“Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own ?” – 1 Corinthians 6: 19
Once we give our hearts to Christ, we become His – and our bodies – a place where His Spirit dwells. We know that God saw our unformed bodies while we were still in the womb (Psalm 139:16); we know that His hands shaped us and altogether formed us (Job 10:8a), so, God actually gave us our bodies.
We also know that we have been bought with a very high price (…) the precious blood of Christ. (1 Peter 1:18-19).
We know that Jesus was pierced for our transgressions, that He was crushed for our iniquities. (Isaiah 53:5a).
How can we “not” respect our bodies when we know what Christ has done and suffered in his own body, for us? Knowing that His Spirit dwells in us, how can we fathom: abuse, addiction, mutilation, gluttony, sexual immorality, prostitution, drunkenness, and so on?
“We are the temple of the living God.” (2 Corinthians 6:16) And we need to keep this ‘temple’ clean in every sense, we need to nurture and feed the Spirit within us, and tame the desires of our flesh. “For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh.” (Galatians 5:17).
“You are not your own, you were bought at a price.
Therefore honor God with your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:20).
