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What God Has to Say about Our Bodies: How the Gospel Is Good News for Our Physical Selves
“God’s eternal plan for us involves our body. We can’t write off our physical life as spiritually irrelevant.” —Sam Allberry
There’s a danger in focusing too much on the body. There’s also a danger in not valuing it enough. In fact, the Bible has lots to say about the body. With the coming of Jesus, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”—flesh that was pierced and crushed for the sins of the world.
In What God Has to Say about Our Bodies, Sam Allberry explains that all of us are fearfully and wonderfully made, and should regard our physicality as a gift. He offers biblical guidance for living, including understanding gender, sexuality, and identity; dealing with aging, illness, and death; and considering the physical future hope that we have in Christ.
In this powerfully written book, you’ll gain a new understanding for the immeasurable value of our bodies and God’s ultimate plan to redeem them.
There’s a danger in focusing too much on the body. There’s also a danger in not valuing it enough. In fact, the Bible has lots to say about the body. With the coming of Jesus, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”—flesh that was pierced and crushed for the sins of the world.
In What God Has to Say about Our Bodies, Sam Allberry explains that all of us are fearfully and wonderfully made, and should regard our physicality as a gift. He offers biblical guidance for living, including understanding gender, sexuality, and identity; dealing with aging, illness, and death; and considering the physical future hope that we have in Christ.
In this powerfully written book, you’ll gain a new understanding for the immeasurable value of our bodies and God’s ultimate plan to redeem them.
191 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 2021
191 people are currently reading
3189 people want to read
About the author
Sam Allberry
33 books311 followersSam comes from Sevenoaks in Kent, but studied theology at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford, and has since worked at St Ebbe's Church, Oxford, and now serves at a church in Maidenhead. Hobbies include reading, watching The West Wing and anything to do with South-East Asia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 197 reviews
July 15, 2021
My endorsement:
“Evangelicals have excelled at many things; theological reflection on the body isn’t one of them. If you’re thinking, ‘I’ve seen many books on the church!’ then your assumption proves my point. Far more attention has been devoted to Christ’s spiritual body than to our physical selves. But we desperately need guidance here, for we inhabit a confused age that waffles back and forth between body obsession (my body is the most important thing about me) and body denial (my body is irrelevant to who I really am). Feel the whiplash? This book is medicine for the moment. I’m thrilled it now exists.”
“Evangelicals have excelled at many things; theological reflection on the body isn’t one of them. If you’re thinking, ‘I’ve seen many books on the church!’ then your assumption proves my point. Far more attention has been devoted to Christ’s spiritual body than to our physical selves. But we desperately need guidance here, for we inhabit a confused age that waffles back and forth between body obsession (my body is the most important thing about me) and body denial (my body is irrelevant to who I really am). Feel the whiplash? This book is medicine for the moment. I’m thrilled it now exists.”
August 11, 2022
Anthropology has become a hot topic in recent days. Nancy Pearcey gifted the church with her book, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality. Gregg R. Allison made a solid contribution with his book, Embodied: Living as Whole People in a Fractured World. And Owen Strachan presented the most comprehensive treatment in his important book, Reenchanting Humanity: A Theology of Mankind. Sam Allberry joins the anthropological parade with his work, What God Has to Say about Our Bodies.
Allberry makes his case in three sections - created bodies, broken bodies, and redeemed bodies.
Created Bodies
The author begins by noting that God’s creatures are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14). Allberry adds, “We could not begin to measure the value of our body, however it looks and however we feel about it.” The stress here is on the inherent dignity and worth of the body. Surely, this is a much-needed reminder for followers of Christ, especially those who rightly emphasize the depravity of mankind.
Allbery reminds readers that God created males and females. This basic reality is largely forgotten in our culture and is even being recklessly cast aside by progressive thinkers. Males and females are image-bearers, created with a distinct purpose, namely - to glorify God.
Broken Bodies
Allbery maintains his allegiance to the authority of Scripture by holding that God’s image-bearers have dignity and worth before God. Yet, they have been subjected to futility. Sin has introduced shame and brokenness. As such, each creature is brought into this world with a posture of defiance before God. “The greatest evidence of our bodily brokenness,” writes Alberry “is simultaneously ubiquitous and forced out of our minds so that we tend not to notice its significance - our bodies die” (Gen. 2:16-17; Heb. 9:27).
Redeemed Bodies
The author focuses his attention on some of the glorious aspects of the body by reminding readers that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19-20). The body, therefore, must be presented to God as a living sacrifice (Rom. 12:1-2). The themes here are unfortunately neglected by many evangelicals as they downplay the body and refuse to properly nourish it and use it in a way the glorifies the Lord.
The book ends on a triumphant note as the author directs the attention of the reader to the promise of a glorified body. The author notes, “The resurrection of Jesus makes our own resurrection as his people a certainty.” Our future, then, is one that is filled with great hope as we long for the day when we will receive a glorified body.
Allberry’s work is greatly needed in our day when secular voices overemphasize the body and when local churches downplay the body. What God Has to Say About Our Bodies strikes the biblical balance by turning our attention to sacred Scripture.
Allberry makes his case in three sections - created bodies, broken bodies, and redeemed bodies.
Created Bodies
The author begins by noting that God’s creatures are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14). Allberry adds, “We could not begin to measure the value of our body, however it looks and however we feel about it.” The stress here is on the inherent dignity and worth of the body. Surely, this is a much-needed reminder for followers of Christ, especially those who rightly emphasize the depravity of mankind.
Allbery reminds readers that God created males and females. This basic reality is largely forgotten in our culture and is even being recklessly cast aside by progressive thinkers. Males and females are image-bearers, created with a distinct purpose, namely - to glorify God.
Broken Bodies
Allbery maintains his allegiance to the authority of Scripture by holding that God’s image-bearers have dignity and worth before God. Yet, they have been subjected to futility. Sin has introduced shame and brokenness. As such, each creature is brought into this world with a posture of defiance before God. “The greatest evidence of our bodily brokenness,” writes Alberry “is simultaneously ubiquitous and forced out of our minds so that we tend not to notice its significance - our bodies die” (Gen. 2:16-17; Heb. 9:27).
Redeemed Bodies
The author focuses his attention on some of the glorious aspects of the body by reminding readers that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19-20). The body, therefore, must be presented to God as a living sacrifice (Rom. 12:1-2). The themes here are unfortunately neglected by many evangelicals as they downplay the body and refuse to properly nourish it and use it in a way the glorifies the Lord.
The book ends on a triumphant note as the author directs the attention of the reader to the promise of a glorified body. The author notes, “The resurrection of Jesus makes our own resurrection as his people a certainty.” Our future, then, is one that is filled with great hope as we long for the day when we will receive a glorified body.
Allberry’s work is greatly needed in our day when secular voices overemphasize the body and when local churches downplay the body. What God Has to Say About Our Bodies strikes the biblical balance by turning our attention to sacred Scripture.
