16 Glorify God in Your Body: What Paul Says About Sex and Belonging (1 Corinthians 6:15-20)

Krisan Marotta: Good morning. Thank you for joining me today for the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is the podcast where we explain not only what scripture means, but how we figure it out. I have a listener warning today. This particular podcast concerns issues within marriage and may not be appropriate for young listeners. So if you're listening with little ones nearby, you may want to save this podcast for later. We're going to be studying 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 15 through 20 today. This is the 16th talk in our series on 1 Corinthians. And as always, you can find the lecture notes for today's talk on the link below the podcast, or by going to the website wednesdayintheword.com slash 1 Corinthians 16. Take a moment to look at the website while you're there. There is no charge, no spam, no ads, only Bible study. Glad to have you along today. In the first four chapters of the book, Paul addressed the worldliness that was causing divisions in the Corinthian church. And in chapter five, he began addressing a new topic, and we are continuing that discussion. A member of the Corinthian church is living in blatant and unrepentant immorality. He's having an affair with his stepmother, probably while his father is still alive. And the Corinthians are very proud of their open-minded, progressive, tolerant attitude toward that situation. They're proud of the fact that they don't consider this lifestyle choice a big deal, and in general, they find Paul's perspective on the situation unenlightened and foolish. And Paul is making the case that the pursuit of sexual purity is a necessary part of being a follower of Christ. If you're interested in following Christ, then God's view of sexuality is part of the package. And we're in the middle of his argument. We looked at the first part of it in the last podcast, and if you haven't already done so, please go back and listen to that podcast first because I'm going to assume that you're familiar with what we talked about. Paul's arguments in this section are important for our theology of sexuality, but they're also difficult. The issues are complicated, and wise, sincere, godly people are going to disagree on what this section means. Though many of us end up in the same interpretive place, there is some disagreement about the route we take that gets us to that place. I think I understand how Paul is arguing here, but as always, I may be wrong. This is my best understanding given the resources and knowledge I have at this time, and I reserve the right to change my mind. And and this always goes without saying, with all passages, and especially the most difficult ones, you should seek second and third opinions on what they mean and prayerfully weigh through the issues. I do not claim to have the market cornered on truth. This is my best shot at understanding the passage, and as always, I admit that I could be the one in the wrong. And partly I say all that to warn you that I have a lot of explaining to do to get through this passage. We're going to be looking at other passages to try to understand Paul's argument, so bear with me. But first, let's remember where we are in the book. Paul has been challenging the Corinthians that some of the ways they've been living their lives are not in keeping with the gospel. In fact, some of their choices are very big red flags, like this casual attitude toward this man's sin. The Corinthians have been unwilling to evaluate the circumstances they're in from a Christian perspective. That refusal was the deeper problem behind the strife and the divisions that we looked at in the first four chapters. It was the underlying problem in the issue of confronting this man who's living in sin. It was the underlying issue about going to secular lawsuits to reconcile their disputes, and it's still the underlying issue in their view of sexuality. I think the string that ties all these passages together is their refusal to use a Christian worldview to evaluate their circumstances. They have just argued that they can do whatever they want with their bodies because all things are lawful for them since they're no longer under the law. And secondly, they argued that because their bodies were made for sexuality the same way the stomach was made for food and God's going to do away with both, then they can do whatever they want with their bodies. And Paul countered being justified does not excuse any type of selfish or immoral behavior. How I live my life is crucially important because part of the gift of saving faith is wanting to obey God. My choices matter, they reflect what I truly believe. And second, Paul argued God did not give us bodies for us to use them for immorality. He gave us bodies so that we might serve Him and obey Him and worship Him in that body, and immorality is not compatible with that. So again, that's I explained that in more detail in the last podcast. I encourage you to go back and listen to it. Essentially, he argued God made us with a body for certain purposes, and that all those purposes fall under the umbrella of how we follow God. It makes a great deal of difference how we live in our bodies now because our choices and the way we live our lives reveals our inner faith and commitments and values. Now he's continuing in chapter six verses fifteen through twenty. I'm going to read that for us. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be. Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one flesh with her? For he says the two shall become one flesh. But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with him. Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body. Paul starts this section with do you not know? And then he quotes Genesis two. Do you not know that the two shall become one flesh? So our first step as Bible students is to make sure that we know what he's quoting. What is he referring to? So we're going to start by going back to Genesis two. I'm going to cover it briefly here. I do have a podcast on Genesis two if you want more in-depth information and a look at that passage, and I'll put a link to that in the lecture notes. I'm just going to highlight the main points that I think Paul is drawing on in Corinthians in this talk. So this is Genesis two. I'm going to start in verse eighteen and read through twenty five. Then the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone, I will make him a helper suitable for him. Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept. Then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. Then the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. And the man said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Okay, I'm stop there for a minute. What we see is God creates Adam, God tells us it's not good that the man is alone and that he doesn't have a matched pair equal or corresponding to him. Then he creates Eve, and in two twenty four he says for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. So for the purposes of Paul's argument in Corinthians, we learn two important facts from Genesis two. The first one is that sexuality was created for the purpose of marriage and not vice versa. Marriage is not a social institution that mankind created to regulate procreation and sexuality, rather, God created marriage to solve this problem of loneliness and he created sexuality and sexual difference for marriage. So sexuality was created for marriage, not vice versa. And second, Genesis two twenty four is the definition of a biblical marriage. In the creation of Adam and Eve, God created marriage and he tells us what it means to be married. And a biblical marriage involves three commitments. First, he says the man shall leave his father and mother. The idea there is that biblical marriage is between a man and a woman, and at the time a man's highest social commitment was to his parents. Now he has a new highest priority, his wife. His loyalty to her takes precedence over the rest of his family and the rest of his commitments and responsibilities. So whatever his highest priority and responsibility was before being married, that is no longer the case. He has left that family, he's forming a new family, and now that's his highest commitment. And I'm using the word man, the male pronoun here, but it's for this is true for both parties. For both husband and wife, this is their new highest commitment. Second, he shall cleave to his wife. The idea here is that the two are making a lifelong monogamous commitment to each other. So this new relationship requires stability and security to thrive, and they are not free to leave as their feelings ebb and flow or they think another pastor looks greener. They're committing to remain in this relationship as long as they live. And third, they shall become one flesh. This idea of becoming one flesh means that I now adopt an attitude toward my spouse that I so intimately care about him that I love him as if he were my own body. So I don't make a distinction between us. What happens to him is as relevant as if it happens to me. It's a profound, deep commitment and attachment. The idea is once I get married, I'm no longer a person on my own, but I am joined with another and I share my life with him. So I'm no longer free to make decisions that suit me and only me. I now have this other person and all my decisions and choices and lifestyle and commitments take that other person into account. So I stop thinking about I and me and mine, and I start thinking about we and us. So these three commitments work together. They are now our highest priority. The marriage is now our highest priority. It is a permanent, lifelong, monogamous, stable, secure commitment, and we stop thinking of ourselves as individuals living parallel lives. We think of ourselves as one unit as if we are one body. God created sexuality then to express that commitment. Sexuality means something. It is the language of marriage, and we are not free to decide that it means something else or that it means nothing. God created sexuality with meaning. Paul expresses this same idea in Ephesians, this idea that it is as if my spouse is me, that we are together, and I should care for my spouse with the same care I would offer myself. So this is Ephesians chapter five verses twenty eight through thirty one. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So in Ephesians, Paul says one implication of this idea of being one flesh, of making this commitment of marriage is that a husband loves his wife as he loves his own body. It is as if my spouse is me and I should have the same sort of care for my spouse that I have for myself. So in biblical marriage we see the idea is more than being roommates and sharing your finances, this is a commitment, and that commitment is expressed by sexuality. The sexual union between a husband and wife reflects the emotional, one flesh, lifelong commitment and union. And you can also see how appropriate it is that new life comes from this new union and that sexuality is the means by which new members of this new family come into the world. The central idea is that the physical union of husband and wife reflects this commitment. It reflects the intimacy that binds them together. There should be no other person you share your physical body with the same way you share it with your spouse. Sharing yourself is the most intimate representation of the fact that we are now one. So sexuality then is the language of marriage. It is not a meaningless recreational act. It means something and God has defined what it means. Paul's argument depends on the conviction that sexual intimacy is an expression of the marriage commitment, that God created sexuality with that purpose in mind, and it has that meaning whether I want it to or not. The language of sexuality is I want to be one with you, and if that's not a message I want to communicate, then I'm lying with my body. Okay, the next piece of background information we need to understand is this idea that we are members of Christ. Paul frequently pictures the church as a body with Christ as the head. The metaphor is that the assembly of all God's people make up one body with Christ as the head, and he refers to that as the body of Christ, and we individually are members of that body. It's a really meaningful analogy, and we can learn something from it about our relationship to each other and to Christ. In fact, we can learn several things from it. Paul uses this same analogy in different letters and different contexts to make different but related points. One of the ways he's going to use it later in Corinthians is to teach us about our relationship to each other. So just as my physical body is made up of different members that have different functions, so are believers in the body of Christ. So my eye has a different function than my thumb, my thumb has a different function than my foot, and so on, but they are all essential parts of me and together make up one body. And we're going to see that later in Corinthians when he talks about spiritual gifts. There, his emphasis is on how we should think of each other and treat each other given the fact that we have different roles in the body of Christ. Should I look down on someone else because I'm a metaphorical hand and that person is a metaphorical foot? No, of course not, because we are part of the same body. But that's not his point here in chapter six. He also uses this analogy in Ephesians 5, and that's closer to what's going on here in chapter 6 of Corinthians. So let's look at that. Actually, Paul uses several analogies in Ephesians 5. He refers to the one flesh language of Genesis. He talks about the church as members of Christ's body and relates both of those analogies to the husband and wife. Talking to the husband at the end of the section, he says, Your wife is part of your body, using the language of Genesis that we read earlier. And he compares the way Christ loved the church as his own body to the way husbands ought to love their wives. And he uses these two metaphors to paint this rich picture of how husbands ought to love and treat their wives. The way Christ deals with the church, who is part of his metaphorical body, is the way the husband is to treat his wife, who is similarly metaphorically a part of his body. For our purposes in trying to understand First Corinthians six, look at Ephesians 5 23. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. I want to try to pick apart this analogy a bit. I think what Paul's saying is we belong to Christ in a way that is analogous to the way my body belongs to me because he is my savior. We believers belong to him and are no longer on our own. He paid a price for us on the cross to redeem us from our sin and we are no longer autonomous individuals. We now belong to Christ because He redeemed us. He bought us out of death and brought us into life and now we belong to Him. And the analogy of being part of His body works because He is the one who saved us. So I belong to Christ in a certain sense, just as my spouse belongs to me in a certain sense, because we have made this commitment of marriage which is expressed in our sexuality. Therefore, I ought to conduct myself with the same sort of attitude, love, respect, and honor that Christ showed the church. Christ is committed to us and we are his. And that's the same sort of attitude that a husband ought to take toward his wife because she is part of him in a way that is analogous to the way we are part of Christ. Now there's a difference. The husband is not the wife's savior. We belong to Christ because he's our savior, but husbands and wives belong to each other because of the commitment they have made. That gives us a window into Paul's thinking that we can bring into 1 Corinthians. Why would Paul say that we are members of Christ? Because through his blood Christ bought us to be his people. So I am brought under his rule, his spirit, his lordship, and I am no longer an autonomous, independent unit. I belong to Christ. He sees me as his and is committed to me, and I need to see myself as belonging to him. I am joined to him through what he did for me. That's the idea behind what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6. I used to belong only to myself, but when I belonged to myself, I was lost and destined to perish. Now I have a redeemer, a rescuer who is committed to bringing me into eternal life, and I belong to him. I owe him my allegiance because he went to the extreme to sacrifice his own life for me to give me this gift. So you want to keep these two ideas in mind as we go through 1 Corinthians 6. The idea of being one flesh in marriage such that we can say it is as if we are one body. We have made this commitment to treat each other as if we are one. And second, we belong to Christ and can be said to be part of Christ's body. And those two ideas inform our text. Okay, now we're ready to look at Corinthians. Let's start with 615. