Wonderfully Made - Part 1 - Skin

WONDERFULLY MADE – FIVE SHORT STUDIES ON THE MAKE-UP OF THE HUMAN BODY

Introduction

David, the author of most of the psalms in our Bible wrote that ‘I am fearfully and wonderfully made’. In this series of short studies, we will be looking at five parts of our wonderfully made bodies, and finding out what spiritual lessons they have for us today. 

1. We’ll start on the outside with our skin, which is far more than merely the outer protective covering of our bodies! It’s actually the largest organ in our bodies, covering an area of up to two square metres, or 18 square feet in the old currency, and making up to nearly 1/6^thof the weight of the human body. 

The thinnest skin is found in our eyelids, and the thickest on the palms of our hands. Every single day we shed around a million skin cells, which are then replaced, so that in a month or so, our skin has completely renewed itself. A large amount of the dust in your home is actually made up of those dead skin cells. Our skin is itself the home to about one million million bacteria, fortunately most of them are harmless!

Good supplies of vitamins A, C, D and E obtained from a good diet are necessary to keep the skin healthy. If exposed to plenty of sunshine, our skin is a vitamin D factory making its own supply of this valuable vitamin! Vitamin D promotes the body's absorption of calcium, which is essential for the normal development of healthy teeth and bones, as well as helping in wound healing. 

We could spend a lot more time talking about our skin and its features and functions that we all share in common. However, there is one thing about our skin that is unique to us all, that is our fingerprints. Even for identical twins, though their fingerprints might be similar, they are never identical! So our fingertips can uniquely identify us all! This reminds us that, while we are all members of the human race, sharing many things in common, nevertheless we are all individual, responsible creatures of God. 

The Bible makes many statements about us all. There are also many things that it says about each one of us in particular. For instance, we read that ‘all have sinned’, but we have the record in then Bible of a number of individuals who said ‘I have sinned’.  

In John’s Gospel, we find a remarkable statement made about the Lord Jesus Christ, that is that ‘he knew all men’. When we read that ‘Christ died for the ungodly’, and that when He died on the cross ‘[He] gave himself a ransom for all’, then we are all concerned in His death. When Jesus died for us all on the cross, He knew every one He was dying for!

If you are not saved from the penalty of your sins in your lifetime, then you personally will stand before the Lord Jesus Christ at the end of time, and He will judge you according to your works, Rev. 20. 12. 

God ‘now commandeth all men every where to repent’, Acts. 17. 30, that means changing your minds completely about your spiritual state, acknowledging that you are, like all human beings, a sinner, deserving only judgment, and then really believe that ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life’, John 3. 16.

You will then be able to say with the apostle Paul, ‘[God] hath saved us . . . not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace’, 2 Tim. 1. 9. 

To be continued . . .