November 26, 2021
Totally worth reading but...
I prefer not to judge a book based on how I wish the author had written it. In this case, that feels tricky.
First, the author does not reference the work of a single female author. (There are two women listed in his Notes section. One was a conversation and the other a talk given by Jen Wilken.) Given that the book focuses on the human body—as in both male and female—I felt this was short-sighted and frankly, insulting.
Second, he brings up several incredibly important topics—like self-harm and transgenderism—but then does not deeply explore them or offer us any real insight on the causality or how we as Christians night engage with folks who deal with these issues. It seems like he missed an opportunity given his clout and intellect.
I prefer not to judge a book based on how I wish the author had written it. In this case, that feels tricky.
First, the author does not reference the work of a single female author. (There are two women listed in his Notes section. One was a conversation and the other a talk given by Jen Wilken.) Given that the book focuses on the human body—as in both male and female—I felt this was short-sighted and frankly, insulting.
Second, he brings up several incredibly important topics—like self-harm and transgenderism—but then does not deeply explore them or offer us any real insight on the causality or how we as Christians night engage with folks who deal with these issues. It seems like he missed an opportunity given his clout and intellect.
May 30, 2023
4.5 stars, it was great to touch on a lot of topics with passages and principles found in scripture that anchor the conversation. Only took a half star off because I felt like this book should have been longer for some topics that were touched on. Overall I think is a great book to begin to start bringing the hope of the gospel into our perception of our physical bodies and have our view be biblically informed instead of by culture.
October 23, 2025
This book lives up to its title. Allberry writes a medium depth and accessible treatment of this topic with clarity and winsomeness. I would especially recommend this for anyone who find it difficult to find their body good.
December 30, 2021
This book wasn’t what I expected it to be. I thought it would be helpful in reconciling the latest cultural and scientific with scripture, but it wasn’t for me. I was particularly disappointed that Allberry related being intersex to being colorblind. Intersex people deserve more than 1.5 pages of light metaphor. I acknowledge that this is a very difficult topic with endless potential avenues — eating disorders, exercise regimen, substance use, sexuality, chronic illness, death, etc., and I think this book would better serve readers to singularly focus on one rather than committing 1-2 pages to each.
December 6, 2024
I’m grateful this book exists. sensitively written, comprehensive, and biblically-informed.
“your body—my body—is not just there, happening to exist. it means something to God. He knows it. He made it. He cares about it. and all that Christ has done in His death and resurrection is not in order for us one day to escape our body, but for Him one day to redeem it.”
“in Christ, our bodies are no longer identified by what we do with them, or by what others have done to them, but by what Jesus has done for them… and so we await ‘the redemption of our bodies (rom 8:23) with patience.’”
“your body—my body—is not just there, happening to exist. it means something to God. He knows it. He made it. He cares about it. and all that Christ has done in His death and resurrection is not in order for us one day to escape our body, but for Him one day to redeem it.”
“in Christ, our bodies are no longer identified by what we do with them, or by what others have done to them, but by what Jesus has done for them… and so we await ‘the redemption of our bodies (rom 8:23) with patience.’”
July 7, 2024
Wonderfully helpful! Paul David Tripp says in the foreword that “we can move out in tenderhearted love and grace and speak with surety into the difficulty [of contemporary discussion surrounding our bodies] precisely because God has spoken to us with clarity,” and Allberry does that very thing. He writes with distinct gentleness and compassion, giving an excellent introduction to this loaded topic.
I wish I could have read this book as a teenager!
I wish I could have read this book as a teenager!
June 3, 2022
Super conversational. The kind of book I want to have ready to give away for a non-Christian or young believer. General enough to give a broad vision of the topic, and in depth enough to struggle with specific biblical passages that anchor the discussion. Tackles a whole spectrum of subcategories, from sexuality to self-harm to inner-life. Really pleased that this resource exists.
July 8, 2021
“Because we live in a created world, our bodies are a gift. But because we live in a fallen world, they might not be the gift we would have wanted.”
Are you thankful for your body?
Maybe our knee-jerk reaction is yes, but it’s a tricky question when we’re really honest with ourselves.
We all have parts of our bodies that we wish looked or functioned a little differently. Our bodies can cause us a lot of pain— physically or emotionally. They can be the source of shame or ongoing struggle. Our bodies have certain limitations, some more than others.
I think we can all agree that our bodies are not perfect in every way.
So, how then, should we view the body?
Something to be escaped? Something to be perfected? Something to be ignored?
Worthless? Pointless?
A hindrance? A trophy?
Sam Allberry has written this fantastic book sharing with us what God says about our bodies, helping us understand this necessary but at times uncomfortable thing. It is thoughtful, gospel-oriented and very pertinent to today.
To start- our bodies are not inconsequential.
Our bodies matter and what we do with our bodies matters.
Paul Tripp sums up the book pretty well in his foreword to this book:
“Your body––my body––is not just there, happening to exist. It means something to God. He knows it. He made it. He cares about it. And all that Christ has done in his death and resurrection is not in order for us one day to escape our body, but for him one day to redeem it.”
Allberry has appropriately split his book into three parts:
- Created Bodies (why our bodies are good)
- Broken Bodies (how our bodies feel bad)
- Redeemed Bodies (when/how our bodies will be perfected)
He broaches many topics in discussing our bodies including gender, identity, sex, self-harm, illness, aging, death, disability, dysphoria, and empathy. And he does it all gently, with both compassion and conviction. I believe his primary goal in this book is to lay out how important and purposeful our bodies are, how they can be used to glorify God, and how we have hope that all things will be made right.
We can think too little of our bodies, believing we can do whatever we want with them because it doesn’t matter. Or we can think too much of them, believing our worth and identity is wrapped up in our bodies’ appearances and capabilities.
But to think biblically about our bodies we must recognize that what God has created is good and so our bodies matter. Further, our bodies are broken and we need redemption. And so we live in this tension between two gardens— Eden before sin corrupted bringing pain and brokenness and Eden restored where we will finally walk unblemished with our Lord. We yearn for rightness but we must wrestle with wrongness until we are redeemed.
One of the more controversial claims of this book (though rooted in Scripture) is how gender and identity is shaped by our bodies, especially in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, and gender roles. I venture to guess that his discussion of this might be a driving factor in your opinion of this book. It is not the primary focus of the book in message or in page real estate but let’s go ahead and address the elephant in the room.
Increasingly, our culture is separating our identity from our bodies. A body is merely the transportation or casing for our ‘selves’ or ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ or what have you. It cannot tell us anything about who we are and is a blank canvas on which we paint the version of ourselves that we feel is best. But is this thinking right?
“Theologian Tom Wright puts it this way: ‘The great controlling myth of our time has been the belief that within each one of us there is a real, inner, private “self,” long buried beneath layers of socialization and attempted cultural and religious control, and needing to be rediscovered if we are to live authentic lives.’”
