Glorify God With Your Body
The things that come at significant cost to us tend to be things that we are careful with and place great value on. In 1 Corinthians 6:12–20, Paul told the Corinthian Church that although they had been set free, their freedom had been purchased at a great price. That meant that they were united with Christ and God’s Spirit was within them Therefore, their goal should be to honor God in all that they did, including the things that they did with their bodies. I pray that we will look to honor God with everything we have and in everything we do…. body, mind and spirit. Amen.
“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. (1 Corinthians 6:12-14)
A Christian’s life is a life that has been set free because of the price paid by Jesus on the cross. But as Paul consistently stated in scripture, our freedom is not meant to be a license for us to indulge in sin. So in addressing the Corinthian church’s attitude, summed up in the saying “I have the right to do anything”, Paul responded yes, but “not everything is beneficial”. For example, just because I can jump off a cliff, doesn’t mean it’s good for me to do it. Having been saved by God, Paul pointed out that using one’s body for sexual immorality does nothing to honor God or show Him gratitude for our salvation. Moreover, these bodies of ours are the ones that God intends to raise from the grave as He did with Christ.
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. (1 Corinthians 6:15-17)
Do you not know?” is repeated throughout 1 Corinthians 6, and is repeated twice in these verses. Paul is in essence saying to the Corinthian church “you should know this by now!”.
Paul urged Christians in his letter to the church at Rome, to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Romans 12:1). Here, to the Corinthian church, he explained that as Christians, we are wedded to Christ. Paul often said that the church was the body of Christ. And as such, we have become one with Christ (the two will become one flesh. Gen. 2:24). Christians are united (become one) with Christ spiritually. Given that fact, what we do with our bodies matters spiritually. To bring that point home, Paul said that whoever unites with the Lord is one with Him in spirit.
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. (1 Corinthians 6:18-20)
Paul urged Corinthians Christians and all of us to “flee” (ie run away from a dangerous situation) from sexual immorality. To be sure there are other sins, and Paul is not lifting this up as being the worst sin. Instead, Paul identified the spiritual implications of why our bodies belong to God and why we shouldn’t use our bodies in ways that do not honor God. First, these are the bodies that will be resurrected to be with Christ. Second, the Holy Spirit resides within the body of each believer. And lastly, all believers (and our bodies) have been bought by God with a very great price…. the blood of Jesus.
There is a saying, “freedom ain’t free”. In other words, freedom always costs someone something to obtain. Your freedom came at a price, a very high price. It cost you nothing, but it cost God everything. He sent His only begotten Son to a cross to die for your sins and mine. How do we repay a God like that? We could never fully repay God. But we can honor him by the way that we live and the things that we do. The Son set you free, so we are free, but we are not our own. We belong to Him and we are united with Christ as members of His body. What we do with our bodies reflects on Christ and has physical consequences, as well as spiritual implications. So do you serve Him as Lord, with all that you have? Or do you treat your salvation like a “get out of jail free card” that lets you go back to the worldly living that put you into bondage, pain and heartbreak in the first place? God sees our bodies as instruments for glorifying Him….maybe you should start seeing it that way too!
Blessings, Rev. Glenn
Do you think of your body as an instrument for glorifying God?
How do you, in fact, offer your body to God as a living sacrifice?
Does 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 change the way you think and live?
Giving our bodies to God entails much more than abstaining from the sins of the flesh. We are to offer our bodies by living each day for God.
