What Is a Man?Sýnishorn

Created With a Male Body

Sometimes Christians say things like, “On earth, I’m not a body having a spiritual experience; I’m a spirit having a bodily experience.”

Or, at a funeral, we say, “This body is just the shell; the 'real' person is with the Lord.”

Or, a preacher says, “Don’t worry so much about your physical health; your spiritual health is far more important.”

Sayings like these paint a picture that our bodies are secondary, and our inner self (whether you call it the “soul” or “spirit”) is the “true” essence of who we are, with this body being discarded one day as our “true” self lives on forever with Jesus.

This common view is biblically incomplete.

The first member of humanity created was a man, and crucially, God created him with a physical body.

Before sin entered the world and messed everything up, man was still physical.

When Jesus, the perfect Man, walked the earth, He too had a physical male body, and in His resurrection, He maintains that physical body (John 20:24-29).

When we elevate our spiritual selves over our physical selves, we deny a crucial part of our masculinity. God made us with a physical body, and even if this body dies, in eternity, we will be resurrected with physical bodies forever (1 Corinthians 15:35-49).

There are various body types among men, of course—differences in height, weight, skin color, shape, etc., but there are physical commonalities across all men, across all cultures, across all times.

Men carry XY chromosomes, and have male genitalia, greater bone density and muscle mass than women, larger hearts and more complex blood chemistry, and higher testosterone levels, amongst other things.

Implied in some of these characteristics is a call for men to use this strength to protect and provide for those in need, inside our homes and outside of them.

Men can claim no superiority over female bodies, of course, which have God-given superpowers for creating life!

But we acknowledge the physical differences, which are so distinct that if a detective found blood at a crime scene, or an archeologist found a random shinbone that was 1,000 years old, the investigators can tell whether they came from a man or woman, because they are distinctly different.

God created men with a male body. This body is part of who we are, and it is part of us that will exist throughout eternity. Let us not be dismissive but embrace this crucial part of our masculinity.

Prayer: Lord, thank You for making me as I am. Thank You for the form that You have created for me. Help me to honour and steward well this male body You have created. Amen.

Reflection: Do you honour your male body as you should? If so, what helps you do that? If not, why not?