A Very Good Body

Contributor: W. Travis Stewart, LPC

A Good Creation

I have a confession to make: I’ve never told a client that she needs to love her body. In the culture of eating disorder recovery and treatment that feels a bit like confessing that I believe the world is flat.

It’s not that I don’t want clients to value their bodies. Rather, I believe that there is something more powerful than loving your body. I want to invite you to see your body the same way God sees it—as very good! When you begin to see your body as very good you will begin to treat your body with dignity.

Consider the creation story in Genesis, Chapter 1. Light and dark, land and sea, plants and animals. With each created thing, on each subsequent day of creation, God adds complexity and beauty. Each creation is more amazing than what came before it.

Finding the Human Creation

It’s like the story is rising to a final reveal—a final creation. What do we find there? What do we find as the final, most amazing and beautiful of all of God’s creation? We find the human creation. In our physical bodies, we are the final act of creation. God saved the best for last. And calls us VERY GOOD!

If we are to be faithful Christians, we cannot deny the goodness of the body. We too must learn to call the body VERY GOOD.

Healing Bodies

The value God places on the body is seen all throughout the Scriptures. Jesus himself highlights the importance God places on our physical wholeness. Consider the story we find in Luke, Chapter 7:

John the Baptist, who was in prison awaiting execution, sent his own disciples to Jesus with a desperate question. In his last moments, he wanted to know if Jesus really was sent from God. So his disciples went to find Jesus. When they arrived this is what they found:

21 In that hour he [Jesus] healed many people of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and on many who were blind, he bestowed sight. 22 And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.

When Jesus was asked if he really was the Saving One, the Son of God, he responded with, “Look at what I am doing. I am healing physical brokenness.” That is what a Savior does. A Savior does not simply save ‘souls’. A Savior rescues people, body and soul.

God Comes Near

God comes near us to save us. He does not rescue from a distance. He fully enters our humanity. He takes on human flesh. He forever grants value and dignity to the human body. This is what Christmas is all about—the Incarnation—God becoming flesh and dwelling among us.

This is the Biblical storyline of God coming near: In the beginning, He walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden. That intimacy was broken by sin.

But God was not content to remain at a distance and he had a plan to restore creation.

So, after Moses led the people out of Egypt, God said, “Build me a tent (or tabernacle) and put it in the middle of the community. I want to be at the center of your lives.”

But that was not close enough.

So God said, “Build me a Temple and put it at the center of your religious life.” So God’s presence dwelt in the Temple.

But that was not close enough.

So God said, “I will go down there myself. I will become flesh and dwell among them. In fact, I will die for them to remove the sin that keeps us apart.”

But that was not close enough.

So God said, “I will put my Spirit in them. I will not dwell among them but inside them.” And our bodies became Temple of the Holy Spirit

God sees your body as VERY GOOD and delights in calling it home.

Heavenly Bodies

Finally, we know that our bodies are good because the Bible clearly teaches that in heaven we will have resurrected bodies. That makes sense because we already know that God calls the body very good and that it is worth saving.

Philippians 3:20-21 reads “we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body…”

Jesus is the model of what will happen to those who trust in him. We too will experience a resurrection and have a new, more substantial, glorious heavenly body.

We will be just like Jesus. When he came out of the grave, He was not a spirit but a living, breathing human with a physical body.

To many of you with body-hatred, this does not sound like good news because you have not yet fully grasped the freedom of the children of God. Not only will your body be transformed, but your heart and mind as well! You will be free from body hatred. You will have a body and you too will call it very good!

A Physical Promise

How do we know that our bodies matter? How do we know that God will heal? How do we know that our shame will be removed? How do we know that we will be resurrected with new, glorious, heavenly bodies? Because God made a promise and kept it with His own body.

God created you with a body and calls it very good. Sin broke that relationship but God was not content with that. Jesus came to us in a body in order to save us as whole people. The only way He could do that was buy breaking His own body and raising it again.

God looked at the broken body of Jesus and says, that is very good because it will save my people. But He was not content with that. So God raised him from the dead – and gave Him a resurrected body. He will do the same for us. And one day, we too will be able to look at our bodies and say, it is good, and because God is VERY GOOD.

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About the Author:
Travis Stewart is a Licensed Professional Counselor who has worked in the field of eating disorders since 2003.

Christian Track: Eating Disorder Hope is proud to announce the initiation of a special Christian Track of blogs and articles to commemorate our 10th year of being blessed with such a special community of those in or searching for eating disorder recovery. Watch for further special blogs noted as “Christian Track”.

Last Updated & Reviewed By: Jacquelyn Ekern, MS, LPC on February 26, 2019
Published August 8, 2015 on EatingDisorderHope.com