Carl Trueman explores this in-depth in his must-read book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which tracks the historical influences that have led to the shift in how we view the self and how that change interacts with our culture. He says,
“Satisfaction and meaning—authenticity—are now found by an inward turn, and the culture is reconfigured to this end. Indeed, it must now serve the purpose of meeting my psychological needs; I must not tailor my psychological needs to the nature of society, for that would create anxiety and make me inauthentic… The era of psychological man therefore requires changes in the culture and its institutions, practices, and beliefs that affect everyone. They all need to adapt to reflect a therapeutic mentality that focuses on the psychological well-being of the individual.”
‘Authenticity’ is the mark of fulfillment. If our bodies don’t ‘match’ our authentic selves in appearance or practice, we must do what it takes to be in harmony with our ‘true self’ and that is deemed celebratory.
Allberry points out the shift in cultural and moral values that tags along with this concept:
“In our culture, the hero today is not the person who risks his body for the sake of others, but the person who lays aside anything and anyone for the sake of being authentic. We most esteem not self-sacrifice, but self-expression.”
Self-expression elevated over self-sacrifice and at the expense of our given biological bodies is a rejection of God’s design and his example in Jesus Christ. We are taking what the Creator made and deemed “very good” in Genesis and are telling Him, ‘No, you didn’t do this right. I know better than you.’
“…[but] if we have been created, then our body is not some arbitrary lump of matter. It means something. It is not peripheral to our understanding of who we are. For all the difficulties you may have with it, it is the body God wanted you to have.
This can be a hard thing to bear. We’ve already established that our bodies can cause us physical and emotional pain. But we can be comforted that the bodies we were given are not worthless, pointless, or wrong. They are loved, purposed, and good.
“We’re not just the outcome of God’s activity; we are the product of God’s intention.”
And yet, we do experience brokenness. When sin entered the world, it affected our bodies. We get sick, we get hurt, we get old, we die. Our bodies don’t look or feel the way we want them to. Further, our bodies also experience pain that is caused by the sins of other bodies. This speaks to our inability to separate our bodies from our 'selves.’
“However much we might privilege the mind or soul over the body as the “real” us, we know deep down that the body is an essential part of who we truly are. When people hurt your body, you know that they have not just damaged some of your property; they have violated you. What you do to someone’s body, you do to a person.”
We cannot deny our God-given biological gender as it pertains to who we are and who God designed us to be.
To the question of gender roles, Allberry critiques the church for adding to Scripture by trying to define exactly what it means to be masculine or feminine too specifically. This is a long excerpt, but essential:
“We each have our own deep sense of what constitutes true masculinity and femininity, and we can all too easily assume that sense has come from the Bible, especially if we’re holding it in contrast to what a wider, secular culture around us might be saying. But what seems obvious and instinctive to us about the nature of men and women might reflect our own cultural prejudices more than what the Bible actually says…
…we must be careful about saying that all men or all women should be this way or that way, or that men should be interested in these things and women in those things. More often than not, we will not find these views in the Bible…
…And while we mustn’t overdefine what these differences are, neither must we deny they exist at all. This is especially important given that it is increasingly common to think that being equal must mean being the same in every respect––that equality cannot properly exist where there is any kind of difference.”
There is more to be said on this, and I would suggest Men and Women in the Church as a good starting place or a(typical) Woman if you’re a woman. (I’ll be reading more on this topic so check back regularly on my blog for more content).
But the main point on gender roles/differences is that, as Allberry says, men and women aren’t meant to be interchangeable. For example, there are differences in appearance and demeanor between men and women. God has designed us to be equal yet different in function.
There are some traits or tendencies that more typify men than women and vice versa. He gives the example of men being quarrelsome (1 Tim. 2:8) and emphasizes that it doesn’t mean we view this statement: “universally (all men, without exception), absolutely (all men to the same extent, with no variation), or exclusively (only men, as if women couldn’t be quarrelsome), but generally, typically.”
He reminds us that as men and women, we exhibit the fruits of the Spirit in “differing proportions between the sexes and within them.” We are not assigned 4 or 5 because we are women and the other ones get to be for the men.
Men and women both pursue godliness, and we must use wisdom when we teach how this is exhibited differently— as to not add nor take away from what the Bible tells us or prescribe where we merely see patterns.
[One thing I’ll add here: I wish Allberry would have addressed in this book the prevalent idea in the Western world that women’s bodies are empowering. He doesn’t talk at all about modesty, which gets tricky considering cultural differences, but this idea that if women reveal their bodies or use them in certain ways that it is empowering to women baffles me— I believe this idea to be damaging rather than empowering and I think it would have been beneficial to include in this book about our bodies.]
To the question of gender dysphoria- it is real. And I can’t imagine how it feels to feel like you’ve been assigned the wrong biological gender. It is not something we should sweep under the rug, shame, or gloss over with platitudes. There are really hard struggles with our bodies, like gender dysphoria, that may or may not get easier. That is a heavy weight to bear.
We don’t really have the answer to the question ‘why?’ but we are shown time and again in Scripture that Jesus sees you and he desires you to bring your bodily burden to him for rest.
I love the truth that Tim and Kathy Keller share with us about dysphoria: “To have your feelings sharply out of accord with your body is a life-dominating grief. As Christians, we of all people should be able to show understanding and compassion, knowing how the fall has twisted what God pronounced “good” when he made humanity into a binary-gendered reflection of his nature.”
When Jesus took on flesh “it was the ultimate experience of being in the wrong flesh. There was no greater dysphoria ever experienced. And he went through all of that for us… Only through being in Christ’s body—through the change in identity that comes from being a child in his family—does anyone find ultimate relief from their sense of dislocation in the world.”
There are burdens God has asked us to carry— physically and emotionally— with our broken bodies. But he has not asked us to do it alone. He beckons us to come to him and trust him with these burdens. We can trust him with our bodies—after all, he made them!
Katherine Elizabeth Clark, who experienced her own story of a broken body, says this in her book, Where I End, as she challenges us to stop asking ‘why?’ and instead ask ‘to what end?’:
“The question ‘To what end?’ however, turns our hearts back to our kindhearted Father who bids us come, to trust in Him, to rest in His promise that though sadness and grief, pain and hardship are ever with us now, He sees and is all the time working powerfully toward ends that are good, ends that are more beautiful and impossible than we could ever imagine… Rather than take the position of accuser, which leads us to discouragement and despair, we must set our eyes on Jesus and the ends for which He calls us.”
Again, I’ve focused on gender identity in my review of this book, but Allberry covers so much more. I wanted to also share what Allberry talks about in terms of how we, then, use our body to worship the Lord.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says—"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body."
