Our Bodies are Temples

In 2012, the sports world was shocked to discover that professional cyclist Lance Armstrong was discovered to be involved in using performance-enhancing drugs during his career.

I remember being shocked because it was common to see people wearing yellow “live strong” bracelets meant to support Lance and his career after he recovered from cancer. In my mind, He was someone who defied the odds, beat cancer, and took great care of his health and his body. To have someone who faced a disease that threatened their body and then intentionally harmed it by using drugs made no sense to me.

We get only one body, and God created our bodies to glorify and honor Him (Psalm 139). If God didn’t care about how we treated our bodies, why would He have spent time and energy creating such intricate and complex bodies that we still don’t completely understand how they work?

We all have things about our bodies that we wish were different, but we are called to care for them. Why? Because Christ reminds us that we have a job here on earth, and we can’t do it without honoring our bodies.

When we accept Christ, we receive the Holy Spirit inside us, and the Spirit lives within our bodies and souls. To harm our bodies is to harm the vessel that holds the Spirit of God. God also created us to be His hands and feet on earth, to share and care for His people. We cannot care for his people if we choose to hurt ourselves.

God desires us to view our bodies as temples outside of our calling here on earth. Temples are beautiful, strong, fortified and Holy places. So, the next time you are tempted to talk badly about your body or even harm your body, remember that you are slowly destroying a temple God created.