In the beginning, God formed humanity from the dust of the ground and breathed into that dust the breath of life. The Bible’s first portrait of us is not of a ghostly spirit floating toward heaven but of a living, breathing unity — flesh animated by divine breath. Body and spirit, dust and glory. That’s the original meaning of wholeness.
When Scripture says that God saw all He had made and declared it very good, it includes the body. Our physical life was never an accident or an afterthought. The human form itself was meant to be a sanctuary where the presence of God could dwell.
Wholeness and holiness were never meant to be two different projects. They were two sides of the same creation. To be holy was to be whole; to be whole was to live in harmony with the God who made you.
II. Broken Wholeness
Then sin fractured everything. The Fall didn’t just introduce guilt; it introduced disorder. Our minds lost clarity, our bodies began to decay, our emotions turned chaotic. We became divided beings — longing for heaven while chained to habits that drag us down.
That’s why redemption is not merely the forgiveness of sin; it’s the restoration of harmony. God’s goal isn’t simply to get us to heaven someday, but to get heaven back into us today.
When Paul pleads in Romans 12 : 1-2 to “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,” he is not shifting from spiritual talk to practical advice; he’s showing that worship and wellness belong together. Our lives — our thoughts, choices, appetites, even our sleep patterns — are places where grace can take root.
III. The Gospel Restores
Everywhere Jesus went, He made people whole. He didn’t divide His ministry into spiritual and physical. He forgave and He healed, sometimes in the same breath. When He touched the leper, He restored more than skin; He gave back dignity, belonging, and joy. When He raised Jairus’s daughter, He told them to give her something to eat. Even in resurrection, Jesus cared about breakfast.
That’s why the gospel is not an escape from the body but the redemption of it. Our Savior carried scars after He rose, proof that redemption does not erase our humanity — it transforms it. He came to give life, and to give it “more abundantly” (John 10 : 10). Abundance isn’t luxury; it’s balance. It’s living in rhythm with God again.
IV. The Temple of the Holy Spirit
Paul wrote, “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” (1 Cor. 6 : 19). He didn’t say the body contains a temple; he said the body is one. In Israel’s history, the temple was the meeting place between heaven and earth. It was a place of beauty and reverence, not obsession. Likewise, the Christian’s body is a sacred space for God’s indwelling presence.
To care for this temple is not vanity but reverence. Holiness is not about polishing the marble; it’s about protecting the Presence. The Spirit who sanctifies the soul also calls us to steward our physical lives.
That stewardship was nearly forgotten by the mid-1800s. The world reeked of tobacco, quack medicines, and ignorance of basic sanitation. It was in that setting that God impressed a small group of believers with a startling insight: health is spiritual.
V. A People Who Remembered the Body
In 1863, while the Civil War tore America apart, a modest Christian woman named Ellen White had a vision that would plant seeds of global reform. She saw that the gospel must touch the stomach as well as the soul — that obedience to God’s laws of life was not bondage but blessing.
The early Adventists built sanitariums — centers for healing that combined prayer, hydrotherapy, fresh air, and simple food. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg at Battle Creek made breakfast famous for all the right reasons. Loma Linda University would later anchor a world network of hospitals built on the same conviction: the Creator cares how His creatures live.
And modern science has vindicated that conviction. Studies on the Adventist Health Advantage show that people who live by those simple principles — plant-based diets, rest, exercise, abstaining from alcohol and tobacco, strong community, and faith — live significantly longer and healthier lives. Loma Linda, California, stands as one of the world’s official “Blue Zones.”
But longevity was never the point. The point was loyalty. Health reform was not about pride in performance but participation in redemption. As Ellen White wrote, “The health message is the right arm of the gospel” — not the head, not the heart, but the helping arm that serves.
VI. The Shift of Temptation
In the nineteenth century, the great intemperance was what people ate and drank. Today, the greater intemperance is what people watch and absorb. We’ve moved from stomach to screen.
Our grandparents were warned about tobacco smoke; we are surrounded by a digital haze. The world no longer sells sin in bottles but in pixels. The new addiction doesn’t smell; it glows.
VII. Guarding the Avenues of the Soul
Adventist pioneers spoke of “guarding the avenues of the soul” — the senses through which the mind receives impressions. They understood that holiness begins with attention.
And nowhere is that battle fiercer than in our eyes.
“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”
— Matthew 6 : 22
Today’s greatest intemperance no longer comes from what we put into our mouths but from what we let into our eyes. We live in an age where the eyes never rest — screens, scrolls, ads, endless entertainment. The ancient appetite for food has been joined — and often surpassed — by the modern appetite for images.
We don’t just eat meals; we eat moments. We binge on light.
“We used to say, ‘Feast your eyes on that!’ But that’s the problem, isn’t it? We’re feasting — not on bread, but on images. Our eyes have become the new mouths of the soul. And whatever we feed them, we eventually become.”
We live in a generation that will binge-watch Dexter while injecting itself with Ozempic.
We starve the body while we glut the mind.
We detox our blood but not our thoughts.
We count calories but not hours of screen time.
And then we wonder why our souls feel malnourished.
Imagine the amount of time we spend each day focusing on the cyber world.
