The theology of the body starts in Genesis, with God’s creating man in His image. God is invisible. By giving us our bodies in His image, He has made the invisible visible, the intangible tangible.

So our bodies are living metaphors of God’s loving nature—but more than metaphors, because God, in creating us, breathed His Spirit into us. This divine origin of our bodies gives what we do with them meaning beyond the superficial. When we use them as God has instructed us, especially when we take part in something sacred, we are making visible a hidden mystery—bringing to earth a bit of heaven. This may be seen in baptism, when, in being washed with water—the means we normally use to cleanse our bodies and make us feel new—we instead are cleansed in our souls and made into literally new creations. It may also be seen in Communion, when God uses the most mundane physical processes of eating and drinking to bring forth a metaphysical experience where we touch eternity.

To really see the theology of the body at work, you don’t have to go inside a church. God uses your body every day to make the invisible visible and the intangible tangible. It happens every time you share His love with another individual.

I’m not talking about what Christians call witnessing. Ordinary acts of love and kindness—from telling a relative, "I love you," to smiling at the woman who sells you your morning coffee, to pausing to let another driver into your lane—all hint at heaven. Moreover, such actions align your body with God’s purpose for it—a loving purpose that rejects selfishness.

The idea that parts of the body have purpose in and of themselves is not terribly fashionable these days. As our culture would have it, if a friend of yours gets her tongue pierced with a silver stud, you’re not supposed to say, "That’s gross. It looks unnatural, and it’s going to be a real pain for you when you eat." You’re supposed to say something like, "Cool! What a bold fashion statement!"

Likewise, our culture rebels against the idea that the body has a higher purpose, because to suggest it instantly implies that we will suffer in our spirits for sins that we commit against our own bodies. This is too terrible for many people to even think about—so they deny the body’s deeper meaning entirely.

Just as your tongue is made to taste and speak, so your whole body is made to experience God’s love and communicate it to others.

This is a great responsibility, but an even greater blessing—especially when we consider the most intense and exciting means that God has created for us to share His love.

In marriage, God enables us to use our bodies to create a love that is more than the sum of their parts. On one level, He does this literally—by granting children. But even before that occurs, He does it figuratively, by making the bride’s and bridegroom’s love bear new and greater spiritual fruit.