The Wailing Wall in Jerusalem is a place of pilgrimage for Jews to go and mourn the loss of their temple, God’s dwelling place. But the Bible tells us our bodies are now temples because God has chosen to give us His Spirit to dwell within us. That is significant! We did nothing to earn this, but it is a gift. One that came at great cost. We don’t like the idea of ‘being bought’ but in this context it means freedom, dignity, and worth. Jesus died for us and to belong to him is a blessing.
So when Paul says in Romans 6:12-13…
“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.”
…we understand that to glorify God with our bodies means we turn away from sin. We don’t use our bodies (meaning all of ourselves) to sin. And we willingly do this out of love and gratitude for the unmerited grace and gift of life he has given us. Not to earn his love but because he loved us first.
Allberry goes through three ways shown in the New Testament of how we can honor God with our bodies: stewarding, consecrating, and disciplining them.
This includes mention of the expected sins that we need to avoid, but he also talks about food, sleep, self-harm, our words, and our posture in prayer. I think we often reduce our bodies’ sinfulness to sexual sin because it gets the most publicity but there are many other ways that we use or treat our bodies against God’s design.
“…we do have bodily wants and desires that need to be constantly resisted if we are to move forward with Christ. If we go with our physical instincts, without questioning and resisting them, we will drift away from the prize. Paul’s final words here are a sober warning: ‘I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.’ (1 Cor. 9:27)”
And of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up hope!
God is in the business of redemption.
We endure the bodily burdens we have. We push through the pain of our broken, disappointing, and hurting bodies. And we rejoice because God has promised to make all things right. If we are in Christ, we will be given new, glorified bodies.
“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:20)
Jesus was resurrected in bodily form and so will we. Just like a seed buried in dark soil dies in order to grow new life, we too will die an earthly death, be buried, and will rise to new life. "…growth can only happen because the plant first dies. Leaving the seed in its packaging leads to nothing. It has to die first."
“Death used to be an executioner, but the Gospel makes him just a gardener.”— poet George Herbert
So yes, we can and should be thankful for our bodies, created with love and purposed for godly worship.
Our life on earth is not our best life; the best is yet to come. But that doesn’t render our life or body useless. We wait patiently and confidently knowing our bodily struggles will not be in vain. God will redeem our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies.
And this is, indeed, good news!
Some other quotes:
“Ultimately the pains and struggles we experience in our bodies are not a sign that our bodies have no value but that God hasn’t finished with them yet.”
“Color-blindness is not uncommon—you may in fact experience it… But just because some struggle to distinguish red from green doesn’t mean that the colors red and green do not actually exist. They clearly do. They are objective realities. [like binary genders] That some confuse one for the other does not change that. In fact, when we drive, our lives depend on the fact these two colors really do exist and are not subjectively determined.”
“We are not meant to be interchangeable, so that all one can do, the other must also do in exactly the same way. It is not always helpful to compare one with another, as though we are pitted against each other in a zero sum competition. G. K. Chesterton hits the nail on the head in this short poem: ‘If I set the sun beside the moon, And if I set the land beside the sea, And if I set the town beside the country, And if I set the man beside the woman, I suppose some fool would talk about one being better.’”
“Today we all collude in upholding an expectation of beauty that is virtually fantastical. No wonder we view our bodies as increasingly flawed. We’re not comparing them to the best of our species but to the best of our species’ imagination.”
“When we disparage people because of the way they are physically, we are not just disparaging them; we are disparaging the God in whose image they have been carefully made.”
“Sin is not just wrong in some abstract sense. It is wrong in that it contradicts how God has meant us to live. Not every sin is directly and immediately harmful in a way that is obvious to all. Many sins are more subtle. But they can set us on a course that we might never have intended to go, and now we’re doing things we never imagined doing and find ourselves feeling powerless to stop doing.”
“[Jesus] knows what it is to be thirsty, hungry, despised, rejected, scorned, shamed, embarrassed, abandoned, misunderstood, falsely accused, suffocated, tortured, and killed. He knows what it is to be lonely.”— Dane Ortlund
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog: www.shelfreflection.com
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Are you thankful for your body?
Maybe our knee-jerk reaction is yes, but it’s a tricky question when we’re really honest with ourselves.
We all have parts of our bodies that we wish looked or functioned a little differently. Our bodies can cause us a lot of pain— physically or emotionally. They can be the source of shame or ongoing struggle. Our bodies have certain limitations, some more than others.
I think we can all agree that our bodies are not perfect in every way.
So, how then, should we view the body?
Something to be escaped? Something to be perfected? Something to be ignored?
Worthless? Pointless?
A hindrance? A trophy?
Sam Allberry has written this fantastic book sharing with us what God says about our bodies, helping us understand this necessary but at times uncomfortable thing. It is thoughtful, gospel-oriented and very pertinent to today.
To start- our bodies are not inconsequential.
Our bodies matter and what we do with our bodies matters.
Paul Tripp sums up the book pretty well in his foreword to this book:
“Your body––my body––is not just there, happening to exist. It means something to God. He knows it. He made it. He cares about it. And all that Christ has done in his death and resurrection is not in order for us one day to escape our body, but for him one day to redeem it.”
Allberry has appropriately split his book into three parts:
- Created Bodies (why our bodies are good)
- Broken Bodies (how our bodies feel bad)
- Redeemed Bodies (when/how our bodies will be perfected)
He broaches many topics in discussing our bodies including gender, identity, sex, self-harm, illness, aging, death, disability, dysphoria, and empathy. And he does it all gently, with both compassion and conviction. I believe his primary goal in this book is to lay out how important and purposeful our bodies are, how they can be used to glorify God, and how we have hope that all things will be made right.
We can think too little of our bodies, believing we can do whatever we want with them because it doesn’t matter. Or we can think too much of them, believing our worth and identity is wrapped up in our bodies’ appearances and capabilities.
But to think biblically about our bodies we must recognize that what God has created is good and so our bodies matter. Further, our bodies are broken and we need redemption. And so we live in this tension between two gardens— Eden before sin corrupted bringing pain and brokenness and Eden restored where we will finally walk unblemished with our Lord. We yearn for rightness but we must wrestle with wrongness until we are redeemed.
One of the more controversial claims of this book (though rooted in Scripture) is how gender and identity is shaped by our bodies, especially in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, and gender roles. I venture to guess that his discussion of this might be a driving factor in your opinion of this book. It is not the primary focus of the book in message or in page real estate but let’s go ahead and address the elephant in the room.
Increasingly, our culture is separating our identity from our bodies. A body is merely the transportation or casing for our ‘selves’ or ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ or what have you. It cannot tell us anything about who we are and is a blank canvas on which we paint the version of ourselves that we feel is best. But is this thinking right?
“Theologian Tom Wright puts it this way: ‘The great controlling myth of our time has been the belief that within each one of us there is a real, inner, private “self,” long buried beneath layers of socialization and attempted cultural and religious control, and needing to be rediscovered if we are to live authentic lives.’”
