Living In The Spirit

DEVOTION

1 CORINTHIANS

LIVING IN THE SPIRIT

1 Cor 6:12-17

12 "Everything is permissible for me"-but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"-but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 "Food for the stomach and the stomach for food"-but God will destroy them both. The body 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 he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

NIV

Once again we glance into the past lives and what they were doing even though it appears they had already accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. It seems they just continued or reengaged in visiting those temple prostitutes of their old beliefs. Maybe they just thought they were just adding Jesus to an already existing belief and not actually repenting of what God considers sin and turning from their evil ways and following Christ. Then again, maybe they had turned away, but were enticed by their own evil desires back into their old ways. Even though this is speaking directly to sexual immorality, we could apply that concept to every area of our lives as well. Does our freedom in Christ give us that kind of freedom to fulfill our every desire no matter what that might be? Maybe, but as we see here it may not be so beneficial for us to indulge ourselves. Truly we may behave openly in a manner how we think everyone else expects us to, but what about those inward thoughts, feelings, and desires that no other person can see? When we behave poorly openly others can see we are uniting ourselves with the sinful world. When we behave or live in the same way the world does, isn’t that the same as uniting with a temple prostitute? Sure we have to work to provide our daily lives and have all the material things like homes, clothes, food, cars, and all that other stuff. But have we engaged in the same sort of beliefs the world has? Have we continued or reengaged in believing we need to provide for our own future, storing up wealth for our older years? That is just one of many of the world beliefs. Do we actually think, as believers in God, we are more powerful than He is and we can destroy what He created? That is what the environmentalist thinks, but we should not. If we are united with Christ then we need to apply all our efforts toward being like Him, and not like the world.  We need to be thinking like Christ thinks. We need to be about our Fathers business, not ours. We need to see we have the freedom to live free from the constraints of this world, and truly live in the Spirit.