The Holy Spirit’s Temple
Christ's Boundless Riches • Sermon • Submitted
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Imagine you are shopping for a new-to-you car. As most shopping is done, especially these days, your work begins online. You do some research to figure out what make and model and trim you’re looking for, and then you start scouring the internet for that particular vehicle. After scrolling through pages and sifting through different sites, two vehicles catch your eye. Same make, model, trim, and mileage. Different years, but comparable in price. They’re both local, too. So now, you start getting into the weeds of the two vehicles. You pull up the history for both vehicles. Both have seen regular service. But the vehicle that’s 3 years newer was a “fleet” vehicle, and the older one was always dealer serviced near Sun City. You call up the dealerships to discuss the vehicles, and they tell you the newer one used to be a rental car; the older one was driven by a little old lady. Which one do you want to buy?
Many of us would choose the older vehicle—because you have much more confidence in how it was cared for. A little, old lady isn’t likely flying off the blocks when the light hits green or slamming on the brakes either. But a rental car driver might. Even good drivers—you know the kind that insurance companies give reduced rates to—tend to be a little rougher on rentals than normal. Because the car isn’t their’s. Because they know, in a few days, they’ll be dropping that vehicle off and it will be somebody else’s problem.
As strange as it may sound, the people of 1st century Corinth had their own rental car problem. Paul summarizes their “rental car” attitude for us in a couple of pithy sayings: (1 Cor. 6:12) I have the right to do anything! and (1 Cor. 6:13) Food for the stomach and the stomach for food and God will destroy them both. It’s easy to recognize the Corinthians individualistic pride as they clamor about their rights and freedom. It’s not hard to see a “Corinthian” kind of spirit permeate our culture today, either. But Paul isn’t interested in having a philosophical debate about inalienable rights. He knows how this fight for rights and freedom is leading people in the Corinthian congregation astray. So Paul gets down to brass tacks —right into the nitty gritty issues of how the sinful nature confuses and abuses the freedom that God’s grace grants us.
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” 17 But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.
1 Corinthians 6:15
The issue that Paul is dealing with is pretty clear. So clear, it might make us uncomfortable to even think about. Somehow, more than a couple of Corinthian men had convinced themselves that slumming it with the city prostitutes was no big deal. Paul’s introduction (vv. 12-13) give us insight into their attempts at justifying this vile behavior.
It’s clear throughout this letter, that in Corinth, marriage was not held in highest esteem. For some of the Roman world, marriage was more contractual than romantic. In those cases, intimacy was necessary only for procreation. But that didn’t mean the Corinthians felt sex was unnecessary. Many thought of sexual urges like an appetite—an idea that still permeates our culture. In Roman culture, this was a celebrated appetite. They held a fertility festival called Lupercalia that would make Mardi Gras blush. Historian Joshua Marks says: Men were free to and almost expected to engage in extramarital affairs with women, young boys, and other men as long as their partners were not freeborn Roman citizens. So when a Corinthian man had an appetite for sex, he found an outlet, and that outlet was not always his own wife. And to many, this was fine. They figured it was purely a physical act—just a body thing. And the body, like the stomach, will ultimately die and return to dust. So what difference does it make? The Corinthians had a rental car mentality towards their bodies. They concluded that since they were free in Christ to eat whatever they wanted, they must be free in Christ to have sex with whomever they wanted.
Paul rebukes these cultural norms with clarity and courage. Don’t you know that your bodies are like the limbs and organs of Christ himself? Don’t you see that uniting yourself with a prostitute brings shame to the name of Christ? You are one with the Lord! Don’t become one with sexual immorality!
To be sure, there are ancient truths here that are very applicable to our modern world. Like the Roman world, our culture can’t really pin down a purpose for sex beyond personal pleasure. They are confused as to what sex is or is meant for. Young people, like Roman men, are encouraged to try it out, so long as they take proper precautions to prevent pregnancy and disease and secure consent. In our culture, adultery no longer means extramarital relations of any kind, but sleeping with someone who is still married and cheating on their spouse. In our culture, pornography is fine—and even fun!—so long as it is “ethically sourced”. What Paul says here, exposes even culturally acceptable sexual behavior as (1 Cor. 6:18) a sin against one’s own body.