Carl Trueman explores this in-depth in his must-read book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which tracks the historical influences that have led to the shift in how we view the self and how that change interacts with our culture. He says,
“Satisfaction and meaning—authenticity—are now found by an inward turn, and the culture is reconfigured to this end. Indeed, it must now serve the purpose of meeting my psychological needs; I must not tailor my psychological needs to the nature of society, for that would create anxiety and make me inauthentic… The era of psychological man therefore requires changes in the culture and its institutions, practices, and beliefs that affect everyone. They all need to adapt to reflect a therapeutic mentality that focuses on the psychological well-being of the individual.”
‘Authenticity’ is the mark of fulfillment. If our bodies don’t ‘match’ our authentic selves in appearance or practice, we must do what it takes to be in harmony with our ‘true self’ and that is deemed celebratory.
Allberry points out the shift in cultural and moral values that tags along with this concept:
“In our culture, the hero today is not the person who risks his body for the sake of others, but the person who lays aside anything and anyone for the sake of being authentic. We most esteem not self-sacrifice, but self-expression.”
Self-expression elevated over self-sacrifice and at the expense of our given biological bodies is a rejection of God’s design and his example in Jesus Christ. We are taking what the Creator made and deemed “very good” in Genesis and are telling Him, ‘No, you didn’t do this right. I know better than you.’
“…[but] if we have been created, then our body is not some arbitrary lump of matter. It means something. It is not peripheral to our understanding of who we are. For all the difficulties you may have with it, it is the body God wanted you to have.
This can be a hard thing to bear. We’ve already established that our bodies can cause us physical and emotional pain. But we can be comforted that the bodies we were given are not worthless, pointless, or wrong. They are loved, purposed, and good.
“We’re not just the outcome of God’s activity; we are the product of God’s intention.”
And yet, we do experience brokenness. When sin entered the world, it affected our bodies. We get sick, we get hurt, we get old, we die. Our bodies don’t look or feel the way we want them to. Further, our bodies also experience pain that is caused by the sins of other bodies. This speaks to our inability to separate our bodies from our 'selves.’
“However much we might privilege the mind or soul over the body as the “real” us, we know deep down that the body is an essential part of who we truly are. When people hurt your body, you know that they have not just damaged some of your property; they have violated you. What you do to someone’s body, you do to a person.”
We cannot deny our God-given biological gender as it pertains to who we are and who God designed us to be.
To the question of gender roles, Allberry critiques the church for adding to Scripture by trying to define exactly what it means to be masculine or feminine too specifically. This is a long excerpt, but essential:
“We each have our own deep sense of what constitutes true masculinity and femininity, and we can all too easily assume that sense has come from the Bible, especially if we’re holding it in contrast to what a wider, secular culture around us might be saying. But what seems obvious and instinctive to us about the nature of men and women might reflect our own cultural prejudices more than what the Bible actually says…
…we must be careful about saying that all men or all women should be this way or that way, or that men should be interested in these things and women in those things. More often than not, we will not find these views in the Bible…
…And while we mustn’t overdefine what these differences are, neither must we deny they exist at all. This is especially important given that it is increasingly common to think that being equal must mean being the same in every respect––that equality cannot properly exist where there is any kind of difference.”
There is more to be said on this, and I would suggest Men and Women in the Church as a good starting place or a(typical) Woman if you’re a woman. (I’ll be reading more on this topic so check back regularly on my blog for more content).
But the main point on gender roles/differences is that, as Allberry says, men and women aren’t meant to be interchangeable. For example, there are differences in appearance and demeanor between men and women. God has designed us to be equal yet different in function.
There are some traits or tendencies that more typify men than women and vice versa. He gives the example of men being quarrelsome (1 Tim. 2:8) and emphasizes that it doesn’t mean we view this statement: “universally (all men, without exception), absolutely (all men to the same extent, with no variation), or exclusively (only men, as if women couldn’t be quarrelsome), but generally, typically.”
He reminds us that as men and women, we exhibit the fruits of the Spirit in “differing proportions between the sexes and within them.” We are not assigned 4 or 5 because we are women and the other ones get to be for the men.
Men and women both pursue godliness, and we must use wisdom when we teach how this is exhibited differently— as to not add nor take away from what the Bible tells us or prescribe where we merely see patterns.
[One thing I’ll add here: I wish Allberry would have addressed in this book the prevalent idea in the Western world that women’s bodies are empowering. He doesn’t talk at all about modesty, which gets tricky considering cultural differences, but this idea that if women reveal their bodies or use them in certain ways that it is empowering to women baffles me— I believe this idea to be damaging rather than empowering and I think it would have been beneficial to include in this book about our bodies.]
To the question of gender dysphoria- it is real. And I can’t imagine how it feels to feel like you’ve been assigned the wrong biological gender. It is not something we should sweep under the rug, shame, or gloss over with platitudes. There are really hard struggles with our bodies, like gender dysphoria, that may or may not get easier. That is a heavy weight to bear.
We don’t really have the answer to the question ‘why?’ but we are shown time and again in Scripture that Jesus sees you and he desires you to bring your bodily burden to him for rest.
I love the truth that Tim and Kathy Keller share with us about dysphoria: “To have your feelings sharply out of accord with your body is a life-dominating grief. As Christians, we of all people should be able to show understanding and compassion, knowing how the fall has twisted what God pronounced “good” when he made humanity into a binary-gendered reflection of his nature.”
When Jesus took on flesh “it was the ultimate experience of being in the wrong flesh. There was no greater dysphoria ever experienced. And he went through all of that for us… Only through being in Christ’s body—through the change in identity that comes from being a child in his family—does anyone find ultimate relief from their sense of dislocation in the world.”
There are burdens God has asked us to carry— physically and emotionally— with our broken bodies. But he has not asked us to do it alone. He beckons us to come to him and trust him with these burdens. We can trust him with our bodies—after all, he made them!
Katherine Elizabeth Clark, who experienced her own story of a broken body, says this in her book, Where I End, as she challenges us to stop asking ‘why?’ and instead ask ‘to what end?’:
“The question ‘To what end?’ however, turns our hearts back to our kindhearted Father who bids us come, to trust in Him, to rest in His promise that though sadness and grief, pain and hardship are ever with us now, He sees and is all the time working powerfully toward ends that are good, ends that are more beautiful and impossible than we could ever imagine… Rather than take the position of accuser, which leads us to discouragement and despair, we must set our eyes on Jesus and the ends for which He calls us.”
Again, I’ve focused on gender identity in my review of this book, but Allberry covers so much more. I wanted to also share what Allberry talks about in terms of how we, then, use our body to worship the Lord.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says—"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body."
The Wailing Wall in Jerusalem is a place of pilgrimage for Jews to go and mourn the loss of their temple, God’s dwelling place. But the Bible tells us our bodies are now temples because God has chosen to give us His Spirit to dwell within us. That is significant! We did nothing to earn this, but it is a gift. One that came at great cost. We don’t like the idea of ‘being bought’ but in this context it means freedom, dignity, and worth. Jesus died for us and to belong to him is a blessing.
