1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Glorify God in Your Temple

10/20 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Glorify God in Your Temple;Audio available at: http://www.ephraimbible.org/Sermons/20131020_1cor6_19-20.mp3

1Cor 6 [SBLGNT]

19 ἢ οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι τὸ σῶμα ὑμῶν ναὸς τοῦ ἐν ὑμῖν ἁγίου πνεύματός ἐστιν, οὗ ἔχετε ἀπὸ θεοῦ ; καὶ οὐκ ἐστὲ ἑαυτῶν, 20 ἠγοράσθητε γὰρ τιμῆς· δοξάσατε δὴ τὸν θεὸν ἐν τῷ σώματι ὑμῶν.

1Cor 6 [ESV2011]

1 Corinthians 6:12 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. 13 “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” 17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 19 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, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Again, in the context of a severe rebuke, in the context of sin and selfishness and sexual immorality, against this dark backdrop, we have a most beautiful reminder of the gospel, the good news, and a pointer to the ultimate purpose for which we were created, and to which we have been rescued.

Apparently the Corinthian believers were claiming under the banner of Christian liberty that they were free to live immoral self-centered, greedy lifestyles. Paul is quick to point out that those who continue in willful disobedience to Christ, those who refuse to follow Jesus, give evidence that they are not part of the family of God, and will not inherit the kingdom. He points them past the mere thought of what is permissible to ask what is profitable, what is beneficial. He warns that so-called liberties can lead us into bondage to sin, proving that what we might flaunt as freedom may become for us another form of slavery. He raises our sights beyond merely gratifying our physical desires, to realize that what we were really made for, that only which will fulfill our innermost desires, is the Lord. We were made to enjoy relationship with our Creator. He points us to the human sexual relationship as creating a one flesh union, and he parallels the intimacy of that union to our union with Jesus, which brings us into, not a one flesh union, but a one spirit union with him.

Do You Not Know?

In verse 19, the Apostle asks the eighth of ten ‘do you not know’ questions in 1 Corinthians. Christian doctrine has practical implications. What we believe affects how we live. The problems in the church are evidence that they have not grasped the implications of biblical truth. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? These are basic truths that he had taught them as new believers in Jesus. They ought to know this.

Indwelling Spirit

Even in the Old Testament Scriptures, we see the coming of the Holy Spirit anticipated in passages like

Ezekiel 11:19 And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, 20 that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

Ezekiel 36:26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

God promised that there was a day coming that he would put his own Spirit in his people.

We hear Jesus saying:

Luke 11:13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Jesus told his disciples:

John 14:16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit, who had been with them,would come to live inside of them. This is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies that God would put his Spirit within his people. This was a promise worth waiting for. In Acts 1, Jesus,

Acts 1:4 And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

Jesus had said in John 7:

John 7:37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

This became the evidence in the New Testament church of genuine faith in Jesus. This was a major argument for allowing Gentile believers who had not been circumcised into the church. In Acts 10, Peter argues:

Acts 10:47 “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”

In Acts 19, Paul asks an isolated group who had only been baptized with the baptism of John:

Acts 19:2 And he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

Paul had already told the Corinthians in 3:16

1 Corinthians 3:16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

In that passage, he was addressing the Corinthians as a body of believers, who together were indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Here, in chapter 6, he is referring to each individual believer, specifically to their physical bodies.

1 Corinthians 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?…

This was a fulfillment of what Jesus said to the woman of Samaria about the place of worship.

John 4:21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

No longer in the temple in Jerusalem. Not in the temple in Samaria. Now we worship the Father wherever we are, in spirit and truth, in the temple of our bodies. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is God Omnipresent

This passage provides strong evidence for the full deity of the Holy Spirit. “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” A temple is the place where God lives. If being indwelt by the Holy Spirit constitutes our bodies as a temples, then the Holy Spirit must be fully divine. This also argues for the everywhere presence of God. How could Paul in Ephesus, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, write to the believers in Corinth who are also indwelt by the same Holy Spirit? How could we believers in Utah be indwelt by the same Holy Spirit who fills the believers in the underground church in China? God is Spirit, and God is everywhere present. Each of our bodies, together with the bodies of every believer in Jesus, serve as temples of the Holy Spirit who is within you.

The Spirit a Gift from God

Paul tells us that all this is a gift. The indwelling Spirit is from God.

Jesus continually used the language of giving in relation to the Holy Spirit. A gift is different from wages. There is nothing we could ever do to earn the right to have the Holy Spirit reside in us. Jesus described his Father as loving to give good gifts to his children. God is the giver and we, undeserving recipients receive his gifts.

