What do Borrowed Cars and Bodies Have in Common?

I know the title of this post sounds like the start of a bad dad joke. It’s not, I promise. There’s no time for jokes up in here. This is serious! We’re talking about our health here!! Okay, in reality though, there are many more important things to concern ourselves with than our health. In light of eternity, in light of Jesus saving you from the just punishment of eternal death, what I eat for dinner doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Truth be told, it’s much more important to be an evangelist for the Gospel than an evangelist for health. As followers of Christ, our number one passion should be learning how we can glorify God, and making disciples of Jesus. But does that give us the excuse to just trash our bodies while we wait for the coming of Jesus? Does that mean we can eat whatever our pallet is craving at any given moment, especially when we know what we are craving is bad for us? No, of course not. I’m sure no follower of Jesus would agree with that. We know we need to be temperate and all things (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).

But let’s take it one step further. Maybe you don’t eat the worst foods all the time but you don’t really see the point in learning about health or making some diet changes that you know you should probably make. Let me draw an analogy. Say someone graciously gives you a car to borrow. They said it’s yours to use until you no longer have need of it. Because it’s not your car, you are more likely to take greater care of it than if it was your own car. You’ll make sure it gets regular check-ups, you’ll try not to scuff it up, you’ll vacuum it out when it gets dirty, and you’ll wash it and fill it up with gas before you return it. We need to have the same mindset about our bodies. Our bodies are not our own. They are a temporary dwelling for our souls to carry out God‘s purposes while we are here on earth. And they aren’t just cheap rentals either. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says our bodies are temples. To fit with our analogy, they’re Teslas. Ferrari’s. F-150s if that’s your jam. Our bodies are INCREDIBLE! And they deserve incredible care. Let’s honor the One who let us borrow them by proactively maintaining them, getting regular tune-ups, and filling them with the best fuel!

On top of this, keeping the mindset that our bodies are not our own keeps our health from becoming our obsession. Even if someone let us borrow their Tesla for our whole life, we would still lack that pride in it because we know it’s not really ours. We couldn’t be all like, “Hey dude, check out my sweet ride!” without following it up with “Yeah, it’s not actually mine though.” It would honestly be a little humiliating! “Yeah, I couldn’t afford it myself…but my boss was super cool and hooked me up.” All that pride in your own accomplishments would turn into thanks for the one who gave it to you! It’s the same with our bodies. If someone compliments you on your physique, all you can say is, “Thanks, it’s all because God gave me this incredible body that can do cool things.” We shouldn’t be proud of anything except our King who saved us and loves us with incomprehensible care. Nothing we do deserves any praise (even those gym gains). What does deserve praise is our God who masterfully built our bodies to thrive on the fuel He created for us in nature. So let’s do the best we can to steward the “rental body” God has given us so that we can return it pure and undefiled before Him.