God Cares About Your Body: A Christian View of Health and Stewardship

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A Divided Trust

We all know the drill. We surrender our lives to Christ. The next step is to grow in grace and tell others. We dutifully read our Bibles and pray. We go to church. We memorize the Roman Road. We do our best to live out our faith everywhere we go. This is what is known as sanctification, or growing to be more like Christ and surrendering all to him.

But here’s a question we don’t often ask: Do you trust God with your health—or just your soul? We say we’ve surrendered everything, but when it comes to our physical bodies, many of us feel confused, guilty, or silent. What role does our health play in the Christian life? Does God even care about our physical struggles?

We know we’re told to let go of the things of the world. The world tells us that physical beauty defines our worth. The Bible says God looks at the heart. The world tells women their purpose is to attract men. The Bible says our purpose is to glorify and serve God. We reject these lies, as we should.

But our physical health feels like a different category. Do we ignore it and focus only on the spiritual? Do we burn ourselves out with working and serving, and tell ourselves that we will sleep when we’re dead? Or do we hyperfocus on our health, elevating clean eating and exercise to the same spiritual plane as love, peace, and kindness?

The Breakdown

These are questions that have been troubling Christians since the early church. The concept of dualism—that the only thing that really matters is our souls—is something that still creeps into our thinking today. We unintentionally feed this when we ignore the reality of our physical bodies and focus only on the spiritual.

But as always, we can also overcorrect. We subtly—or not so subtly—suggest to Christians who are sick or struggling that their physical ailments are the result of sin. And even if our theology is correct and we realize physical illness is a result of living in a fallen world, we can still make Christians struggling with health issues feel somehow “less than.”

It is true that Christ can give us peace that surpasses all understanding. Christ sustains some Christians with a supernatural peace in the face of illness that defies explanation apart from Him. But I’ve seen far too many Christians feel forced to keep their “game face” on. This grieves me, even though I’m sure that far too many times I have been insensitive or flippant about a serious physical concern.

God Cares About Our Bodies, Not Just Our Souls

The thing that made Jesus most famous when he walked on earth was his healing of the sick. People flocked from miles away to see him. People crawled through crowds and lowered their friends down from the rafters (Matthew 9:1-8). We are so familiar with these stories that we sometimes cause us to lose sight of their impact. But imagine for a moment if Christ’s ministry on earth occurred today. Do you have a friend who you would lower down from the rafters toward him? Do you know anyone who would crawl through a crowd to touch his garment? I do. God has blessed me with good health right now, but I underwent two surgeries last year I would have gladly avoided

I am grateful for modern medicine and the help it brings, but it is an imperfect cure at best. Sometimes it is merely a lessening of the symptoms. Our physical health is important, and God cares about it very much. Although the full healing won’t come this side of heaven, he cares for us “spirit, soul, and body” (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

Health Is Not the Ultimate Goal, But It’s Not Irrelevant

One of the problems of middle age is the number of mistakes you have to look back on. I am afraid that when I was young and healthy, I tended to get this wrong. I would read Bible verses about the “sin of the flesh” and the fact that our bodies were wasting away and liken our physical bodies to a paper plate: something that is useful for a short time, and then would be discarded like garbage.

Our bodies are wasting away, and if we die before Jesus returns, they are certainly going to decompose. But our physical bodies are not insignificant. They are being planted to be resurrected on the final day. We will not spend eternity as disembodied spirits. God will give us a resurrected body. Our physical bodies are broken, but they will be redeemed (1 Corinthians 15:42–44).

Understanding Christian Body Stewardship

We wouldn’t give much care to a paper plate. We are just going to toss it in the trash, anyway. But if we are guests at our friend’s house, and they hand us a meal on their china, we are going to be more careful.

Our bodies, like our money, our time, and our possessions, are gifts from God that we are called to steward. He gives us different levels of wealth, talents, and health. He doesn’t call us to be as rich (or as poor) as our neighbor. He calls us to wisely use what He has given us. He has blessed some of us with abundant health and energy. We should be grateful for that gift and use it to his glory. Some of us struggle with health issues throughout our lives. We have to trust the good God who holds us and who is with us in the struggle.

Faith for Today, Not Just Eternity

The most important thing in life and death is trusting Jesus. He is the only thing that can save us, and he will make all things new. He is God in the brain fog and the biopsy results. He is God in anxiety and depression. He remains God when we lose our jobs and when moth and rust destroy our earthly possessions.

Trusting God with your health doesn’t mean never grieving or fearing, but it does mean you will never carry it alone. There’s no perfect formula for honoring God with your health. But there is abundant grace for every season—weakness included. Your health journey probably doesn’t look like your friend’s, but you are loved, known, and cared for by a God who knows the end from the beginning. And his care is for the whole of who you are.