Audio Transcript
Do you worry that your pursuit of physical fitness is feeding your pride instead of honoring God? Today on Ask Pastor John, John Piper gives us three metrics to untangle our motivations when it comes to body image and to ensure our exercise exists to make him look strong.
But before we get to today’s episode, a quick programming note on where we’re headed this year. We sat down and looked at Pastor John’s full schedule for the year ahead and carved out space for 88 brand new episodes with him in the studio in 2026. We’re very grateful to get that precious time with him. Pastor John just turned eighty and still has wonderful life and energy for ministry, as his full schedule attests, and we pray this is true for many years to come. And if we meet here twice a week, that leaves sixteen slots for the year. With those, my plan is to take your excellent new questions coming into the inbox and match them to fitting responses from our archive, curating some of our best episodes from the past. And to be frank, this is one of the hopes we have for the trajectory of the podcast going forward, making good use of what we have and mixing those in along the way in 2026.
On Monday, Pastor John was in the studio with us to talk about motives in religious contexts. Today, we’re talking about exercise — a fitting topic for the start of the year with its resolutions, weight goals, and gym memberships. And today we have a question in the inbox from a listener named Avery, who lives in Austin, Texas. She writes:
“Dear Pastor John, I’m feeling conflicted of late, maybe convicted is the word. I spend a lot of time on fitness planning and meal prep, getting to the gym five days a week. I follow several influencers on Instagram for motivation. On the surface, it feels like I’m just stewarding the body God gave me, and I know discipline is a good thing. But if I’m being honest, it starts to feel a little empty sometimes. I worry that what started as a healthy habit is feeding my pride, and that my desire to be healthy is tangled up with the world’s intense pressure to look a certain way. I truly want to honor God in this, but it’s hard to untangle my motivations. How can I tell when my pursuit of physical fitness stops being good stewardship and crosses over into sinful self-glorification? Where is that line found in the Bible?”
Thank you, Avery. Here’s how Pastor John answered a very similar question in 2017.
From Stewardship to Self-Glory
I’ll put my answer in a sentence, and then I’ll try to unpack it for its implications. The discipline of the pursuit of physical fitness becomes sinful self-glorification when it is no longer pursued as a means of (1) overcoming our own sin, (2) serving others, and (3) glorifying Christ.
“Our aim at the gym is to be strong in a way that makes Jesus look strong.”
Now, this is a huge issue both for men and women in our culture, because hour after hour every day — through advertising and other media — we are being told that to be successful and happy, our bodies must have a certain appearance. So, whether we’re talking about the way we dress or the way we do our hair or the way we work out in order to be fit, the Christian needs to be clear about the way Jesus calls us to do this that makes us different from the world — and I think he does.
What I’m suggesting is that there are three ways to measure whether our pursuit of fitness is sinful or not. Those three ways are these:
- Is that pursuit a genuine desire to defeat sin in my own life?
- Is that pursuit of fitness a genuine desire to become more useful in serving the temporal and eternal good of others?
- Is my pursuit of fitness expressing a genuine desire to show that Christ is more valuable to me than my looks or my health or my reputation as disciplined?
So, let’s take a look at those one at a time.
1. Do you work out to kill sin?
Is your working out at the gym a strategy for overcoming sin in your life? I believe it can be. Paul said that he pummeled his body to keep it in subjection, because he knew that there were powerful temptations that come from the flesh to undermine his ministry (1 Corinthians 9:27). Now, laziness is one of them.
Over and over in the book of Proverbs, we are warned against being a sluggard. Proverbs 20:4: “The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing.” Proverbs 21:25: “The desire of the sluggard [the lazy bones] kills him, for his hands refuse to labor.” So, it is a good thing to exercise and eat and sleep in a healthy way, so as to subdue the enslaving impulses of the body, including laziness. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6:12, “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be [enslaved] by anything.” That’s any good thing or any bad thing. It is good to exercise in order to defeat the sin of laziness and the love of ease.
Now, as soon as I say that, every biblically mature saint realizes that Jesus also warned against boasting in that kind of self-discipline. He warned against loving the reputation of being a disciplined person:
And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast . . . (Matthew 6:16–17)
Fasting here really is any kind of self-denial, such as fasting from television — and so, “You don’t have a television, John Piper; whoa, you’re so proud of that, blah, blah, blah” — or fasting from ease, so you’re going to pump iron until you’re exhausted, or fasting from food, or whatever. Fasting stands here for any kind of self-discipline.
. . . when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:17–18)
So, yes, by all means, let’s be disciplined and self-denying in the pursuit of defeating sin in our own lives — and let us be ever alert to the deceitfulness of sin that causes us to boast in the very triumphs over sin, and thus turn triumph over sin into defeat by another sin. That’s how deceitful we are in our own hearts. Which leads now to the second way that we measure whether our pursuit of fitness is sinful.
2. Do you work out to serve others?
Is our pursuit of fitness owing to a genuine desire to become more useful in serving the temporal and eternal good of others? Are you aiming to be fit in order to be faithful? Are you aiming to be healthy in order to be helpful? Is your concern with your looks a concern to love other people better?
When the disciples argued about who was the greatest, Jesus said, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). In other words, instead of mirrors in the gym, there should be big signs on the wall, reading, “He who would be great must be the servant of all.” So, you want to be strong, you want to be fit, you want to be buff — are you going to use it to be a more faithful servant of people, or are you out to be seen by others? If you are, that’s a damnable attitude, and you’re in big trouble. That’s what Jesus would say — he did say it.
3. Do you work out to honor Christ?
Is the pursuit of fitness a genuine desire to show that Christ is more valuable to you than your looks or your health or your reputation for being disciplined? Are you seeking to make Christ look great, or only yourself?
“It is good to exercise in order to defeat the sin of laziness and the love of ease.”
Here’s what Paul said in Ephesians 6:10: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” In other words, it’s true strength when we are seeking to be strong in the strength of Christ — not strength in ourselves but strength in the Lord. Our aim at the gym is to be strong in a way that makes Jesus look strong. We’ve got to figure that out, or we’re going to be idolaters, we’re going to be vainglorious. Here’s the way Peter put it in 1 Peter 1:24–25:
All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord remains forever.
In the gym, the glory that people are seeking is like grass. It withers; it falls — believe me. I have been jogging regularly since I was 22. It is not a fountain of youth, folks. You’re going to sag; you’re going to be wrinkled; you’re going to be splotchy; you’re going to be scaly. You’re not going to be pretty or cool. And if you have invested your life in that, oh, you will look pathetic, like all those older folks in Phoenix with their ridiculous tans and their sagging, wrinkled skin. It’s just ridiculous.
“The word of the Lord remains forever,” and that word says, “Work out faithfully.” That is, work out at the gym to defeat sin in your own life, and work out at the gym to become more useful in serving the temporal and eternal good of others, and work out at the gym — yes, you can — to show that Christ is more valuable, more precious to you than your looks or your health or your reputation for being so disciplined.
