Welcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.

If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.

Summary/Engagement

Fat. Skinny. Tall. Short. Frumpy. Old. Withered. Young. Deformed. Broken.

All words used to describe the bodies of men and women. Words that wound our hearts or bring joy. The pressure of the world to conform ourselves to an idolized image is heavy. Advertising tells us in subtle or not so subtle ways that we must each be Adonis or Venus. We lie to ourselves and say if we can just lose that weight, fit in that pair of jeans, if only we were taller, younger, bigger, smaller, blonde, brunette, if only we had hair, we would be happy.

Our idols are carefully painted and sculpted celebrities. Hair, perfect. Bodies, fit. Smiles, bright and white. That voice inside says, “this is what it means to be happy.” We covet health and body type and strength and perceived beauty. Our idols are mortal men and women who we have turned into little gods, supposing that in them is the key to happiness. Whether another, or our own body, we craft that idol in our heart into such perfection as has never been seen by man. Some of us even think we have achieved it.

Yet we are vile. Poor. Pitiable. Wretched. “For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” (Rev 3:17) 

“The fairest body is but well-coloured dust.”

Application / Further Discussion

We obscure the truth with our unhealthy fascination with the physical. We were made from dust, and to dust we will return. That is, until that great and awesome day of the Lord. We are preoccupied with our bodies because they are failing. Failing from birth under the effects of sin. Our sinful appetites can leave us eating too much or too little. Age breaks down once strong muscles and proud backs. Disease wracks the body until we are left whimpering in pain. We start to long for death, hoping then we will be released from this apparent prison of our mortal bodies.

Yet, our bodies are not prisons for the soul. We are not souls that happen to have a body. We are a union of body and soul. In Adam, we have sinful natures, and are sinful, the effects of which lead to death. Yet we are not left there, those of us whose hope is in Christ. Christ is a forerunner of what is to come. He was fully man and fully God. He died on the cross to atone for the sins of all who would believe. His resurrection is proof that his sacrifice was acceptable to God. He returned from the grave, alive, glorified.

This is our sure and certain hope. “Our body shall be like his glorious body, not equal to his glorious body.” We shall be like him, but not be equal to him. He is the head upon which the crown of glory rests. We are the body, who obey his commands and accomplish his will. He is a foretaste of what will be.

Do not, then, make idols of the body. If we are temples of the Holy Spirit, then let us treat our bodies with care. Live healthy, exercise, and take care of your body, yes. However do not live in base hedonism, seeking pleasure and comfort above all other things. Our bodies are tools. “Let every member of this vile body, while we live here, be a weapon of a sanctified soul; a weapon of righteousness ready to do good.”

When Christ bids us home, we will go, and He will give us glorified bodies. Yours may have failed you. Disease, sickness, age, etc. may seem to stand in your way to happiness. Yet happiness is not found in the physical. Don’t look to other people and their sinful bodies as though in them is happiness and the light of life. No, they are painted corpses. Covered in a veneer, an illusion, but underneath still dying and decaying as we all are.

Our hope is in the age to come, not in our failing shadows here. Our treasure is in heaven, not the fool’s gold of this world. Our treasure is Christ.

   “I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:50–58, ESV)

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Last week, we read The Bride’s Longing.

Next week, we read The Art of Contentment.