Exercise: Valuable or Worthless?

As I worked my body on the elliptical machine at the YMCA today, the verse in 1 Timothy 4:8 (in the KJV) echoed in my head: Bodily exercise profiteth little. How to reconcile Paul's admonition to my thrice-weekly routine?

The first thing to recognize (and all the commentators are in basic agreement on this) is that Paul does not say that the benefits of exercise are so little as to be no benefit at all. There is a parallel comparison with the next phrase:

For bodily exercise is little usefulness,
But godliness is all usefulness.

Well, when you put it like that, of course anything we do for our physical bodies is meaningless in comparison with having godly character. So, in context, Paul's purpose is not to preach against physical exercise (he has no other comments on the practice), but to put it in proper perspective to being like God.

Naturally, even here we could make comparisons with people who exercise obsessively or who hone their bodies to painful perfection. How chiseled do you have to be to work at a desk?

Even so, I think we need to be careful when comparing what many of us do (or should be doing) in relation to exercise when compared to Paul's time.

First, the average person in Paul's day was not in need of exercise. In truth, they "exercised" all day long--we could call it work. Farming, keeping house, woodworking, or whatever a person did all day long was physically demanding in ways that most of us do not understand. They had no machines, it was all done by hand. And legs. And back. The last thing that the average person thought after the end of the work-day was, "Maybe I should go down to the gym and lift some weights." There were many fewer seriously overweight people than we see today. And though they were smaller, they were comparatively stronger than we are on average.

Those who did the kind of exercise to which Paul refers were the athletes in each city who were trained between 16 and 18 to participate in games between cities. What they did was for show and for a short time. Their work pales in comparison to what a godly man or woman could accomplish.

Most of us, however, do not do physical labor that compares in any way to what the average man or woman did in the first century. We are rich by comparison so we eat too much. We get soft. A good steward of the body that God gives needs to get in some exercise. I had a heart-attack four years ago. Though one artery to my heart was completely blocked (there's the over-eating fatty foods), the monitors showed that I had 100% heart function. The doctor attributed it to my workout regimen.

So we need to understand Paul's point without being bound to the cultural background which makes up the literal expression that he uses to make the point. Physical exercise has much more benefit to us than to those in Paul's day. But in comparison to being godly, it is still of small importance. So let's do both: take care of our bodies and live as he wants us to.