Exercise can lower your risk of heart disease, increase your energy levels, improve your mood and self-confidence, improve your memory, help you sleep better, and slow down the aging process. And yet, most of us still find many excuses for not exercising. This seems to be especially true in the church, where dedication to exercise is often confused with vanity. The truth is, Scripture encourages us to be physically active in exercise. Considering the many benefits of exercise, it is obvious that God created us to be active, that we were created to move.
Many people are familiar with 1 Corinthians 6: 10-20, in which the Apostle Paul exhorts us to care for our bodies.
"Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit that is in you, that you have God and that you are not yours? 20 Because you have been bought for a price: glorify God in your body." (1 Corinthians 6: 19-20 NAS95S)
While many have heard that this verse used to teach that we should avoid promiscuity, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, we are seldom taught that this verse is not just a warning to avoid these activities, but an exhortation to be proactive in caring for our bodies We must make sure we keep our bodies in top condition at all times. That means that we must glorify God with the food we eat to feed our bodies, but also that we must do physical exercise. In fact, in his first letter to Timothy, การออกกำลังกาย.
"For physical exercise you take advantage of a little, but piety is profitable for all things, promising the life that is now and that which is to come." (1 Timothy 4: 8 NKJV)
Some people take Paul's words that bodily exercise benefits a little, but that piety pays off for all things as an abandonment of exercise, making them a convenient excuse for sitting. But that is not what Paul says. First, we have already seen in 1 Corinithians that God is very concerned about what we do with our bodies. Second, we have to consider the context.
"But reject the fables of the old and profane, and exercise yourself toward godliness. Because bodily exercise benefits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, promising the life that is now and that which is to come." (1 Timothy 4: 7-8 NKJV)
Paul is commanding Timothy to reject the false teaching, which is spiritually damaging to us, and to exercise ourselves toward godliness. Paul then reaffirms the benefit of physical exercise to use it as an example of the greatest benefit of spiritual exercise. Body exercise, while beneficial in this life, will not result in eternal life. But it still benefits. I remember Jesus' instructions to the Pharisees.
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For decimating mint, dill and cumin, and you have neglected the most important provisions of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. "(Matthew 23:23 NAS95S)
It is not a case of "or / or" but of "both / and". We need to exercise physically and spiritually. To assume that Paul is teaching in 1 Timothy that Christians should not engage in physical exercise is to fall into the Gnostic heresy and ignore Paul's numerous references to the benefits of physical discipline and exercise.
Another fundamental rule for interpreting Scripture is that the original audience and the distance of time must be taken into account. Paul wrote these words to Timothy almost 2,000 years ago. Paul and Timothy lived in a time and culture where constant physical activity was the norm. Only in the last 100 years have labor-saving devices resulted in a drastic decrease in our daily physical activity. A recent study of Old Order Amish populations, which reject modern conveniences, showed that a very high level of activity is integrated into their daily lives. On average, the Amish participated in six times the physical activity performed by participants in a recent survey of 12 modernized nations.
"The Amish were able to show us how far we have fallen in the last 150 years or so in terms of the amount of physical activity we normally do," said David R. Bassett, Ph.D., FACSM, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and principal investigator of the study. "Their lifestyle indicates that physical activity played a critical role in keeping our ancestors fit and healthy."
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