Honor God with Your Body
Opening Prayer
Lord, my now-sanctified body belongs to You.
Read 1 CORINTHIANS 6:12–20
12 “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. 13 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. 14 By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. 15 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! 16 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.” 17 But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 19 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; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
New International Version (NIV)
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Reflect
“I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Rom. 12:1).
When my wife’s sister entered a care home, a mad panic followed to sew her name into every item of clothing that she owned and ended up on everything that she took with her. There was to be no misunderstanding that it all belonged to her. A similar idea confronts us here. We belong to Jesus—body, mind and spirit—and no single component can be isolated as being spiritual only, or bodily only. This is one of the most important theological passages in the New Testament about the human body. It should forever lay to rest the popular but misguided idea that the body is to be minimized, subdued—or conversely, indulged—because it is of no significance for, or even a hindrance to, salvation which is incorrectly believed to do only with the soul. No! The body, not only the soul or spirit, is the Lord’s (13), and he will one day raise it up from its resting place in death.
Paul answers the Corinthians’ questions about visiting temple prostitutes, of which some are guilty. The issue is simply that we now belong to Christ. We are called to be God’s people, created for God’s glory (Isa. 43:7). How can one who is in relationship to Christ become “one flesh” with a prostitute (16)? Never! In fact, any form of sexual immorality (porneia) must never infect God’s people. When Paul says “Flee from sexual immorality” (18), he is perhaps thinking of Joseph who, when enticed by his boss’s wife, fled from the house rather than give in to her demands (Gen. 39).
Is there a situation you need to run from today? Those who walk through this sordid world with God’s name sewn onto their hearts may sometimes have no alternative other than to flee when tempted.
Apply
Pray that God will alert you to any temptation that might hinder your relationship with him.
Closing prayer
Lord, make me appreciate the horror of fornication and other similar sexual sins that the world tolerates.
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