Have you ever thanked God after a good bowel movement that your body is “self-cleaning” on the inside? We often spend hours with soaps, shampoos, skin care and hygiene products to “spiff up” the outside of our bodies. But true health is mostly on the inside. It is the same with our walk in this life. We want the outside to reflect the beauty on the inside. We want to be “inside out.”
Our inner health has much to do with diet, exercise, and attitude. In fact, there are “six doctors” that can help us to stay healthy. Here is a cute little song that I wrote about them. Paul encouraged Timothy to keep his body healthy.
1 Timothy 4:8:
For bodily exercise profiteth little[for a short time]….
Taking care of our physical bodies IS important. But we only have them for a short time while here on earth. There is another kind of exercise that lasts eternally.
1 Timothy 4:7,8:
…exercise thyself rather unto godliness.…godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.
Godliness is spiritual fellowship with our heavenly Father through Jesus Christ, our Lord. It has promise of our lives now, and of our future life in a new spiritual body when Christ returns for us.
1 John 1:3
…truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.
Jesus talked about the inside and outside with some religious people who had it all backwards.
Matthew 23:25-28:
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
They even had the spiritual gall to accuse Jesus and his disciples of being evil because they didn’t wash their hands a certain way. Jesus confronted their “outside in” way of thinking and taught his disciples how to think properly.
Matthew 15:18-20:
Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught [through the bowels and into the sewer]?
But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.
For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.
People should be diligent to care for the inside of their physical body and not merely adorn the outside. And we as born-again believers, should spiritually keep our hearts pure and in fellowship with our Father. Remember that all good things are through Christ.
1 Corinthians 8:6:
But to us there is but one God, the Father, of [Greek ek, out of] whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by [Greek dia, through] whom are all things, and we by him.
Let’s accept God’s goodness to us through His Son. We can show the beauty of “Christ in” us on the outside as we walk in God’s power, wisdom, love, and might. Amen!
