1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Do you not know that your bodies are temples 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 bodies.
Some people today think that we have a private life that doesn’t affect our public life. “If it doesn’t hurt anyone” then I should be able to do it. So all manner of evil is done in “private” in the belief that private morality doesn’t affect them. But private sin does bleed into public life. Just look at the headlines.
In the spy world, sex is one of the greatest tools of foreign powers to extract secret information from government and corporate actors. And there are thousands of spies working undercover to connect with individuals who have access to our secrets right now. We see the damage done to individuals who get exposed to the light of day. Private affects public.
And this isn’t only true with spies. Everyday people get caught up in the public-private divide. And to our shame, our society is trying to eliminate this divide by sanctioning all manner of evil in the name of inclusion and tolerance. Some things are left in private and out of the light.
Our text is the conclusion of a section of this letter to the Church in Corinth dealing with the connection between our bodily behaviors and our spiritual life. When we engage in sin with our bodies, we are dragging Jesus through the mud. The whole community gets tainted with the results of the sin.
The topic of sex is a big part of this illustration. There is no way to engage in sexual activity as a follower of Jesus and not drag Him into it. The Holy Spirit dwells in us, so when we engage in out of bounds sexual behavior, then Christ Himself is engaged. What an untenable position this is to defend.
The language is taken from the culture of their day, a culture very familiar to what happens in a temple where god is worshipped. All the gods of their day had places where worship took place. Sacrifices, prayers, singing, offerings, and teaching all took place in these places called sacred.
Paul uses this language to describe the relationship we have with the Holy Spirit. We are the temple. Therefore all the activity that takes place with our bodies takes place in the temple, our bodies. We can’t take a break from being a temple. We are a temple 24/7/365. So everything that we do is to be present to God as an act of worship, devotion, and connection.
To read that we are not our own pushes our Western sensibilities to the limit. As Americans, we pride ourselves with the idea that we are our own person, our choices are our choices, our actions are our actions. Freedom has taken over the leading of the Spirit and obedience in our lives.
This isn’t the kind of freedom that the Scriptures speak about. We are now free from the bondage of sin and free to be obedient. We are not free to do whatever we want at any moment. Our activities are activities of worship, temple activities. The most mundane things have become sacred.
And if everything is scared, then we must monitor and curb our freedoms to be obedient to the LORD. And now we are able to make the choice toward holy living that we were unable to make before we were Believers. The Holy Spirit enables us to live a ‘temple’ life.
The Arnold Journey 