At the same time, these ancient truths are very applicable to our own lives in ways that don’t jump off the page as quickly and easily as those I’ve already mentioned. While it’s hard to imagine any of us defending pornography as fine, there are plenty of researchers who say that married Christian men struggle to flee from pornography at nearly the same rates as married unbelievers. Those same researches will say that women aren’t as far behind as we might like to imagine.
Even if we are not engaging in extra-marital affairs or using pornography, can we really say we’re fleeing sexual immorality? Consider the shows you binge watch, the books you devour, and the gossip magazines you gobble up. How often do those things fixate on matters of sexual immorality? Who’s sleeping with whom headlines tend to grab our attention, don’t they? Sex scenes in movies, shows, and books may catch us by surprise, but sometimes they shouldn’t. Past history should have given us a clue about the intentions of the entertainment world. There are plenty of writers and producers that make a point to include these kinds of things in nearly everything they create. Sex sells, or so they say. So why are we buying a ticket, or a subscription, or a copy when that’s the message that’s being conveyed? How can we claim to be fleeing sexual immorality if we consume their content just like the pagan world around us?!?
The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord. God has a design for our bodies and a God-pleasing purpose for sex, too. And it doesn’t take visiting a prostitute to violate either. Inside a marriage, God is clear: (1 Cor. 7:3) a husband and a wife have a marital duty to fulfill. (1 Cor. 6:16) The two have become one flesh and so they must (1 Cor. 7:4) yield their bodies to their own spouses and no one else. This is God’s design and God’s design is always good.
(1 Cor. 6:13) In his wisdom and love, God even designed sex to be pleasurable. That wasn’t some accident or oversight. Yet, even in our midst, that pleasure and satisfaction is abused and weaponized. A husband acts as if these words entitle him to sex whenever he pleases. A wife withholds because something in the marriage is not to her liking. An older married couple considers sex and romance to be a thing of the past—young people stuff. None of these attitudes honors God or his design.
There are even ways we dishonor God’s gift and design for the body that have nothing to do with sex, too. It is very easy for us to fall into the pattern of the world and think that our bodies are meant to bring us pleasure and joy. Some have even adapted a copycat version of Paul’s words to the Corinthians to summarize this view. My body is my temple. It’s a subtle shift, to be sure. Because, like Christians ought to do, they invest great energy in taking great care of their temple. They eat right. They exercise. They find time for rest and rejuvenation. But they do so to serve themselves, because their body is a temple unto themselves. It is crafted and shaped to bring me glory, and not God.
Of course there is the opposite end of the spectrum. Call it the my body is in shambles crowd. They recognize It’s all downhill from here! and so they live with a kind of wanton fatalism. What difference does it make if I take care of myself? While it is most certainly true that none can stave off death permanently, it is a slap in the face of the God who knit you together to treat what he made as junk, or to waste its potential and opportunities, or to spend the whole time complaining about what it can’t or can no longer do. This is just as much a sin against the body as sexual immorality. (1 Cor. 6:13) The body is made for the Lord and the Lord for the body. (1 Cor. 6:19) Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God!
As evidence of God’s high view of the human body, Paul points us to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Just as our bodies were meant to bring glory to the Lord, our Lord accomplished his glory through a body. Our God, who is (Jn. 4:24) spirit, (Jn. 1:14) took on flesh and blood and became true man.
The Lord was ordained for a body. Jesus, the second person of the Godhead, underwent normal human gestation. He nursed and grew in stature and wisdom before God and men. The vast majority of Jesus’ earthly life was spent being a son, a brother, a friend, and a neighbor to the people of Nazareth. God saw fit to grow up before us (Is. 53:2) like a tender shoot in a body that had no majesty or beauty to attract us to him. (Is. 53:4) He came to take up our pain and bear our suffering.
