What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s (I Corinthians 6:19).
[I originally began this post on Tuesday, April 17th, 2012, but because of everything that I had going on, was unable to finish it. It is now posted as originally written. I have also decided since I am struggling with obesity, to include a widget on the About the author page from a program I am using to record my weight loss progress. No Christian currently living is perfect, but we do have an obligation to avoid being a stumbling block for others – and this includes the way we take care of ourselves.]
This afternoon, as my daughter took a mid-day nap, I ran the kitchen trash out to the dumpster near the row of townhouses where ours is located. As I was on my way back to our home, I ran into one of the neighbors that lives in the building across the street. Firmly believing that it is important to acknowledge others, I said hello to the young man; when we show common courtesy to others it may give us the opportunity to share the Lord with others and help us establish meaningful friendships (Proverbs 18:24). I didn’t expect him to even respond to my greeting, but he soon began to ask me a series of questions.
He told me that he and his live-in girlfriend were having a disagreement over several things and had to leave the apartment and used the trash as his excuse. The disagreement had begun over a seemingly small issue but soon had evolved (or devolved) into a discussion between the two over whose lifestyle was the worst. He said that his was not as bad as what it could be, he was not into drugs or alcohol; he had a problem looking at pornography and had been caught looking at the stuff on the Internet. I am sure he was looking for a sympathetic “you’re right,” or “at least you weren’t cheating…” either being the last thing he needed to hear. He needed to hear about Jesus.
As I began to explain to him that it really doesn’t matter what other people think of his life, I did tell him what matters is how God sees his life. I explained to him that in God’s eyes sin is sin. Where we seek to justify ourselves in our own eyes by placing sin in categories, God simply sees it all as being equal. Simply put, sin is the act of violating the laws of God (James 2:10). As we continued our conversation a bit more I began to see things in my own life in a slightly different manner.
Many Christians today make a big deal out of the body piercings and tattoos that many people have; we have all heard it preached from the pulpits that during the Old Testament times God had instructed the children of Israel that Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD (Leviticus 19:28). What we seem to forget – the very reason that God does not want us to mark our bodies – is the exact reason that Paul reminds us in I Corinthians – our bodies are not our own, but have been bought with a price. Just as Christians claim that tattoos, piercings, and the use of illegal drugs are all sins that destroy the body, so is neglecting our physical health. Obesity, anorexia, and bulimia are ever present in our churches yet they are rarely mentioned.
This is one of the many reasons that the lost will claim that our churches are filled with hypocrites. We easily condemn those that are lost based on outward appearances but yet tell ourselves that others need to judge us by what is in our hearts. Even Jesus warned those listening to him, And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye (Matthew 7:3-5).
When we set different standards for others, including the standards of physical appearance, categorization of “greater” and “lesser” sins we are actually committing what God has labeled as an abomination. Solomon, who had been given a great gift of wisdom by God, wrote that Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD (Proverbs 20:10). As Christians, we should not pass our own judgment on the lost or on Christians who are lingering after the flesh more harshly than we view our own shortcomings. In the eyes of God, sin is sin – sexual immorality, murder, obesity, affairs, and even “white lies” – are all equal in the eyes of God. They are all open rebellion against God’s righteousness. We also must understand that while God hates all sin, he also has made a way for all sinners to be redeemed through his love (John 3:16).
