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Marriage: traditional or redefined. Gender: fixed or malleable. Unborn babies: prolife or prochoice. Sexuality: fidelity or immorality. End of life: support or euthanize. Disabled: valuable or expendable. Technology: tool or transhumanism.
The purpose behind this post is to help Christians understand how the human body shapes today’s most important political and cultural debates. Each issue is briefly filtered through Scripture to demonstrate the implications of a biblical worldview, as your take on these hot button topics are primarily shaped by 2 theological realities revealed in God’s Word:
The Creator/creature distinction
A theology of the body
First, the Creator/creature distinction says that there is a Holy God who is all powerful, knowing, and good that completely transcends his creation and whose Word is fully authoritative over our lives. In response, his creatures humbly acknowledge his existence, submit to his authority, obey Scripture, and order their lives accordingly.
If you hold this view, it’s a good chance that you’re a Christian who recognized your sin debt against your holy Creator. You confessed it and believed that Jesus Christ bore the penalty for your sin, rose from the dead, and was raised with God. Now, you live surrendered to him and his ways, knowing that your ultimate purpose is found in the One who created you.
The second theological reality is a theology of the body (TOB), which says your physical existence is not accidental, but purposefully designed by the Creator’s plans for your life (Acts 17:24-28). The Apostle Paul best summarizes a TOB in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 to Christians who didn’t think very highly of their bodies. Paul explained why their bodies mattered and then commanded them to pursue an embodied holiness because God expects our whole lives, including what we do with our bodies, to glorify him.
A TOB gets political when we recognize that living by the Creator’s plans for his creatures means accepting his design for our bodies–what we believe about and do with them.
Consider the following issues and why a Creator/creature distinction and a theology of the body are important to each issue.
Marriage
Christians hold to traditional marriage because the union of husband and wife in marriage is far more than a social contract or emotional bond. It reflects the complementarity of male and female bodies, the possibility of procreation, and ultimately, the covenantal relationship between Christ and his Church (Ephesians 5:31-32).
Redefining marriage separates the institution from the physical realities of male and female bodies that God created to under gird it. Man and woman are united in marriage (Genesis 2:24-25), as the Creator intended for his creatures. Thus, a TOB recognizes that the body reveals God’s purposeful design for male and female relationships.
Gender
Christians understand that gender, more appropriately biological sex, is fixed prior to birth. It is not arbitrarily assigned or irrelevant to one’s identity. Humans are embodied beings, composed of immaterial and material, such that the body is not separate from personhood.
Biological sex is therefore determined by the Creator, not by the creature’s self-determined efforts (Genesis 1:27). Internal, psychological feelings are meant to be filtered through external, biological realities. Thus, a TOB teaches that the body is an essential aspect of our existence.
Unborn babies
Christians protect unborn babies holding that life begins from the moment of conception. Size and development have no bearing on the child’s significance growing in the mother’s womb.
The developing creature is intricately known by his Creator, whose body and days are carefully formed according to his plans (Psalm 139:13-16). And the mother, also a creature, is to protect the life the Creator created inside her. Thus, a TOB protects the child’s existence as he grows inside the mother’s body that is specifically designed to carry and nurture a child.
Sexuality
Christians believe any sexual immorality: sex outside of marriage, pornography, adultery, cohabitation etc., erode God’s good design for marital, sexual union. Such behaviors twist this purpose, making bodies about self-gratification and objects for consumption.
When creatures disconnect their sexuality from their Creator’s design, the body’s significance is lost, one’s own body and another’s.  The sexually immoral become victims to dysfunction and enslavement, trading what is good for what is depraved (1 Corinthians 6:18). Thus, a TOB upholds the giving of one’s body to a spouse in a faithful, loving marriage.
End of Life
Christians recognize the dignity of all people, even those who are aging, suffering, and dying. As the Creator holds power over life, his creatures accept his purposes and timing in death.
When the end is near, the value of a human being does not become subjective. Nor ought it be determined by another finite being (Ecclesiastes 8:8). Thus, a TOB maintains that the body’s vitality will cease but only under God’s authority.
Disabled
Christians uphold the worth of those with disabilities knowing that human dignity isn’t dependent upon independence or ability. Creatures may assign value to functional and cognitive abilities, but the Creator establishes unquestionable significance by creating humans in his image.
Disabilities are part of this fallen world but will one day be no more. Thus, a TOB understands the current body is temporary and subject to suffering but hopes in a transformed, glorified body like Christ’s (Philippians 3:20-21).
Technology
Christians utilize technology as a tool, not a means of avoiding death. In transhumanism, melding human consciousness and technology, the finite creature subverts the infinite Creator’s design by perverting the imago Dei and pursuing a transcendence that God alone possesses (Isaiah 40:28).
Seeking to eliminate human limitations through technological means redefines life itself and generates a manmade, disembodied consciousness. Thus, a TOB acknowledges the body will die but be raised for an embodied, eternal life with God.
Underlying these political and cultural issues is a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? A theology of the body provides the answer and affirms that our bodies are part of our Creator’s plans, reveal His design for humanity, and possess inherent dignity and purpose.
By standing firm on these biblical truths, Christians recognize these issues are not merely political concerns but a matter of honoring God’s good design for his male and female image-bearers. Thus, we creatures submit to our Creator, trust his ways, and live for him in humble gratitude.
For further reading on these topics, see:Â
- Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman
- 5 Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age by Rosaria Butterfield
- The Digital Public Square by Jason Thacker
- Disability and the Gospel by Michael Beates
- What does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality by Kevin Deyoung, God
- God, Marriage, and the Family by Andreas Kostenberger
- Total Truth and Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey
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