Healthy Godliness

1 Timothy 4:7, 8 “But reject profane and old wives' fables, and exercise yourself rather to godliness. For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.”

Sometime in the early 1980's I was asked to teach a series to a special class on prevention. I was asked by some folks who were, by my definition of the time, fitness freaks. The clear expectation of me was that I would expound on the Scriptures as they relate to prevention of disease, as they relate to “health maintenance.” This passage from 1 Timothy was to be the key verse, of course, buttressed by the nutritional test that the “four Hebrew children” – Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego – proposed in Daniel 1. They were offered, you may recall the king's wine and delicacies, but preferred vegetables and water, and were found “ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers” who were in the kingdom.

Since that time, I have gone back to the 1 Timothy 4 passage and looked at it more carefully. The way this passage is used – in support of the modern concepts of physical exercise for Christians – is exactly the opposite of the Biblical emphasis. It is setting up a comparison in which bodily exercise comes off second best.

We live in a time of a tyranny of experts. My profession of medicine is, I am sad to say, tyrannizing the population in several ways. We have gradually come to believe in the U.S. that health is something that is in the power of medical experts. We scurry around watching our cholesterol, exercising, having prostate specific antigen blood tests done, Pap smears, and the like. The authorities, after all, have told us that these are the important things. They aren't really, in general, very important. The scientific evidence upon which such procedures as these stand as powerful for the  maintenance of life is tissue thin. Yet, we have in this nation sold ourselves into slavery as far as our health is concerned.

That which is more important for health, godliness, has been traded off for that which is not very powerful at all. The death rate is one apiece.


Excerpt from Westminster PCA talk