Finish this statement for me. Proverbs 29:18 says that, “Where there is no vision, the people __________.“ Yes, well done. The people perish, in the memorable words of the King James translators. Does anyone know the second half of that particular proverb? Where there is no vision, the people perish, but blessed is he who keeps the Law (God’s Torah).

I would like to share a biblical perspective on the body, wholeness, and holiness. My thesis is this: The Body of Christ is, quite literally, perishing due to a lack of understanding, revelation, and vision. It is physically perishing because, as believers in Jesus, we have failed to see the Bible’s view of the importance, even the sanctity, of the physical body.

Confused views and conflicting concepts regarding our physical bodies can lead us to conform to the values of this world rather than the values of the kingdom of God. And I would remind you that the kingdom of God is not of this world. Which is to say, it is a different system. One with a distinct orientation in value, perspective, and approach.

The world is diseased, distressed, and dying. And the Body of Messiah, which is to be in but not of the world, for the most part, is equally diseased, distressed, and dying.

I do not believe it is the biblical mandate. Nor do I believe we honor God in that way.

We need, therefore, in order to make course corrections, a new vision. Or, more accurately said, a renewed revelation. The word translated as “vision” in Proverbs 29:18 is the Hebrew word chazon. It literally means a “seeing” or a “revelation.” Without a biblical revelation, God’s people go astray; they cast off restraints; they perish. We need new revelation and fresh insight into what it means to truly have and live a biblical lifestyle.

More specifically, I want to discuss how to live redemptively in this world, particularly in relation to our bodies—what we put into them and how we use them. What I propose to you is that the Body of Christ stands in desperate need of a theology that is truly pro-life. Yes, it is crucial that we take stands on abortion and on euthanasia in that modern sense of being “pro-life.” But I mean far more than just that. We are not only against death, we are for life. Our Messiah came to give us life!

We need a theology that is pro-health. One that has a comprehensive biblical view of wholeness. And wholeness, as we will see, is entailed in a proper doctrine of holiness. The Bible calls us to be faithful with respect to our bodies: For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (2 Cor 6:16).

We are called to be stewards of His temple.

To achieve this, we need to establish a solid basis. Because without a proper foundation, the house built upon it will not be secure. Or to be more philosophical, if you do not start with the proper premises, you cannot derive the proper or accurate conclusions and requisite actions. So let me begin with something that may strike you as a little dry or intellectual, but it is, in fact, vitally important. I call it the war of worldviews.

Briefly, let us identify three competing worldviews. I will summarize them for the sake of time and simplicity. First, the materialistic; second, the dualistic; and third, the biblical (properly understood from its Hebraic perspective).

The Materialistic Worldview

Simply put, materialism is the view that matter is all and therefore all that matters. There is no supernatural realm, only the natural realm. Graphically, we could depict materialism by drawing a large circle representing matter. This is all that there is.

From the human point of view, what counts most—what really matters, so to speak—is pleasure, possessions, and power. We desire pleasure from our experiences, and we tend to seek out those experiences that give us pleasure. We are obsessed with possessions, emphasizing acquisitions as the way to happiness, security, and wholeness. We manipulate others for selfish ends, driven by the lust for power.

In this worldview, the body is a marvel of mechanistic configuration. It is essentially a complexity of material configuration that becomes our primary identity. Who we are is defined in terms of our bodies. We glorify, therefore, the youthful, the muscular, the handsome, the attractive body. How many of our favorite movie stars, both male and female, have had multiple plastic surgeries to maintain their beautiful appearance? The body is maintained, but for selfish reasons such as power, satisfaction, and influence. The driving force behind a materialistic worldview is Hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure.

This viewpoint has and continues to influence the Body of Christ today, more than we might think. Why, for example, do so many television evangelists have coiffed hairdos and the finest suits? Why do they flash their gold watches, drive the fanciest cars, and live in opulent mansions? Because that impresses so many in the Church. Why? Because they are operating out of a materialistic worldview.

The Dualistic Worldview

This second way of viewing the world predates the New Testament. It exerted enormous influence on the early Church Fathers and continues to affect your theology today. A dualistic worldview posits that reality is composed of both matter and spirit. We would draw a second circle, tangential to the first (representing matter), not overlapping but just touching. This represents the spiritual world.

Dualism was expressed eloquently and with great sophistication by the philosopher Plato. It is often called platonic dualism. The influence of dualism, in my judgment, is far more pernicious upon the Church than even materialism. Materialism, everybody pretty much recognizes. Dualism, we don’t. In fact, we have incorporated it into our very theological premises. Justin Martyr, for example, a Church Father, proclaimed Plato was a Christian before Christ and extolled his philosophical system of dualism. He was not alone.

Again, dualism says that reality is composed of two realms, the material and the spiritual. And the spiritual is higher, pure, and eternal. The material is lower, corrupt, and imperfect. The point is they are separate, of two totally different natures. One is good, one is bad. The spiritual is the realm of the divine in opposition to the material realm, which is human, carnal, evil.

We will discuss the third worldview shortly, but I would like to note here that the dualistic worldview is not the one presented in the Bible. It is masquerading as the truth. And if you have this view that the spiritual is separate from and superior to the material, it has all kinds of practical consequences in how you live.

For example, it deemphasizes and devalues the material world, including your body. Why? Because what is truly real, important, good, and pure is the spiritual. And so the goal of life becomes to spend as much time as possible in the spiritual. The extreme examples of this, of course, are the early church fathers who mortified the flesh, went into the caves in the desert to try to totally do away with the physical and dwell perpetually in the spiritual, the real, the pure, as opposed to the impure, corrupt, and carnal physical.

In the dualistic worldview, a human is essentially a soul. A soul who happens to be incarnated in a clay prison called the body. To use the Greek idea, man is the ghost caught in the machine. As you can imagine, there are a myriad of philosophical variations and explanations, but the typical view is that in some way or another, man is essentially a soul that has become contaminated with the material. The desire, therefore, is to free yourself from the prison of the corrupt body. Either through philosophical insight or spiritual experience, the quest is to reach the pure realm of light, beauty, and truth. To become one with the divine spirit.

God’s Word, thankfully, presents a third and much more satisfying worldview. We now turn our attention to that.