A Word from 1 Corinthians 6

If I were to ask you, “How’s your spiritual health these days?” what criteria would you use to answer that question? Would you take stock of how faithful your prayer life is, or how often you read the Bible? Would you evaluate your church attendance, or how faithfully you give? Or would you try to get a sense of how much joy, and peace, and other fruit of the Spirit you’re producing?

Well naturally, all of those would be good things to consider. But in reading today’s word from 1 Corinthians 6, I wonder if we should also pay attention to how we’re using our bodies. “Don’t you realize,” Paul says, “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.” (6:19-20)

Now, Paul says this while discussing sexual immorality. And that’s one area in which we should “honor God with our body.” But I’d imagine there are others. And please understand, of course, that when I say that, I’m not suggesting that we need to have perfect skin, or rock-hard abs, or the figure of a supermodel.

But I am saying that our physical bodies are the instruments we’ve been given to do God’s will in the world. And so, we should care for them in the same way we’d care for anything we value. And we should remember, of course, that Jesus died to save our bodies (as well as our souls), so that our body and soul could live forever in a world made new.

Naturally, we live in a world where, all too often, “anything goes” when it comes to our bodies. But even though we may say, “I have the right to do anything,” Paul reminds us that “not everything is beneficial,” and we shouldn’t be “mastered by anything” (see 6:12).

So today, let’s honor God with our spirit and our body! And may the price that Jesus paid to bring us to himself prove to be worth the cost. Amen.