So when Paul says in Romans 6:12-13…
“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.”
…we understand that to glorify God with our bodies means we turn away from sin. We don’t use our bodies (meaning all of ourselves) to sin. And we willingly do this out of love and gratitude for the unmerited grace and gift of life he has given us. Not to earn his love but because he loved us first.
Allberry goes through three ways shown in the New Testament of how we can honor God with our bodies: stewarding, consecrating, and disciplining them.
This includes mention of the expected sins that we need to avoid, but he also talks about food, sleep, self-harm, our words, and our posture in prayer. I think we often reduce our bodies’ sinfulness to sexual sin because it gets the most publicity but there are many other ways that we use or treat our bodies against God’s design.
“…we do have bodily wants and desires that need to be constantly resisted if we are to move forward with Christ. If we go with our physical instincts, without questioning and resisting them, we will drift away from the prize. Paul’s final words here are a sober warning: ‘I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.’ (1 Cor. 9:27)”
And of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up hope!
God is in the business of redemption.
We endure the bodily burdens we have. We push through the pain of our broken, disappointing, and hurting bodies. And we rejoice because God has promised to make all things right. If we are in Christ, we will be given new, glorified bodies.
“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:20)
Jesus was resurrected in bodily form and so will we. Just like a seed buried in dark soil dies in order to grow new life, we too will die an earthly death, be buried, and will rise to new life. "…growth can only happen because the plant first dies. Leaving the seed in its packaging leads to nothing. It has to die first."
“Death used to be an executioner, but the Gospel makes him just a gardener.”— poet George Herbert
So yes, we can and should be thankful for our bodies, created with love and purposed for godly worship.
Our life on earth is not our best life; the best is yet to come. But that doesn’t render our life or body useless. We wait patiently and confidently knowing our bodily struggles will not be in vain. God will redeem our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies.
And this is, indeed, good news!
Some other quotes:
“Ultimately the pains and struggles we experience in our bodies are not a sign that our bodies have no value but that God hasn’t finished with them yet.”
“Color-blindness is not uncommon—you may in fact experience it… But just because some struggle to distinguish red from green doesn’t mean that the colors red and green do not actually exist. They clearly do. They are objective realities. [like binary genders] That some confuse one for the other does not change that. In fact, when we drive, our lives depend on the fact these two colors really do exist and are not subjectively determined.”
“We are not meant to be interchangeable, so that all one can do, the other must also do in exactly the same way. It is not always helpful to compare one with another, as though we are pitted against each other in a zero sum competition. G. K. Chesterton hits the nail on the head in this short poem: ‘If I set the sun beside the moon, And if I set the land beside the sea, And if I set the town beside the country, And if I set the man beside the woman, I suppose some fool would talk about one being better.’”
“Today we all collude in upholding an expectation of beauty that is virtually fantastical. No wonder we view our bodies as increasingly flawed. We’re not comparing them to the best of our species but to the best of our species’ imagination.”
“When we disparage people because of the way they are physically, we are not just disparaging them; we are disparaging the God in whose image they have been carefully made.”
“Sin is not just wrong in some abstract sense. It is wrong in that it contradicts how God has meant us to live. Not every sin is directly and immediately harmful in a way that is obvious to all. Many sins are more subtle. But they can set us on a course that we might never have intended to go, and now we’re doing things we never imagined doing and find ourselves feeling powerless to stop doing.”
“[Jesus] knows what it is to be thirsty, hungry, despised, rejected, scorned, shamed, embarrassed, abandoned, misunderstood, falsely accused, suffocated, tortured, and killed. He knows what it is to be lonely.”— Dane Ortlund
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog: www.shelfreflection.com
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January 14, 2025
As someone whose interest in the Christian perspective on sexuality and gender has recently been piqued, I found this book incredibly helpful (though it is so much more than just a commentary on this subject). Like much of Allberry’s other works, it is compassionately written and packed with frequent reminders, steady encouragement and plenty of truths—all rooted in Scripture.
Allberry discusses how and why God created our bodies as He did—male and female, the brokenness of our bodies and the future redemption of our bodies. He even dedicates a section to how we should worship God with our bodies, including our posture in prayer and corporate worship. The question as to whether or not my posture matches my heart prompts some personal reflection for me.
I found quite a bit of encouragement and hope-filled reminders in the final chapters.
One sweet truth that captivated me appears in the last chapter (especially as I continue reflecting on the future redemption of our bodies). Allberry writes, “The real glory is not that our future bodies might conform to our present culture’s view of beauty in some particular way—or at least better than our present bodies do—but that these new bodies would be able to glorify and serve Jesus perfectly. That is what should make us most excited.” To say the least, this book excites me. These reminders are exciting. This encouragement is exciting.
One final note on Sam: I love his approach to writing. He cleverly weaves pop culture moments, personal stories and current events into his commentary. At times, I feel like I’m sitting with him as he speaks directly to me. (Also, his acknowledgments are so tender).
Resurgam.
Allberry discusses how and why God created our bodies as He did—male and female, the brokenness of our bodies and the future redemption of our bodies. He even dedicates a section to how we should worship God with our bodies, including our posture in prayer and corporate worship. The question as to whether or not my posture matches my heart prompts some personal reflection for me.
I found quite a bit of encouragement and hope-filled reminders in the final chapters.
One sweet truth that captivated me appears in the last chapter (especially as I continue reflecting on the future redemption of our bodies). Allberry writes, “The real glory is not that our future bodies might conform to our present culture’s view of beauty in some particular way—or at least better than our present bodies do—but that these new bodies would be able to glorify and serve Jesus perfectly. That is what should make us most excited.” To say the least, this book excites me. These reminders are exciting. This encouragement is exciting.
One final note on Sam: I love his approach to writing. He cleverly weaves pop culture moments, personal stories and current events into his commentary. At times, I feel like I’m sitting with him as he speaks directly to me. (Also, his acknowledgments are so tender).
Resurgam.
December 27, 2023
This book was a really curious read. I was intrigued by the title and after doing some recent training on sexuality and gender from a Christian perspective, I can confidently say this book added more insights and wisdom to that topic. Alberry does a great job exploring different facets to our bodies from sexuality to identity and how from the brokenness that we all face impacts all of us and how we can hope in the future glory of eternity. I loved the last section of the book with more emphasis on how to use our bodies to glorify God and live with confidence in our future resurrection.
