The Body Shapes the Soul

Ten thousand miles.

As close as I can tell, that’s what I ran in the past decade. Those miles track through multiple countries on several continents over all kinds of terrain and in every kind of weather. I’ve lost count of how many shoes I’ve worn through. It’s safe to say I’ve spent a lot of time putting one foot in front of the other.

I did a chunk of that running before Christ captured my heart, but most of those miles came after. This raises the question: Why spend so much time exercising your body when your soul matters more? Why log ten thousand miles on your feet (not to mention the countless hours I’ve spent in the gym) when you could have spent that time on your knees? Or, to make the question a bit more Pauline, if physical training is of some value but godliness far more, why bother working out the body?

To begin, body or soul is a false dichotomy. As Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians 9:24–27, physical fitness and spiritual fitness don’t have to be either-or; they’re best as both-and. The body and soul have an inseparably reflexive relationship: the body affects the soul, and the soul affects the body. God created us to glorify him by enjoying him, and the body is the soul’s training partner in the pursuit of spiritual pleasures. In his recent book, A Little Theology of Exercise, David Mathis explains this beautifully:

I want my life to center on glory and joy — God’s glory in and through me, and my joy in and through him. I come to the topic of exercise unashamedly in pursuit of my joy in God. I exercise my body for the sake of my soul. I am seeking to make physical exercise serve spiritual joy in God. (48)

Mathis highlights a host of ways exercise facilitates satisfaction in God. Perhaps the most significant to me over the years has been that fitness increases my capacity to enjoy God by giving me new categories to know God and his design for the Christian life. Exercise has become a spiritual training ground, a practice field, that strengthens my will and shapes my soul.

Consider just three of these categories, framed as exhortations that my body speaks to my soul through exercise. Perhaps they will move you to move.

1. Know Pleasure in Pain

Few things help me know pleasure in pain like exercise. Burning lungs, aching arms, legs that feel like lead — training your body hurts. At every turn, physical fitness involves suffering of one kind or another. And yet that pain is both the pathway to joy and is itself strangely enjoyable. Exercise creates the category that great joy often comes as a result of great effort.

In other words, no pain, no gain. Pushing my body through hard workouts and seeing the benefits reinforces the spiritual truth that suffering yields reward. Paul knew this lesson well. He could have coined the phrase “no pain, no gain”: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). As David Mathis summarizes, “Exertion produces reward” (69).

But not only do long miles help me see joy on the far side of pain; they also help me know pleasure in pain. Anyone who’s stuck with exercise long enough to get past the New-Year’s-resolution, pure-willpower phase knows the sorrowful-yet-always-rejoicing flavor of working out. Exercise is not all pleasure. On the surface, there is pain and sweat and heavy breathing. But a bit deeper, exercise coaches us to count it all joy because trials often pave the pathway to maturity and strength.

Exercise has steeled my will to endure difficulty for the joy set before me. The hedonistic discipline I practice in my body is contagious to my soul.

2. Look to Little Gains

I recently tore my meniscus. It wasn’t a bad injury, but it left me a bit despondent. I knew what I was capable of, but I couldn’t perform to that potential. So, I began the arduous process of rehab, starting with some simple stretches and what felt like “weak sauce” exercises.

For the first few weeks, I remained frustrated. I wanted to run ten miles, and I couldn’t walk one without pain. However, I soon noticed that I was improving almost daily. I still couldn’t run, but the stretches and exercises I had struggled with at first gradually became easier. Compared to what I wanted to be, my progress felt meaningless, but compared to what I had been just weeks before, my progress was measurable. I learned to look to the little gains, to not despise baby steps.

“God created the human body to move — and not only to move but to move often and to move well.”

Exercise teaches this lesson everywhere. The day-to-day gains, the practice-to-practice skill improvements, may seem worthless compared to the final goal, but they are the real barometer of growth. Parallels to the spiritual life abound. Sanctification is a day-by-day, practice-to-practice kind of process. If you compare yourself only to the godlike being who will one day shine like the sun and judge angels, you will be sorely disappointed. But measure your progress against last-month-you and prepare to be pleasantly surprised by the Holy Spirit’s slow rehab. The journey further up and further in requires one step at a time (Philippians 3:13–14).

Yet we need not spiritualize this lesson too quickly. After all, we will have bodies forever. Need I remind you that our Lord has a physical body right now? A man sits on the throne of heaven, and his resurrected frame pulses with the hope that we too will have a body like his (Philippians 3:20–21). We are not only embodied now; we will be embodied for eternity. God’s creative masterpiece of the body will not be thrown away but perfected.

This means wielding our bodies well is preparation for heaven. The little gains matter. We use our bodies with training wheels now so we can one day enjoy the full freedom of the spiritual body. Each of us must be faithful with the little we have been given before we will be entrusted with much more (Luke 19:17). C.S. Lewis rightly frames the stakes:

Who will trust me with a spiritual body if I cannot control even an earthly body? These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining, and world-shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King’s stables. Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else — since He has retained His own charger — should we accompany Him? (Miracles, 266)

Exercise teaches us to look to the little gains and not despise the day of small things. Daily discipline — spiritual and physical — is the pathway to our eternal prize (1 Corinthians 9:24–27).

3. Marvel Through Strain

If you want to see how well something is designed, you need to put it through its paces. If I wanted to see how impressive Henry Ford’s Model T was, I’d take the car for a spin. I’d push it to its limits and see how it handles in challenging conditions. I’d race it against other cars. By experiencing the Model T’s full capabilities, especially through strain, Ford’s creativity would be put on fuller display.

In the same way, when we exercise, we take God’s most marvelous design for a spin, and we should be amazed. We should marvel as we put the body through strain. God created the human body to move — and not only to move but to move often and to move well. Therefore, our exercise should be laced with wonder at God’s creative glory.

As a partaker of this wonder, Mathis observes, “The human body in its divine design is capable of developing remarkable skills through practice and conditioning” (6). For instance, did you know that a fit human being can run down an antelope? It’s called “persistence hunting.” Although the antelope is faster initially, God designed its metabolism for short bursts. However, he knit together the human body with both fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscles. Humans have the endurance advantage, so they can literally run down an antelope over time. Keep that in mind the next time you jog around your block, and marvel.

G.K. Chesterton once said, “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder” (Tremendous Trifles, 7). Surely this applies preeminently to the human body. Many millions of muscle fibers work together every time you take a step. Even moving your hand to pick up a weight displays the staggering brilliance of God. Sir Isaac Newton did not lack this wonder: “In the default of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.”

My body teaches my soul to assume a posture of wonder. In exercise, I see that I am indeed “fearfully and wonderfully made”; through strain, I can say, “Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well” (Psalm 139:13–14). Mathis points out that, though fallen and groaning to be renewed, glory pervades the body’s design:

Not only is the glory of our Creator revealed in the creation around us — the skies, the seas, the mountains, the plains, and all the animal kingdom — but we ourselves, we creatures, also proclaim his glory. Right under our noses — in fact, our very eyes, ears, and noses — are even far more striking evidences of the brilliance and skill and wisdom of our designer and maker who is God himself. (22)

Looking back on how my body has shaped my soul through exercise, ten thousand miles seems a small price to pay. In every step and every rep, the body says to the soul, Know pleasure in pain. Look to little gains. Marvel through strain. And if we are attentive, those miles and movements will help us to enjoy God and his wonderful design for his image bearers. Why not take a jog down this avenue of joy?