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be. The reality is you belong to Christ because He's your Savior. This is the idea we've just been talking about. Your bodies are part of Christ's body because He bought you with His life. The image is My body is part of Christ's body. The reality behind the image is that Christ died to save me, redeem me, and make me part of his family, to use another analogy. I now owe him my loyalty and my everything. So as a follower of Christ, I am not free to follow other philosophies, other worldviews, other religions, other paths. I owe everything to Christ because he died for me, and I am not free to rebel against what he says is true and right and wrong. That would be foolish. I belong to him. His way is the way I should go. His word is the word I should obey. His spirit is making me wise and mature. He is the king who will rule over the kingdom in which I hope to find eternal life and fulfillment. He is my teacher who is showing me how to live life now and in the age to come. And he brought all this about by sacrificing his life for me on the cross and making me his own. So if you're a believer, your body is not yours to do with as you please, you are a slave to Christ. Your bodies belong to your king, your savior, your teacher, your redeemer, and your Lord, and you are not free to do with them as you will independently. So essentially what he's saying is, since Christ died for me, shall I reject his ways? No, obviously not. Now remember, the Corinthians had this attitude that it doesn't matter what I do with my body as long as my soul is saved. And Paul is saying, You're wrong. It matters a great deal what you do with your body and how you live your life in this body. Your body as well as your soul belong to Christ. He didn't just save your soul, he saved you. Body, soul, mind, spirit, all of it belongs to him. So remember, this is in the middle of this argument that we started in the last podcast, and he is still speaking to this attitude. So he says, Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Now one of the ways to see this verse is that because my body is part of Christ, if I have a sexual relationship with a prostitute, is is as if I am making Christ have a sexual relationship with a prostitute. And I've heard this passage taught this way before, and I can understand how you arrive at those conclusions and how you get that view from the text, but I don't think that's what Paul is saying. I think Paul ha means something a lot deeper than that. I don't think Paul's concerned that in some mystical sense I am making Christ have contact with something immoral or impure. Christ lived among sinners for thirty years. He ate with prostitutes and tax gatherers and he hung around with sinners all the time. Contact with sinners doesn't seem to be something Jesus was worried about. Plus, later in this letter, Paul says if a believer is married to an unbeliever, they should stay married if possible. If Paul's concern was that somehow the sacred and the holy has contact with the impure and the dirty, then he wouldn't say that. In that situation, he doesn't say you can't join the body of a believer to an unbeliever. He's not concerned about some kind of impure union that would reflect on Christ. In fact, he encourages people who are married to unbelievers to continue their physical relationship. And then there's also the book of Hosea, but we don't have time to get into that. What makes the relationship with a prostitute wrong is that it's an immoral relationship. There is no commitment of marriage. I think he's saying, Don't you know that the one who is sexually intimate with a prostitute is one flesh with her? Don't you realize that sexuality communicates that message whether you like it or not? That's what sexuality means. As we saw from Genesis 2, sexuality was created to express the commitment of marriage. It means the commitment of marriage. That's how God designed it, whether you want that to be the meaning or not. Don't you know that you belong to Christ, body and all? Should I use my body to lie to a prostitute? The prostitute's engaged in a business that is based on a lie, and the lie is the idea that sex can mean nothing. When you visit her, you're joining her in that lie. Should you do that? No. I think the emphasis in this sentence is on the takeaway. Shall I take away what belongs to Christ and give it to someone else? The image is shall I take what belongs to Christ away from him and give it to someone else? That's immoral. There are these two relationships going on here. I have a relationship with Christ such that it can be described that I am part of his body. And then, second, entering into a physical sexual relationship expresses the language that I am now one body with this person. So I belong to Christ and I'm taking what belongs to him and giving it to someone else in a lie. And Paul's saying, I don't want you to abandon your commitment to Christ to join yourself to someone or something else. I think that's the point. The point is being unfaithful to Christ. Are you going to take what belongs to Christ and give it to someone that it does not belong to? And then 6 16 and 17 Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For he says the two shall become one flesh, but the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with him. Paul is playing these two ideas off each other just like he did in Ephesians. If I sleep with a prostitute, then my body belongs to the prostitute in a certain sense, because of what we learned from Genesis 2. But if I'm a follower of Christ, my body belongs to him in a sense. I have to make a choice where to place my allegiance. Which of these two bodies do I want to be a member of, his or hers? Now, the relationship in 616 is not a marriage, in fact, it's a mockery of marriage. And Paul is not saying the man and the prostitute have made a new family, they haven't. He's not saying they have made a new commitment to each other to make each other their highest priority. They haven't. Quite the opposite, they have made no commitment at all. The physical relationship is not a marriage or the one flesh kind of life commitment that Genesis talks about. Yet God created sexuality to speak that language. Sexuality is the natural language to express the commitment and the intimacy and the belonging of a biblical marriage. Sexuality is intended by God to represent these three commitments, and the physical relationship represents that. The immorality in a relationship with a prostitute is I am mocking that language of sexuality. I am joining with someone I have no business joining with, and I'm trying to make sexuality mean nothing when God created it and intended it to mean something very rich and special. So we are wrenching sexuality out of the context it was created for and using it instead for our own selfish pleasure, and we are not free to do that. Sexuality has a God created purpose and a God created meaning, and despite all our denials, it means what God created it to mean. And God meant it to be the language of a biblical marriage. So we are stealing something God intended for one purpose and using it for a different purpose, and that's wrong. The contrast here is between being joined to a prostitute and being joined to the Lord. Joining the prostitute is to join in the lie that sex can be meaningless if I want it to be meaningless. And when I decided to follow Jesus, I committed to believe and follow him, and that includes his view of marriage and sexuality. I am not free to disregard what my King and Lord says is true. Likewise, I am intended to belong to Christ. And Paul uses this other language of one spirit. We are one spirit with Christ, and I think the one spirit is an analogy, just like the one body is an analogy. It's not literally true that I am one spirit with Christ, but I belong to him. I no longer have an independent existence. He's committed to me and I ought to be committed to him. Now, granted, my relationship with Christ is a teacher, student, master, servant kind of relationship. But the idea is I don't have the freedom to live apart from him because he died for me and bought me with the price of his blood. And Paul's confronting the Corinthians with that choice. Are you going to divorce yourself from Christ, a relationship you are called to be faithful to, and instead rebel against his calling and make a different commitment and make yourself physically one with someone else? You don't belong to her. You belong to Christ. Who are you going to live for? Who are you going to believe? What are you going to claim is true? Are you going to live the way Christ says you should live, or are you going to live the lie the prostitute is engaged in? Are you going to serve Christ or are you going to serve your own selfish desires? Then he continues in eighteen. Okay, now he introduces something new to the argument. This is a difficult verse to understand. It's highly debated. You can find whole chapters on this verse in the commentaries. Again, I do not claim to have the market cornered on truth and understanding. I'll give you my best shot, but I do want to insist that however we understand this verse, we strive to keep it in the context of the chapter and the argument he's been making since chapter five. Now, first, in your translation, it probably says, every other sin a man commits is outside the body. The word other is not in the Greek text. That word is added by interpreters to suggest that sexuality differs from other sins because it is the only one inside the body while all the others are outside. So they're adding that to make it more clear how they think we should understand this verse. And that point being that sexual sin is unique. Every other sin is outside the body, but sexual sin is inside or against the body. And that is a very popular and a possible interpretation. But I don't think that's the point Paul's making. I would argue that this verse makes more sense in context if we don't add that word other to the English translation. I think his point is something like this. All sin involves bringing wrong into the world. If I steal, I bring injustice to another person. If I lie, I hurt another person. If I have sexual relationships outside my marriage, I hurt my spouse and my family. A sexual relationship with a prostitute hurts the prostitute. In that sense, it is a sin outside the body in that it hurts another person. It might also hurt a child who comes into the world as a result. It could hurt your spouse if you have one. There are all kinds of consequences in the world outside the body that can result from that sin. All sin is outside the body in that sense. Sin causes pain, regret, loss, tragedy, bitterness, strife, futility, and