God cares about sport

During a seminar, a pastor interrupted me with a simple question: “What even is the point of sport?” It’s a fair question.

Theologically, sport is often overlooked, yet it’s deeply woven into our society. Over 9 million people actively participate in sport in the UK, and millions more watch. Globally, its influence is vast.

Traditionally there have been three main Christian responses to sport:

1. You feel a bit guilty about how much you love it. It seems like a distraction from real Christian things.
2. You see sport as useful – for fitness, teamwork, maybe evangelism, but you’re unsure about the darker sides.
3. You think sport is great, but you’ve never really thought about how it connects to faith.

I want to offer a fourth approach which starts not with sport, but with the God who made it and asks: “Why would God create something like sport in the first place?”

Sport for His glory

Ultimately, we were made to glorify God. Isaiah 43v7 says: “Everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made” (Isaiah 43v7).

Think about how we instinctively celebrate excellence in sport. We cheer great goals. We award medals. We give praise where it’s due.

Professional athletes will regularly offer glory to God in their celebrations and interviews. When we play with joy, gratitude and humility, sportspeople are doing what they were made to do: giving glory to the one who made them and wired them to love to play.

Sport for our joy

If you do love sport, that’s no accident – it’s a gift.

When God made the world, He delighted in it. Eden wasn’t just functional – it was full of abundance and joy. Sport, too, can be a joyful celebration of the bodies God has given us and the world we live in.

Pastor Jeremy Treat captures it beautifully: “Like a father who builds a sandbox for his children, God is honoured and takes joy when his sons and daughters delight in His workmanship. The world, as it has been said, is the theatre of God’s glory, but it is also the playground for God’s goodness.”

Sport points back to the giver in its creativity and its community. Our God is wonderfully creative and when He made the world He called us to continue, in His image, that creative work. God’s world was good – but it wasn’t finished. He invited us to develop and cultivate it. This “creation mandate” includes inventing games, developing rules, and forming teams and leagues. Sport is one expression of our God-given creativity. When we figure out a new move on the pitch, work out how to beat an opponent or unlock a new training pattern that brings improvement, we are creating – mirroring the God who made us.

Sport at its best also brings people together. We’re made in the image of an eternally communal God. Sport is good for us relationally as we share life with others – the highs and the lows – and process them. Sport brings diverse people together and offers deep friendship in a way little else in our world does.

Sport for our good

Sport isn’t perfect. It reflects the brokenness of a fallen world — pride, anger, idolatry, selfish ambition. But just like anything else in life, God can use sport to shape us to be more like Jesus.

Romans 8v28 reminds us: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

In the joys and the disappointments – whether winning trophies or facing injury or defeat – God is at work. Sport becomes a classroom for discipleship, forming character, humility, perseverance, and trust in God. Sport is something God cares about and something we can enjoy as Christians. It is something that is part of your relationship with God if He has wired you this way and it is something that is a wonderful context for sharing life with others wired the same. .