August 6, 2022
Always always always love Sam Allberry’s books—this was a great combination of topical input and wisdom from the Bible (not just biblical wisdom). This book offered comfort and encouragement on a variety of topics, like body image issues, chronic pain, and death. If any of these happen to be something you’re dealing with, have dealt with, or will have to deal with, I recommend this book. ¨̮
August 3, 2025
Allberry has truly outdone himself here. His narration of the embodied experience in its created goodness, current brokenness, and in-Christ redemption has so much to offer the Church and the greater world. Allberry doesn't err to either extreme, refusing to minimize the body's value *and* refusing to overstate its importance. Our bodies aren't the fullest and truest or most important things about us, but they are expressions of who we are — intricately created gifts that the Lord undeniably cares about. I hope to use this book as a resource for my own book to come, and as a conversation partner with all those I speak with about the joys and challenges of living in a body in this broken, groaning (but not utterly hopeless) world. Praise God that He came in a body and that we will be raised into our own glorious bodies one day! Eternity is an embodied promise, and that is good news.
To share a couple favorite quotes (per usual)...
"The Bible gives us unique insight. To those who tend to see themselves — the "real me" — as the person they feel or believe themselves to be deep down insider, the Bible shows that their body is not incidental to who they are. And to those who have a ton of their identity invested in their body, the Bible shows that there is more to them than how they physically appear to others. Your body is not nothing. Nor is it everything. Is your body *you*? Yes. It is intrinsic to who you are. But it is also not the whole of who you are."
"Whatever drew people to him [Jesus], it wasn't appearance or outward beauty. Jesus was (obviously) utterly exceptional in a whole host of ways, but his looks were not part of that. So if we find ourselves to be quite unremarkable in appearance, we are in good company."
"The real glory is not that our future bodies might conform to our present culture's view of beauty in some particular way (at least better than our present bodies do), but that with these new bodies we will be able to glorify and serve Jesus perfectly. That is what should make us most excited."
To share a couple favorite quotes (per usual)...
"The Bible gives us unique insight. To those who tend to see themselves — the "real me" — as the person they feel or believe themselves to be deep down insider, the Bible shows that their body is not incidental to who they are. And to those who have a ton of their identity invested in their body, the Bible shows that there is more to them than how they physically appear to others. Your body is not nothing. Nor is it everything. Is your body *you*? Yes. It is intrinsic to who you are. But it is also not the whole of who you are."
"Whatever drew people to him [Jesus], it wasn't appearance or outward beauty. Jesus was (obviously) utterly exceptional in a whole host of ways, but his looks were not part of that. So if we find ourselves to be quite unremarkable in appearance, we are in good company."
"The real glory is not that our future bodies might conform to our present culture's view of beauty in some particular way (at least better than our present bodies do), but that with these new bodies we will be able to glorify and serve Jesus perfectly. That is what should make us most excited."
January 21, 2023
This book was wonderfully helpful, considerate, and balanced. Spoke helpfully of some key things I’ve been thinking through but also did that within a broader context of thinking about our bodies which is often neglected. Sam is pastoral in his writing style and has many helpful real world examples that inform the way he writes. Would recommend 👌🏼
May 6, 2024
Enjoyed the second half much more than the first - stick with it!
April 15, 2023
This was so good!! Allberry does so well in helping you understand the significance of our physical bodies. An important book in the midst of our culture today.
August 27, 2024
Strong balance between biblical clarity and pastoral sensitivity. Very helpful.
August 8, 2023
This is a practical book for those wanting to know how to engage better with the modern issues concerning the LGBTQ community and the Biblical sexual ethic. In many ways this book is a practical evangelism tool in and of itself. I believe that those wanting to better understand how the gospel speaks into the the questions today about the body and sexuality should read this book.
November 9, 2021
4.5 stars. Typically insightful, fresh, biblical and warm Sam Allberry book. Will only become more relevant in the years to come.
December 29, 2021
Lettlest og varm.
Read
December 9, 2021We live in a world where people believe gender is fluid, our sexual preferences define who we are, and there are as many gender identities as the sand on the sea shore. It’s also increasingly a time where much of human interaction doesn’t take place face-to-face. This means there’s never been a more important time to ask the question, What does God have to say about our bodies?
And I’m glad pastor and author Sam Allberry has answered that question in What God Has to Say About Our Bodies: How the Gospel Is Good News for Our Physical Selves. Allberry writes in the introduction, “While we tend to focus on our body when it’s letting us down, it’s easy to ignore it when it comes to spiritual matters.” Indeed it is, and that is especially a problem considering all that Scripture has to say about our bodies. Allberry divides this 180ish page book into three categories Part 1: Created Bodies, Part 2: Broken Bodies, and Part 3: Redeemed Bodies, and shares a biblical theology of the body in an engaging and applicable way.
A great strength of the book is Allberry’s clear and practical gospel application of the truth he unpacks. The issues he writes about are incredibly personal, often painful, and culturally divisive, and Allberry does a fine job writing winsomely in a way that won’t unnecessarily turn off unbelievers or skeptics.
This is a great book for teaching a gospel-centered theology of the body. I agree with Matt Smethurst that, “This book is medicine for the moment” and with Paul Tripp that “I can’t think of a book that speaks more clearly and more winsomely to our culture’s widening dysphoria.”
Every Christian leader, especially those working with youth, would benefit from reading What God Has to Say About Our Bodies due to how prevalent our culture preaches lies about identity and our bodies. I could see this book sparking teaching series for youth groups and the whole congregations. I also know my wife will use this as a resource for speaking into the lives of the girls she ministers to.
Thankfully, our Creator knows about the problems of our bodies and has shown us the remedy in Christ. I hope Sam Allberry’s new book will point many to the hope we have in Him.
And I’m glad pastor and author Sam Allberry has answered that question in What God Has to Say About Our Bodies: How the Gospel Is Good News for Our Physical Selves. Allberry writes in the introduction, “While we tend to focus on our body when it’s letting us down, it’s easy to ignore it when it comes to spiritual matters.” Indeed it is, and that is especially a problem considering all that Scripture has to say about our bodies. Allberry divides this 180ish page book into three categories Part 1: Created Bodies, Part 2: Broken Bodies, and Part 3: Redeemed Bodies, and shares a biblical theology of the body in an engaging and applicable way.
A great strength of the book is Allberry’s clear and practical gospel application of the truth he unpacks. The issues he writes about are incredibly personal, often painful, and culturally divisive, and Allberry does a fine job writing winsomely in a way that won’t unnecessarily turn off unbelievers or skeptics.
This is a great book for teaching a gospel-centered theology of the body. I agree with Matt Smethurst that, “This book is medicine for the moment” and with Paul Tripp that “I can’t think of a book that speaks more clearly and more winsomely to our culture’s widening dysphoria.”
Every Christian leader, especially those working with youth, would benefit from reading What God Has to Say About Our Bodies due to how prevalent our culture preaches lies about identity and our bodies. I could see this book sparking teaching series for youth groups and the whole congregations. I also know my wife will use this as a resource for speaking into the lives of the girls she ministers to.
Thankfully, our Creator knows about the problems of our bodies and has shown us the remedy in Christ. I hope Sam Allberry’s new book will point many to the hope we have in Him.
