I hope you’ll take some time today to thank God for the wonder of creation on display in your body. 

I have a great follow up. Erin has gone through the Bible and explored times where God has called His people to fast and when He calls His people to feast. She’s written about it in a book called, Fasting and Feasting. This book will help you glorify God when He gives you plenty to enjoy. The book will help you glorify Him when it’s time to scale back and be satisfied in Him alone. You can get a copy of Fasting and Feasting by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com. 

It’s time for Erin Unscripted.

Erin Unscripted

We’ll start with a woman in our audience who has first-hand experience with the wonder of God’s creation. 

Sarah: My name is Sarah. I’ve been a nurse for over thirty years, so I’ve seen a lot of bodies, and a lot of illness, and a lot of wellness. When I have time meditating, one of the things I pray about, I praise God for the miraculous ways He’s made our bodies. You know, I think we just take it for granted when we can go and do what we want to do. 

My husband is a techy guy, so you know he’s all about computers and building systems, and I think about the technology compared to the body. There is no comparison. You know, God can fix things in our body that we can’t even think of at a cellular level. The way things work together is so complex. I see a world that is in awe of technology, and I can’t help but sit in comparison to our bodies. 

Erin: That’s so good. I wouldn’t have thought of that. 

Sarah: When God heals us from something, it’s just so miraculous. We just have to be in awe of God and who He is. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Sarah: And when we have affliction, it’s for our good and His glory. Many people who spend hours upon hours of time getting their body where they want it, sometimes I think if only a fraction of that was spent in His Word, where would we be?

Erin: Yeah, something you said made me think of something. There are going to be women listening to this, and as we’re celebrating the body, their body feels like it’s betrayed them. Maybe they’re deep into a cancer journey. Maybe as I’m saying, “Thank You God because I have legs and arms,” they don’t have legs and arms that work. Or, “Thank You God that I have eyes,” because they don’t have eyes that work. That’s where it’s so important to know that our ultimate hope is beyond this. 

While it’s okay to pray to be healed from cancer, or any number of other physical ailments, ultimately the healing is beyond that. We’re going to talk about that in the next episode, glorified bodies. But to that person who is maybe laying in that hospital bed being taken care of by a nurse, we’ve got to find hope beyond a healed physical body. 

I loved Sarah’s perspective as a nurse. That was fascinating to me. I ended up having a couple other conversations with people who weren’t on the microphone that were so good. Like, one woman in the room had been on a medical missions trip to Honduras. She was describing that they brought in a knee replacement apparatus, I don’t know what you call it, and replaced the knee of this young girl. The Christian doctors were marveling that this was the best they had to work with, but it was nowhere near as good as God’s design.

Then there was actually a doctor in the room. She was describing all of the machines that are needed when someone’s heart or kidney fails, like ecmo or dialysis. She was saying these are huge and complicated machines that would replace the work of say a teeny, tiny kidney or something the size of a heart, and they are not nearly as good. 

So, this perspective that God’s design really is good as being affirmed even in medical science was really cool. 

Shannan: Yeah, I don’t think we can improve on His original design. Can we?

Erin: We definitely can’t. 

Shannan: On the next episode, Erin is going to challenge you with this idea: your body doesn’t belong to you. Ultimately, everything you do is for God. That’s on the next episode of The Deep Well. 

The Deep Wellwith Erin Davis is part of the Revive Our Hearts podcast family, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. 

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.

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