CARE OF THE BODY
CARE OF THE BODY
There is a wide difference between self-indulgence, which whatever form it takes is a hidden and deeply working evil, and care of the body; and yet we often confound them: in attending to the latter, we may fall into the former; while, on the other hand, in seeking [p. 167] to avoid self-indulgence, there may be culpable neglect of the body. We are never right about anything unless we begin with Christ, and having begun with Him we keep up with our beginning, as a river does with its source.
Now if we begin with the sense of the body being the Lord’s, we shall order and care for it with reference to Him. If I am honest in saying that it is His, I am not righteous if I do not preserve it for Him as His property. To please self would be to depart from my source; to please Him would always maintain my connection with my source, and I should flow on in the channel which He had appointed for me, useful on the right hand and on the left, and continuous in usefulness.
I do not think or see that the Lord makes weak bodies strong ones, but when there is a real sense of the claim that He has on the body, there will be a watchful care not to subject it to any tax beyond what the Lord might require, and in every way to keep it fit and ready for use. In self-indulgence there is often a neglect of the body for some temporary gratification, and an overweening consideration for it another time. I feel there is nothing in which we more betray our insubjection to the Lord than in the way the body is treated; over-driven or over-taxed at one time to obtain some pleasure or profit, and again nursed and considered as if there were nothing else to be considered for, either by oneself or others. Our ways are not even. I believe the weakly body might be so tended that it would not be unable to flow on in the appointed channel. When a river ceases to flow there is loss to the locality, and when the body is unable to act, one’s proper services are stopped. There is no doubt that we require to be weakened in our bodies by sickness at times, but weakness is no hindrance to God’s power; unruliness is. I remark that in 1 Corinthians, where it is the unruliness of the flesh which is the subject, then the death of Christ is pressed - Christ crucified, no flesh to glory [p. 168] in His presence. But in 2 Corinthians, where it is the weakness of man, even death, which is before the mind, there it is to be the bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus that the life of Jesus may be manifest in the body.
I feel that we have not sufficiently regarded the body as the only medium now in which to set forth the life of Jesus; and that the body, which in nature expressed all our vanity and tempers, should now express the beauty and grace of Christ, is to me most wonderful and admirable. Nay, there is not a grace which appears in our bodies now, transient though it be, which shall not be established in perennial lustre at the judgment-seat of Christ; so that it is not only that we have rendered to our Lord what was His own, which is but simple righteousness on our part, but in every way that we do so, we ensure a positive gain for ourselves. Any care or discipline which will enable the river to flow on freshly every day (how beautiful to see the streams of life flowing from weak beings like us, but such is His grace) is right and proper; nay, our duty; but it must be ever remembered that the one object is that the river may flow on unhinderedly. If I look at Christ in His death, there is no place for me to glory but in Him, and if I feel myself in death, which is the lowest point of weakness, my relief and my strength is seeing Him in glory; and as I see Him, being transformed into the same image.