Stewarding the senses: Redeeming sensuality
I’m making tacos tonight: pork shoulder slow cooked until it’s falling off the bone, fresh lime and cilantro, a bit of arugula, some fried plantains and homemade guacamole on the side. The many flavors give me a window into the vibrancy of God the Creator. Yes, tacos can be an entry way into worship. And they should be. The senses – hearing, sight, smell, taste, touch – are incredible gifts from God, given to His beloved creation as avenues by which to know Him better, by which we know His love, and through which we learn to long for Him more and more. They are designed to point us to a Creator who is even bigger than what we can know, taste, or touch.
The idolatry of sensuality
New Testament figures, including Jesus, are quick to condemn sensuality as an end in itself. The pleasures we can experience because of the senses are not designed to fulfill, but to stoke an appetite for something better, namely God himself. When twisted by sin, they master and consume us. Whether inflamed or ignored, the appetites of the senses can quickly become objectified in our search for pleasure, satisfaction, meaning, comfort, stability. We become users rather than stewards, relying on our capacity to take rather than to receive. Sensuality as an end in itself is idolatry – taking the glory of the Creator and giving it to something He created.
The Apostle Paul strongly rebukes this in Ephesians 4:17-24:
“You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do…. They… have given themselves up to sensuality…. But that is not the way you learned in Christ! ….be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (emphasis added)
Paul does not leave us with only a negative command of strict sensual abstinence. He leads us to ask: “What is the way we learned in Christ?” If it is neither indulgence nor asceticism, then how is the gift of sensing to be used?
Redemption of the senses in the Old Testament
Back in Exodus 25-30, God lays out in detail His plan for the Tabernacle, the place where He would meet with His people, where they would offer worship back to Him. As God described this physical structure, He catered every detail to a people who would know Him not just with their minds and hearts, but with every physical sense they had. He created a way of worship that would actually be enhanced by their senses. The priests under the old covenant smelled incense, saw rich materials, tasted the bread of the Presence, touched the sprinkled blood of sacrificed animals, and heard the bells tinkling on their garments – each sensation a tactile reminder of their sinfulness and finitude before a gracious and holy God. He spoke to them and came to them in a visceral language they could understand and offered them a way of worship that redeemed the whole body.
The way we learned in Christ: Obedience and worship
The incarnation and resurrection of Christ are the ultimate examples of redeeming the senses. The apostle John wrote with awe about God coming in the flesh saying,
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands… that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you.” (1 John 1:1-3, emphasis added)
Jesus came in a form humanity could understand. He talked, hugged, ate, healed, laughed, worked, suffered, and died, living a full life in the flesh as an offering of joyful worship and obedience to the Father. His resurrection offered the final note of concrete evidence – God loves the body. Under the New Covenant now we as believers are priests to our God. Worship of God includes stewardship of our physiology, directing our attention to the coming day when all things will be made new, when we will feast, work, and rejoice in the new creation. To “taste and see that the Lord is good” in the present is to revel in the ways He has revealed His beauty and mystery to us, and to present His lovely fragrance to those who do not yet know Him. In a world obsessed with idolizing creation over the Creator, may stewardship of our senses bring many more worshipers to the His throne as we live fully before Him!
Rebecca Faulks is a nurse, seminary student, and member at Mosaic Boston church in Boston, MA.
