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; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your body. 1 Corinthians 6:19–20
As a kid in church, I remember hearing these verses in reference to smoking. You shouldn’t smoke because it will pollute your body. Instead, you should treat your body as a temple of the Holy Spirit and keep it clean. When I became an adult, I learned that Paul wasn’t talking about smoking. What Paul is referencing here is polluting our body through sexual impurity. “Flee from sexual immorality,” Paul says, just one verse earlier. However, if you back out of the immediate context for a moment to get the big picture principle underlying Paul’s specific instruction, it isn’t too hard to see how smoking or adultery or any use of our bodies that is contrary to what is healthy physically, morally or spiritually, is sin. The big point underlying Paul’s instruction is that we belong to God. Isn’t it what the hymns teach us? “I surrender all.” “All that I am, without one plea.” “All of me, why not take all of me?” Ok, that last one isn’t a hymn…but it’s really the same idea. God is not interested in a version of Christianity where He plays anything less than the leading role. He will not be a member of the “supporting cast.” He will not even settle for “best supporting actor.” History is His story. He is ever and always the leading character. If this is true for all humanity, how much truer is it for those who belong to Jesus? As John Piper, in his aptly titled book, Don’t Waste Your Life, comments on the verses above: If you are a Christian, you are not your own. Christ has bought you at the price of his own death. You now belong doubly to God: He made you, and he bought you. That means your life is not your own. It is God’s. Therefore, the Bible says, “Glorify God in your body.” God made you for this. He bought you for this. This is the meaning of your life. Boom. Mic drop. End of discussion. This really is the point of all of Scripture, isn’t it? That the best life is the life lived for God? It’s ironic…so often people reject Biblical teaching (or portions thereof) out of fear of what they will lose. True, there is loss associated with following Jesus. It is inherent to “take up your cross and follow me.” But the message of Scripture, over and over again, is that what we gain is far greater! How much time do we spend bartering with God, rationalizing our petty idolatries? And for what? For a temporary dopamine rush? We cling to our idols like a dog clings to a bone. What we don’t see is that these things we cling to are nothing compared to the promises of God for those who find their meaning in life in glorifying Him. Piper writes, again, “The opposite of wasting your life is living life by a single God-exalting, soul-satisfying passion.” Piper expands on this notion of a single passion, writing: How serious is the word “single”? Can life really have that much “singleness” of purpose? Can work and leisure and relationships and eating and lovemaking and ministry all really flow from a single passion? Is there something deep enough and big enough and strong enough to hold all that together? Can sex and cars and work and war and changing diapers and doing taxes have a God-exalting, soul-satisfying unity? Piper’s answer? Yes. In a word, it’s Jesus! Poor Mick Jagger couldn’t “get no satisfaction.” If he’d only realized he was “looking for love in all the wrong places.” But it isn’t just rock stars. The truth is, we who profess Jesus are under constant temptation to seek soul-satisfaction in things unable to satisfy. Sadly, for too many Christ-followers, love for Jesus and love for ice cream is only a matter of difference in degree. Whether your love for God is 5% or 50%, it’s always a matter of degree. God often gets just a piece of the pie of our lives. But what if the equation is askew? What if God is the whole pie, 100%, and everything else in life is just the whip cream on top? Is this not the kind of instruction Paul gives us? Is this not the kind of example Jesus shows us? It’s all for Him. ALL. What we are talking about here is a paradigm shift where God is not merely vying for attention with all of the other things in life we love, but where the pursuit of God is ALL! What would it look like in your daily life if you were to increasingly live life with a God-exalting, soul-satisfying focus on loving, serving and honoring Christ? How might your daily routine change? What current priorities would diminish? What optional pursuits would start to take precedence? Here is a challenge worth our prayer and focus. Why? Because you are not your own! You were bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with all that you are!
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Dan GannonDan has ministered at Renton Bible Church, with his wife Debbie, since 2003. Archives
June 2022
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