Why Your Body Is Wonderful

Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20

In the latter part of 1 Corinthians 6, Paul explains to the believers in Corinth why they should avoid sexual immorality. He doesn’t just give them rules to follow, such as: Do this! or Don’t do that! Rather, he helps them to understand who they really are and why it matters what they do with their bodies.

Paul’s explanation points to the very presence of God in the body of a Christian: “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?” (6:19). Whereas the world in which the Corinthians lived tended to devalue the physical and prize the spiritual, Paul brought a new vision of the body, one rooted in God’s revelation and in the Hebrew worldview. The body was part of God’s good creation, and that goodness didn’t completely disappear when it was tainted by sin. Moreover, when a person comes to faith in Christ, the Spirit of God comes to dwell in that person, making him or her a holy temple. Now there’s a reason not to get involved in sexual sin. Your body is a temple in which God dwells through the Spirit.

Moreover, our bodies are not truly our own. They belong to God, who is our rightful and gracious Lord. Thus we should honor God with our bodies, not just with our spirits. What an extraordinary privilege and opportunity! You and I can actually honor God with our bodies. How? On the one hand, by keeping our bodies free from the defilement of sin. On the other hand, we honor God with our bodies by offering them to him each day. When we use our bodies to do our work or to hug our kids, we honor the Lord. When we use our bodies to sing songs of praise or to feed the hungry, God is honored.

We live in a culture that is not unlike the Corinthian culture. Each day, we hear messages that cheapen our bodies, telling us it doesn’t really matter what we do with them. Like Paul, we have the opportunity and responsibility to tell people just how wonderful their bodies are . . . as temples of the Holy Spirit and as vehicles for honoring God.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: Do you think of your body as a temple of God? What difference might it make in your self-image and your behavior if you took seriously the truth of 1 Corinthians 6:19-20?

PRAYER: Holy God, what an incredible privilege it is to belong to you, not just in our spirits, but in our bodies as well. This gives us motivation to flee from sin that defiles our bodies. It also moves us to live our whole lives for you.

Dear Lord, help me to remember the good news embodied in the first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism: “What is your only comfort in life and death?” “That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins and delivered me from all the power of the devil, and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit His purpose for my salvation, therefore by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready, always, to live for him.”

Indeed, Lord, in all things I belong to you, all that I am.

Hallelujah! Thanks be to you, O God! Amen.


Announcing the Laity Lodge Worship Leaders’ Retreat, September 21-24, 2010

I am pleased to announce a new retreat at Laity Lodge. The Laity Lodge Worship Leaders’ Retreat offers rest, refreshment, and renewal for all who help lead worship in churches (worship leaders, worship pastors, music ministers, choir and band members, etc.). Spouses are welcome to participate, if they wish. Laity Lodge will be teaming up with Worship Team Training, an outstanding ministry to worship leaders, founded by Branon Dempsey. The main speaker for this event will be Scotty Smith, a Laity Lodge favorite and a pastor to some of the leading Christian musical artists in the country.

If you are a worship leader, please join us at Laity Lodge in September. If you know worship leaders, please tell them about this unique opportunity to “unplug” and be refreshed for their ministry. You can find more information about the Worship Leaders’ Retreat at our website.