What Does the Bible Say About Body Image?

1 Samuel 16:7 ESV / 337 helpful votes

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

1 Peter 3:3-4 ESV / 256 helpful votes

Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 ESV / 240 helpful votes

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Proverbs 31:30 ESV / 121 helpful votes

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

Genesis 1:27 ESV / 120 helpful votes

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Psalm 139:13-16 ESV / 111 helpful votes

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

Matthew 6:25 ESV / 67 helpful votes

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

1 Corinthians 3:16 ESV / 47 helpful votes

Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?

Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV / 41 helpful votes

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

Genesis 1:26-27 ESV / 40 helpful votes

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Psalm 45:11 ESV / 32 helpful votes

And the king will desire your beauty. Since he is your lord, bow to him.

Ephesians 2:10 ESV / 31 helpful votes

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 ESV / 24 helpful votes

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;

Proverbs 6:25 ESV / 24 helpful votes

Do not desire her beauty in your heart, and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes;

Romans 1:24-25 ESV / 23 helpful votes

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Psalm 139:14 ESV / 23 helpful votes

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

Genesis 1:31 ESV / 16 helpful votes

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Isaiah 44:2 ESV / 13 helpful votes

Thus says the Lord who made you, who formed you from the womb and will help you: Fear not, O Jacob my servant, Jeshurun whom I have chosen.

Psalm 23:1-6 ESV / 12 helpful votes

A Psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. ...

1 Corinthians 15:42-53 ESV / 11 helpful votes

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. ...

Romans 12:1 ESV / 10 helpful votes

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Zechariah 2:5 ESV / 7 helpful votes

And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory in her midst.’”

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 ESV / 5 helpful votes

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ...

Matthew 6:1-34 ESV / 3 helpful votes

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. ...

Jeremiah 17:7-8 ESV / 3 helpful votes

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

Proverbs 16:32 ESV / 3 helpful votes

Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

1 Corinthians 11:7 ESV / 2 helpful votes

For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.

Luke 12:27-28 ESV / 2 helpful votes

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!

Luke 12:22-23 ESV / 2 helpful votes

And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.

Bible Verses about Body Image