Body & SoulSample

Daily Glory and Future Glory

We don’t just live for the present; that’s short-sighted. And we don’t just hold on for heaven; that’s missing out on how God wants us to live right now.

Our lives are made up of both daily and future glory.

The daily glory: even in our human, compromised bodies, living with a sense of the coming resurrection, as we are daily being made new by the new morning mercies of the Lord. In this, we show the glory of Jesus in the way we operate to bring glory to Him.

The future glory: being alive with Jesus in our resurrected bodies—our complete and perfected bodies.

A lot of us may understand that we will have future glory in heaven in our resurrected bodies, but we fail to see how we live present, daily glory in our bodies and how those two realities are related.

As we understand a whole body theology, issues like gluttony, self-care, sex, and others begin to come under a different perspective. We realize our whole body theology drives everything from goals to lifestyle.

We are designed to image God, our Creator. As believers, we not only image Him, we are living, breathing temples where the Holy Spirit dwells. We function as such—striving to give Him glory in our thoughts and actions. Our purpose is to be disciples and make disciples, using our physical bodies to work together as the body of Christ to make Him known to the world, embodying the fruit of the Spirit.

It’s important to see the shift, because for a lot of us a lack of change has been centered not around poor willpower or bad genes but around a lack of true, integrated, start to finish biblical rootedness in how and for what we were even created! I also want you to see that many of these feelings and actions in our bodies are not sinful in and of themselves. We can bring glory to God by treating our bodies, including our outward appearances and inward health, in a way that befits image bearers—temples of the One true God.

God created us to be. Be holy, like He is holy (1 Pet. 1:16). Be consecrated to Him (Lev. 20:7). Be His witnesses (Acts 1:8). The whole secular culture of image and aesthetics is not about being; it is about doing to gain significance or reach a certain achievement or goal. We may even talk about getting healthy versus losing weight for instance (a much better focus), thinking we have perfectly corrected our viewpoint, but that goal can still go sideways because humans can take any good thing and distort it. Health goals can still go awry if not grounded in a biblical whole body theology.

For too long, friend, we’ve been trying to love our bodies without understanding our bodies. No wonder we don’t love ourselves well or understand our God-given purpose!

Loving our bodies isn’t about body positivity or even self-acceptance. It’s about operating with a body theology that drives the way we see every part of us, from the inside-out from now to eternity. Future glory and daily glory. A whole body theology rather than a behavior modification lifestyle. This changes everything.

Your body may have been through the wringer—years of yo-yo dieting to immobilization to thyroid issues to trauma and abuse—but it was created for glory and it was meant for resurrection.

Your future resurrection is coming. There, your “lowly” body will be free from pain, limitation, and imperfection forever. But those daily mercies are yours today too; in that way, resurrection is yours every day by way of forgiveness and redemption from sin and shame. You have a new opportunity to start, even today, honoring your body differently. It’s never too late. Don’t believe that you cannot overcome this through the power of Christ, even if you never have before.

God created your body for so many amazing, good things—in design, function, and purpose.

Read 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 and consider how you can live this day glorifying God with how you live in your body and soul, and thank Him for the promise of future glory for all eternity.

For more of this study by Lisa Whittle, visit lifeway.com/bodyandsoul .