December 16, 2023
A few weeks ago I enjoyed listening to Sam Allberry speak on this topic at the Single Minded conference, so I thought I’d read the book to refresh and go deeper on what I heard that day. I’m so glad I did.
This is a great book for any Christian to read. But perhaps especially for those who’ve left behind the days of having a body that doesn’t cause them problems. As someone who’s recently passed the standard mid-life-crisis birthday (40), Sam Allberry’s teachings on the body were much needed, a helpful rebuke, and a warm encouragement. I don’t think I’ve ever thought as much on what the Bible has to say specifically about our bodies, and how the gospel transforms our expectations and hopes for it.
Highly recommended.
Re-read in Dec 2023. Still just as good. And just as needed, after another lap around the sun.
This is a great book for any Christian to read. But perhaps especially for those who’ve left behind the days of having a body that doesn’t cause them problems. As someone who’s recently passed the standard mid-life-crisis birthday (40), Sam Allberry’s teachings on the body were much needed, a helpful rebuke, and a warm encouragement. I don’t think I’ve ever thought as much on what the Bible has to say specifically about our bodies, and how the gospel transforms our expectations and hopes for it.
Highly recommended.
Re-read in Dec 2023. Still just as good. And just as needed, after another lap around the sun.
December 6, 2021
I gained SO much from this book!!
If you are someone that never really thinks about your body and thinks it is pretty irrelevant to God, or if you are someone that is all too aware of a strained relationship with your body because of chronic illness, insecurities, mistreatment, aging, or other consequences of the fall (and want something more than Psalm 139:14 being spoken over you to tell you that you are beautiful xx, with no mention of Christ) plssss read this book.
I can’t sum this already concise1!1!!1 book up in a few sentences but my favourite parts are when Sam Allberry discusses how the Corinthians believed their physical bodies to be irrelevant to God and thus disregarded the reality that God has a purpose for our whole selves. We have been bought with a price, bodies included, and bought for His service. Our human bodies have an eternal future, and are significant now.
I was so challenged by the fact that our fallen physical bodies are actually important enough to God for Him to redeem them (see: the incarnation and resurrection). We are so much more than these tents, but not less than them.
Hopefully this book will move us to gratitude for these tabernacles of the living God and the humble God that came all the way down to dwell in human flesh, and be tortured by human flesh.
Hopefully it will increase our desire for bodily service: “then our feet will walk in his paths, our lips will speak the truth and spread the gospel, our tongues will bring healing, our hands will lift up those who have fallen, and perform many mundane tasks as well like cooking and cleaning, typing and mending; our arms will embrace the lonely and the unloved, our ears will listen to the cries of the distressed, and our eyes will look humbly and patiently towards God.”- John Stott
AND may it fill us with anticipation for our heavenly bodies, redeemed for Christ for all eternity.
“Lord Jesus, I can’t wait for the day when I will rise up on resurrected legs. The first thing I will then do is to drop on grateful, glorified knees.” - Joni Eareckson Tada.
If you are someone that never really thinks about your body and thinks it is pretty irrelevant to God, or if you are someone that is all too aware of a strained relationship with your body because of chronic illness, insecurities, mistreatment, aging, or other consequences of the fall (and want something more than Psalm 139:14 being spoken over you to tell you that you are beautiful xx, with no mention of Christ) plssss read this book.
I can’t sum this already concise1!1!!1 book up in a few sentences but my favourite parts are when Sam Allberry discusses how the Corinthians believed their physical bodies to be irrelevant to God and thus disregarded the reality that God has a purpose for our whole selves. We have been bought with a price, bodies included, and bought for His service. Our human bodies have an eternal future, and are significant now.
I was so challenged by the fact that our fallen physical bodies are actually important enough to God for Him to redeem them (see: the incarnation and resurrection). We are so much more than these tents, but not less than them.
Hopefully this book will move us to gratitude for these tabernacles of the living God and the humble God that came all the way down to dwell in human flesh, and be tortured by human flesh.
Hopefully it will increase our desire for bodily service: “then our feet will walk in his paths, our lips will speak the truth and spread the gospel, our tongues will bring healing, our hands will lift up those who have fallen, and perform many mundane tasks as well like cooking and cleaning, typing and mending; our arms will embrace the lonely and the unloved, our ears will listen to the cries of the distressed, and our eyes will look humbly and patiently towards God.”- John Stott
AND may it fill us with anticipation for our heavenly bodies, redeemed for Christ for all eternity.
“Lord Jesus, I can’t wait for the day when I will rise up on resurrected legs. The first thing I will then do is to drop on grateful, glorified knees.” - Joni Eareckson Tada.
August 18, 2022
Even though a richer and more faithful doctrine of the body has become more popular in recent decades, there is still widespread error on the question even among Christians. What's more, many simply do not see the theological and practical significance of what scripture has to say about the body. This book both faithfully unpacks a biblical doctrine of the body and shows its powerful practical significance.
August 15, 2024
Sam Allberry is always clear, winsome, and concise. "What God Has to Say About Our Bodies" is no exception. While certainly not the most in-depth book on a biblical theology of incarnation, it is the most accessible that I'm aware of. And, of course, the topic is so important for today's Christian with all sorts of ramifications about our sexuality and the digital world we live in.
January 12, 2025
Such a frank, practical work on how God(and we SHOULD) see our physical bodies. I won’t soon forget the things I learned from this book.
January 3, 2025
Helpful and healing words for me about the physical body. We on a journey!
I’ve been a fan of Sam Allberry since I heard him speak at Reality SF in 2019 and then attended his church during my time in Nashville in 2020. Would recommend even if you don’t agree with all of his opinions. Pls lmk if you wanna chat about these topics :)
I’ve been a fan of Sam Allberry since I heard him speak at Reality SF in 2019 and then attended his church during my time in Nashville in 2020. Would recommend even if you don’t agree with all of his opinions. Pls lmk if you wanna chat about these topics :)
August 22, 2025
hello this was a very good book. would recommend.
June 24, 2024
This was such an enjoyable book.
I’ve seen reviews that stated the book could have/should have been longer, but I felt its length made it very accessible and at no point did I feel the author introduced something without dealing with it.
I rarely give 5 stars, but my primary reason for doing so here is that this book dealt with real, concrete issues, but constantly caused me to look up. This book made me love the Lord more, and marvel at his goodness, even as we live in a world marred by sin and real pain.
I’ve already ordered copies to share.
I’ve seen reviews that stated the book could have/should have been longer, but I felt its length made it very accessible and at no point did I feel the author introduced something without dealing with it.
I rarely give 5 stars, but my primary reason for doing so here is that this book dealt with real, concrete issues, but constantly caused me to look up. This book made me love the Lord more, and marvel at his goodness, even as we live in a world marred by sin and real pain.
I’ve already ordered copies to share.
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