You see Jesus doing that in so many of his miracles. Physically touching leprous skin and blind eyes. Jesus restored palsied limbs and feeble legs. If God only cared about the souls, he would have left these people sick and only addressed their sin. But the body is meant for the Lord and the Lord for the body. So our Lord takes great interest in the physical needs of the people around him. Feeding the hungry. Healing the sick. Extending his own hand to catch Peter before he drowned in the Sea of Galilee.
Our Lord also made a great physical investment in redeeming our bodies. Paul reminds us of this when he says: (1 Cor. 6:19-20) You are not your own. You were bought at a price. The price he is referring to is Christ’s suffering and death. Certainly, on Calvary Christ endured the unimaginable pains of hell itself. But his suffering and death was not merely mental anguish or spiritual sorrow. He was whipped. He was beaten. He was spit upon. He was hit. His head was pierced with thorns; his hands and feet with nails; his side with a spear. How can a member of Christ think what they do with their bodies doesn’t really matter when they see what he has done with his body? This beautiful but gruesome act of self-donation, bloody self-sacrifice, was absolutely necessary for our redemption. This is the price that was paid to redeem us. Christ yielded his own body so that we might find satisfaction for our sins.
And three days later, God showed us yet again how important the body is to him. When Christ was raised to life, he appeared to his disciples on many occasions. That Easter Sunday evening, he made a point of proving to his disciples that he was really therenot merely in spirit, but in flesh and blood. (Jn. 20:20) He showed them his hands and side. When Thomas had his doubts, Jesus insisted (Jn. 20:27) Put your finger here. See my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. On at least two occasions, Jesus even ate in front of them to prove his bodily resurrection. And when he ascended into heaven, the two angels who appeared to the disciples assured them: (Acts 1:11) This same flesh and blood Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven. And some day our flesh and blood will join him there.
It will not be the same of course. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul tells us that this flesh and blood is seed of what is to come. We will be raised (1 Cor. 15:42) imperishable, (1 Cor. 15:43) glorious, (1 Cor. 15:43) powerful, (1 Cor. 15:44)
spiritual, and (1 Cor. 15:57) victorious— (1 Cor. 15:49) bearing the image of the heavenly man, the ultimate life-giving spirit, our Lord and God.
So while it is true that our bodies are not everything they could and will someday be, that doesn’t mean they should be treated like a rental car. They are a seed of what is to come.
Instead of treating our bodies like rental cars, what if we viewed them like prime real estate? I want you to imagine a beautiful historic home that has fallen into disrepair. Because of its size and location near a big city, it has been used for all kinds of unspeakable wickedness. But you see—in this house—a seed of something special. So you buy it. You fix it up. You invest your blood, sweat, tears, and a ton of money bringing it back to life. Not to flip it. But because you want to live in it. After you do so, there might be some who want to see that place become a house of horrors once again. What do you do? Whatever it takes to keep litter, graffiti, unsavory characters, and any criminal elements away, right? Why? Because you bought the place. Because you know what it should be. It’s yours. You have pride of ownership.
Don’t you see that Christ has done more for you and your body than you could ever do for any historic home? You are not your own. You are better because you are God’s own. He has redeemed you. He has repaired you. He has repurposed you. And he has something glorious in mind for you. So honor God with your body. Of course, that looks different at different stages of life. For some, honoring God with your body means exercising self-control and remaining chaste. For others, it means yielding your body to your spouse selflessly, regularly, and joyfully. For each of us, it means being good stewards of the flesh we’ve been given, whatever it looks and feels like, because we recognize that our kingdom impact in this world is closely connected with how we use our bodies. Use your tongue to rebuke, instruct, and uplift. Use your limbs to serve and assist. Use your physical presence to point people to God’s unimaginable love. Let your body be known for one thing and one thing only. This body is the Holy Spirit’s temple. Now and forever. Amen.