Sins against the body
Key Verses: 1, 7, 9-11, 15, 19, 20
One of the things that saddens me is when I hear that people who claim to follow Jesus are suing each other. How do we let things go so wrong that we end up in court on opposite side of the bench? We should be able to settle these things between each other, or at least be able to gather some other believers and sort through these things. Instead, we allow a worldly system to determine our fate, and we end up paying court fees!
Paul says that it would be better to just be wronged rather than fight over stuff. When we take a fellow Jesus-follower to court it says that both parties have their priorities wrong. This is a hard truth that gets lost in our litigious society where lawsuits are a way of life.
There are some things listed here that are just plain wrong everywhere, every time, every place. Some of these are at the center of a cultural battle raging here in the U.S. Some have become a cultural norm years ago, and sadly have infiltrated even the church, like adultery and greed. But there is hope. Some of us used to be these things before coming Christ. But God intervened in our lives and cleaned us up, so that we no longer practice these things. God is in the business of cleaning up our messes. But once they are cleaned up, He expects us to keep our rooms cleaned! He wants us to choose to do the right things, rather than falling back into the old pattern of living.
When we participate in these sinful things, we bring Christ right along with us into the sin. We can’t participate in sexual sins, as an example, and expect that we can “get away with it” and not have consequences. I have a friend who out of loneliness had one night of passion. Pregnancy! She thought it would be a small sin that would soon fade into the background, be forgiven and she could move forward in Christ. This blessing of a child will be a reminder of her need for grace for years to come. Not all sins carry as visible a reminder of themselves as this one did, but all do have consequences.
We have a responsibility to honor the Lord with our physical body. Sexual sins bring our physical body into the mix. In Paul’s day there was a teaching that the physical world was not important, so sins committed with the physical were not important. The inner world was what was important. Paul says both are important, inner and outer world, spiritual and physical. The Holy Spirit is now present with us as we live in this world in a way that creates a new intimacy with God and with the world. We need to remember that wherever we are, we bring God into that space in a new relational way. We need to honor that relationship.
The Arnold Journey 