We receive powerful messages every day about losing weight and getting fit. Social media is filled with fitness influencers, diet trends, and before-and-after photos. It’s hard to argue that being healthy isn’t a good thing, so we often absorb these messages without thinking critically about them. But what if the modern messages about health are rooted in thinking that’s at odds with the Bible? What if Christians are called to approach food, fitness, and health differently? Consider these three ways the Bible calls Christians to think about dieting and fitness.
1. The problem isn’t weight—it’s what we worship
Most diets have as their goal an ideal weight or an ideal body. We’re taught to feel shame about how we look and given a standard of what we should achieve. When we accept that, we’re on our way to trading God’s grace for the law of our chosen diet or influencer. The scale becomes a tool for either condemnation or self-righteousness. According to the Bible, however, our problem isn’t just our weight, it’s what we worship.
The great challenge with food is to avoid making a god out of it. Paul warned of people whose “god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Philippians 3:19). Food becomes a god when it controls you—when you turn to it for comfort and reassurance or submit to its every whim. As Lindsey Carlson (My Struggle to Smash the Food Idol) put it, “When I decide to eat whatever I want, whenever I want, I crown food and place it on a throne meant only for Jesus.”
The Bible calls Christians to resist ungodly control: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12). Your cravings can’t control you and at the same time be submitted to the Lordship of Jesus. Mike Cosper (Grace-Motivated … Dieting?) described the contrast this way: “Food, like any good gift, should be enjoyed as a gift and avoided as a master.”
How would it change our approach to dieting and fitness if we stopped seeing the number on the scale or our appearance in the mirror as the problem and started examining our heart and our relationship with food? Idolatry can be confessed and forgiven while a scale can only condemn or approve.
2. The goal isn’t beauty—it’s faithfulness
In 2011, Rick Warren stood before his congregation and confessed that he had set a poor example for them in his health and invited them to join him in getting fit. While he set a goal of losing 90 pounds, he emphasized stewardship (food, fitness, focus, faith, and friends) rather than looks. Although he produced a book called, “The Daniel Plan,” his approach was about lifestyle rather than quick fixes.
When you recognize that how you eat can glorify God or dishonour Him, it places the emphasis rightly on our stewardship of what God has given us. Paul says, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). To make your goal to look skinny or get ready for the beach is to worship the god of thin waistlines instead of Jesus. Seeing your body as a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19) makes caring for your body a sacred task, not a secular one.
3. The motivation isn’t to impress others—it’s to please God
Anyone can do the right thing for the wrong reason. With dieting and fitness that’s all the more true. Whenever our goal is to earn people’s approval, we set ourselves up for frustration. Colossians 3:23 puts it this way, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” And when our focus is on pleasing people it isn’t on pleasing the Lord. As Paul reflected in Galatians 1:10, “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
What if we honoured God in our bodies because we sought to please Him? What if we were liberated from the pressure to train or refrain for fear of what people might think? What if our motivation wasn’t people who look “on the outward appearance, but the LORD [who] looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7)? The shift in motivation is everything because people are hard to please and the Lord is gentle and full of mercy.
We long to please Him in our bodies not in order to earn His acceptance, though, but with the conviction that He already accepts us through faith in Christ. Even dieting and fitness—and perhaps especially dieting and fitness—should be seen through the lens of grace and the gospel. We remind ourselves that “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy” (Titus 3:5), and so we rest in God’s good pleasure even as we struggle with food and our bodies.
Amie Patrick (Eating, Body Image, and the Gospel) expressed the relief that the gospel gave to her relationship with food like this: “When I finally began consistently resting in the reality that I truly had nothing to earn and nothing to prove, miraculously, food began to lose its power, and my body became a gift for which I was truly thankful.” The two results she experienced may be better indicators of our progress than a scale or a mirror: Is food losing its power over me? Do I see my body as a gift for which I am truly thankful?”
As you consider your approach to dieting and fitness, ask yourself whether the gospel is shaping your thinking. When it does, you experience freedom, rest, and joy in God's goodness.
In awe of Him,
Paul