Jesus told us that his Father would be the one who would give us the Spirit. This tells us that the Holy Spirit is distinct from the Father. Here again is another pointer in the Scripture to the doctrine of the Trinity. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons, each equally divine, each everywhere present, yet there is only one God. In this passage, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have as a gift from God the Father, and we are each members of our Lord Jesus, having been joined to Jesus.

This is why it is so important what we do with our physical bodies. Your body is meant for the Lord Jesus. Your physical body will be resurrected by the Father. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not desecrate the temple with anything that would grieve the Holy Spirit. Do not do anything with your body that would be inappropriate to bring Jesus into. In the context, Paul is warning against sexual immorality which is unthinkable for the one who belongs to Jesus.

You Are Not Your Own

1 Corinthians 6:19 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, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

This is a strong statement in today’s culture. We take pride in our freedom. Paul is in no uncertain terms declaring that if you are a follower of Jesus, you are no longer free. You are not your own. We want to be autonomous. We want to be able to do what we want to do, when we want to do it, and nobody can tell me what I can and can’t do. Paul says here that you are not your own. You are no longer in charge. You are not master of your own destiny. You do not have the freedom to choose even what you do with your body. In fact your body is no longer your own. You belong to someone. You are owned. You are possessed and occupied by someone. What you do with your body is no longer yours to decided. Of course, the bible never describes us as moving from freedom and autonomy into slavery to God. The way the bible always describes our situation is moving from hard bondage to a cruel taskmaster into slavery to Jesus.

John 8:34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

The bible does describe this service to Jesus as true freedom, not the freedom to do whatever we want, including the freedom to destroy ourselves. The bible describes service to God as the freedom to be what we were created to be, the freedom to love and serve and worship our good Creator.

Bought With A Price

We are not our own. We are owned by God and occupied by the Holy Spirit. Paul backs up this assertion with the fact that we have been purchased by Jesus Christ. He says ”for you were bought with a price.” This word ‘bought’ is unique. It means ‘to buy in the marketplace’ and it is used in the gospels for buying food, supplies, property, cattle, and items of value. This is one of six places in the New Testament where this term describes God purchasing people for himself. In chapter 7 of 1 Corinthians, Paul addresses the issue of slavery and freedom and says:

1 Corinthians 7:23 You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men.

In 2 Peter he describes the incongruity of false teachers,

2 Peter 2:1 …even denying the Master who bought them…

In Revelation this word is used 3 times to describe those who belong to God. In chapter 5, the price paid is specified.

Revelation 5:9 And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed [bought] people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation,

Jesus paid the price for us by his own blood.

Peter uses the more common word for ransom to describe the price paid.

1 Peter 1:18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

Gomer

We are not our own. We were bought with a price. In order to help us understand our purchase, God has given us the picture of Hosea. God told Hosea to take a wife out of prostitution. After she had become his wife and borne children to Hosea, she apparently left him and returned to her life of prostitution. She ended up on the auction block as a slave. Hosea was told to go and buy her back again. She did not deserve his love. She was rescued. And after she returned to her former way of life, she deserved the humiliation and shame she suffered. But her husband came to the marketplace where she was being sold, paid the price to buy her back, covered her shame, and brought her home to himself. That is the condition we were in. We were unworthy, unlovable, offensive, full of shame, and all of our own doing. Yet God loved us. He paid the ultimate price to buy back what was rightfully his. He brought us to himself to be his own treasured possession.

Our Ultimate Purpose

1 Corinthians 6:19 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, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

What is our response to be? How should we respond to God’s unfathomable grace? We cannot be proud. We cannot draw attention to ourselves. What do we think of Gomer? We don’t think much of her. She is not the main character of the story. She is humbled, but she is loved. What do we think about Hosea? We are amazed at his love, his forgiveness, his grace. We see his character shine. That is the purpose of our purchase. We are not the main character in the story. It is not all about us. God’s character, his love, his forgiveness, his mercy and grace is on display.

We cannot act as if our life is our own to live as we wish. We sold ourselves into slavery, but we were bought back with the precious blood of Jesus. If by God’s grace we have become followers of Jesus, we must follow Jesus. We must listen to what he says and do what he tells us. He is our Master and Lord. He is our king. We must submit to his authority.

How can I glorify God in my body? I can use my body for things that honor God. I can say with Joseph, “How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” (Gen.39:9). I have been purchased with a great price for a great purpose. My body is meant for the Lord. I can live with purpose. My purpose is to glorify God and enjoy him. I am now free to love the Lord my God with all my heart and soul and mind and strength. I am free to love my neighbor as myself.

Pastor Rodney Zedicher ~ Ephraim Church of the Bible ~ www.ephraimbible.org