More than half of every waking hour is spent somewhere that isn’t even real — in the cloud.
Not the cloud where God’s presence filled the sanctuary,
but the digital one — glowing screens, endless scrolls, synthetic connections.
“From the moment we wake up to the sleep-inducing sounds of YouTube,
our center of reality rests in our hand.
We hold a world that holds us — glowing, humming, demanding.
We open our eyes and the first thing we see is a screen, not Scripture.
We fall asleep to algorithms instead of promises.”
The old tempter hasn’t changed his method — only his medium.
In Eden he offered a fruit that promised knowledge.
Today he offers a feed that promises the same.
And still … we bite.
VIII. Grace, Not Guilt
Whenever we talk about health and holiness in the same breath, a subtle danger lurks.
It is the voice that whispers, If you just try harder, eat cleaner, live purer, then God will love you more.
But that is not the gospel; that is the law without love, the rule without the Redeemer.
The moment health reform becomes a measuring stick instead of a gift, it loses its power.
Jesus did not die to make us better vegans; He died to make us new creations.
Wholeness is not a merit badge for the disciplined—it is a mercy for the broken.
When Paul said, “Ye are bought with a price,” he wasn’t calling us to shame but to value.
The body is sacred because it is redeemed, not because it is perfect.
And so we care for it, not to earn grace but because grace has already claimed it.
Legalism says, Behave and you will belong.
The gospel says, You belong, therefore behave like someone loved.
Health lived in gratitude is holiness; health lived in pride is idolatry.
That’s why Adventists have always needed to remember that the health message is not our trophy—it’s our testimony.
We are not healthier to boast; we are healed to bless.
Our lifestyle is not an argument to win but a light to share.
IX. Practical Wholeness
If holiness is expressed through gratitude, what does it look like in everyday rhythm?
It looks like the way we treat time, food, rest, work, and one another.
1. Rest — The Gift of Sabbath
God wrote the word balance into creation itself.
Six days of labor were never meant to swallow the seventh.
Sabbath is God’s built-in recovery day—His way of saying,
“You are not a machine; you are My child.”
The world treats rest as laziness; heaven calls it worship.
Sabbath is not merely a command; it’s a cure.
It slows the pulse, resets priorities, and reminds us that the universe runs on God’s power, not ours.
2. Nutrition — The Joy of Simplicity
Food was the first test of trust in Eden and remains one of the most visible ways we live by faith.
Healthy eating is not about restriction; it’s about restoration.
When we choose the simple over the sensational, we join God in valuing life.
Every meal becomes a small sacrament—an act of gratitude that says,
“Lord, thank You for the colors, the flavors, the harvest of Your earth.”
To eat in gratitude is to eat in grace.
3. Movement — The Celebration of Life
We were never created for couches alone.
Even in Eden, Adam and Eve walked with God.
Movement is praise in motion.
It clears the mind, releases tension, and opens space for prayer.
The goal isn’t competition but circulation—of blood, of breath, of joy.
Exercise becomes a hymn when done with thanksgiving.
4. Emotional Health — Forgiveness as Medicine
So many physical ailments are rooted in unhealed emotion.
Resentment tightens muscles, bitterness poisons chemistry, guilt drains energy.
But forgiveness releases all three.
When Jesus told the paralytic, “Thy sins be forgiven thee,” the man stood up.
Healing of heart preceded healing of limb.
Peace is powerful medicine.
5. Trust in God — The Anchor of Wellness
The final prescription is the simplest and the hardest: trust.
Anxiety corrodes every system in the body.
Faith calms it.
Isaiah said, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.”
Health is not merely the absence of disease; it is the presence of peace.
And that peace has a name: Jesus.
X. Wholeness and the Coming Kingdom
Our ultimate healing is still ahead.
Every scar we carry, every weakness we battle, every chronic pain we manage—it all points forward to the day when the perishable will put on imperishability.
The gospel of health reaches its climax not in this life’s diet plan but in the resurrection morning.
Paul writes in Philippians 3 : 20-21 that Christ “shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body.”
That’s the final act of wholeness—when holiness is complete.
Until that day, we live as walking sanctuaries, little temples of light in a sick world.
We do not curse the darkness; we embody the cure.
Every act of care—every vegetable chosen, every Sabbath kept, every eye turned from the trivial to the true—is a declaration of faith in the coming kingdom.
XI. A Final Appeal — Whole Again
Some of us tonight carry guilt for the body we’ve neglected, the habits we’ve formed, the distractions we’ve let invade the holy space of the mind.
The good news is that Jesus is still in the business of cleansing temples.
He does it gently—driving out the clutter, not the worshipper.
He turns over the tables of addiction and self-hatred and leaves the place clean for grace.
So tonight He invites you:
“Let Me make you whole again—inside and out.”
Wholeness is not perfection; it’s connection.
Holiness is not distance; it’s closeness.
And both are found in Christ.
Fix your eyes on Him, the true Light.
Let His Spirit guard the avenues of your soul.
Let your body, your mind, your heart become His dwelling place.
And when the world tries to drown you in images, opinions, and noise, remember:
You were made for something brighter than screens—
you were made for the glory of God.
