The Temple of God

 DEVOTION

THE 1^ST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

THE TEMPLE OF GOD

1 Cor 6:12-20

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. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. 19 Do you not know that your body is a temple 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 body.

NIV

Clearly, this is the continuation of this warning about dealing with this one particular man who had sexual relations with his father’s wife. However, there also were all those other areas that Paul mention just before about some other sexually immoral behaviors. There must have been some of this going on in this church that was made up of many Greeks that had accepted the gospel message but were still being influenced by the culture they came out of. There is always a danger of letting culture have too much influence on our lives because we live within it. It is interesting that Paul makes this statement about everything being permissible, but everything is not beneficial. He does reference the stomach which indicates this is a matter of eating and drinking, although he also goes on to talk about this sexual matter. It is a good thing that the church today does not have that kind of problem. Yet, the question still arises whether we have completely come to grips with the fact that we belong to Christ, and that we should be united with Christ, being one with him and He with us, as Jesus told us that he and the Father are one. Paul makes this statement about the fact that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, that is God dwells within us. As we ponder on this, we are reminded of the temple or tabernacle that God directed Moses to build, and how it was the place where God would meet with his people. The specifics of the Tabernacle had to be exactly how God directed it. This is what He has done in our bodies. When God made Adam, the first man, he made him in the very likeness of his own image. Of course, that image was corrupted by sin, and now because of Christ, the second Adam, if we unite ourselves with Christ, then we have been returned into the image of God. Therefore as image bearers of God, being his temple, we should be aware that all of us, our soul, spirit, and body belong to God and thus we should look after how we treat ourselves. Therefore, everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial. Of course, we know sexual immorality is on the list of non-beneficial behaviors. But then the list gets a little gray, which it should not be. We have heard over the years how this list of non-beneficial behaviors has changed according to time and culture. The list once included no smoking, drinking adult beverages, dancing, going to movies, and even mixed bathing, that is boys and girls going to the beach or swimming pools together. It is interesting that most of those behaviors have gone by the wayside except these two about smoking and drinking. Those who propose that kind of behavior destroys the temple of God, never bother to include gluttony, which does just as much if not more damage to the temple of God. Jesus came eating and drinking and was accused of being a glutton, while John the Baptist did not eat and drink and was accused of being a demon. All things are permissible but not all things are beneficial. Let us not be mastered by any of those things, eating or drinking, and all those other areas that can be damaging to the temple of God. Could we dare say eat and drink in moderation, so we are not mastered by either, in this way we honor the temple of God.