Your skeleton is the underlying structure of your body and must be healthy for the body to be healthy. When a bone is broken, or out of place, we immediately take steps to insure that it is brought back to its original condition and position as soon as possible. We recognize that the original plan for the placement and function of the bones is the best design.

The vital issue in God’s eyes, however, is not the health of our skeleton or any other aspect of our bodies, but rather what we do with our bodies.

Jesus made a very interesting statement in Matthew 23:23…..

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.”

Justice, mercy and faithfulness are “weighty” matters, but Jesus says these should be done without neglecting even the tithing of herbs. Tithing was part of the law that could be done and completed. You could look back on it and imagine yourself complete and healthy for having fulfilled the law. Yet, this part of the law like many other parts, provided the basic structure for legitimate, divine religious practice.

Paul wrote that the law (including the teachings about tithing) was the schoolmaster or tutor that lead the people of Israel to Christ, in Galatians 3:24. The law was not the end, but the beginning of elementary training for spiritual life in God’s son.

The basic teachings of God are like our skeleton. They support and enable the working of all other aspects of the body of Christ. We are not to abandon, or forsake them, any more than we would neglect our skeleton. As the purpose of a healthy body is to do something with it, so the purpose of believing all that we should believe and getting the “basics” right is so we can move on to accomplishing the “weightier” matters of living Godly lives in this world.

The point is not simply to have a healthy church, but for that church as the body of Christ, to do good and so bring glory to God.