all kinds of evil and trouble. Lots of people can be hurt by sin, and there are frequently unintended consequences that may affect others. Sin is like throwing a rock into a pond. You can just watch the rings ripple outward as more and more people are affected. Sin always has consequences. It always brings wrong and injustice and hurt into the world. But sexual immorality is different. Not only does sexual immorality bring injustice and hurt into the world, it also brings wrong upon my very body at the same time. My body is part of me, it's part of who I am. I can't separate my identity from my body. And sexuality is a powerful force as part of my body. How I handle it affects me. What I do with my sexuality powerfully affects me, my worldview, the way I think about myself, how I feel, and so on. I can't separate it from me. So what I do with my body affects me, and I can't separate the two. So Paul's not saying that sexual sins are more evil. He's countering the idea, remember, that I am free to do whatever I want with my body, whenever I want to do it, and with whoever I want to do it. Paul is countering that very popular idea we would say today, if it feels good, do it. Just because it feels good does not mean it's to my benefit. We have this idea that I am free to pursue physical pleasure with my body in any way, shape, or form I wish at any time with any person I wish. The if it feels good, do it mantra. And it seems so right to us. What could be more natural than doing whatever feels good to your body? Why put any restrictions on physical pleasure? Why put any restrictions on my body? That's the idea of Paul's countering. And we want that maxim to be true even today, and Paul is saying it's not. You think you're pursuing harmless pleasure, but in reality you are harming yourself. Sinning against your own body doesn't make the sin more evil, but it does make it more stupid. Why would you be so foolish as to intentionally bring harm to yourself? Why would you do that? He's argued my body is both an instrument that I use to live out my life and it's me. My body can't be separated from my mind, my soul, and my spirit. When I take this part of me and use it in rebellion against what it was created for, I'm hurting me. If I pollute the environment, I'm polluting out there. But if I take sewage and dump it into my own house, I'm polluting the very place I live. If I pollute the relationship between my body and my mind and my soul, I am polluting myself. I am not only bringing wrong into the world, I am bringing wrong to me. And that's I think what Paul is saying. Don't you know that you are bringing ruin and harm upon your very self when you're pursuing sexual immorality? In addition to hurting others, you're hurting yourself. How you conduct yourself sexually makes a difference in how you see yourself, how you view yourself, and so forth. All sin is an offense against God, all sin brings wrong into the world, and this particular sin brings harm to your very being as well. Now I don't think it's the only one that can harm your being, it's just the most obvious one that can harm your being. I think addictions, for example, would be a similar sort of thing. So he says in nineteen and twenty, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God and that you are not your own, for you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body. Okay, now Paul brings in another new image, the image of our body being a temple of the Holy Spirit. The temple was the physical place where you found God. The temple was the place where God dwelt in a unique way, and the idea was that the Holy of Holies was the seat where you would find God. So if you wanted to find God, you found him in the temple. That was where he dwelt. The temple was this place where God dwelt in a unique way. So what's the analogy? Where do you see God's glory shining today and at work in the world? In his people. Do you want to see God at work in the world today? You look at what he's doing in the lives of his people. His spirit is in his people. What happens in their lives is a work of God. Paul says elsewhere that believers are God's workmanship. Do you want to see God in what he's doing? Look at faith that didn't used to exist before. Look at peace that used to be anxiousness. Look at the patience that used to be anger. Look at forgiveness where there was formerly grudges. Look at mercy where there used to be greed. All that is going on in God's people, and that says the Spirit of God has been at work. Remember, Paul is countering this idea that all things are lawful for me and I can do with whatever I want with my body. His argument is my body, my life is the place where God is at work. In a profound sense, my body is one of the places where God is working. He is building something here, and I shouldn't tear down what he's trying to build up. Christ's blood didn't buy me a free pass so that I can use my body for evil. His blood rescued me from slavery to that evil so that I am now free to use my body for good in a way that was not possible before because now I have the Spirit of God in me. The Spirit of God can now use my body as a canvas to paint a picture of redemption and grace and mercy. If you're a believer, you are God's work in progress. You and your body are intended to glorify God. Your life, as you struggle through it, is intended to reflect and tell the story of grace and redemption and mercy and the new life that is possible because of Jesus Christ. What's happening in this body, in this temple, should bring glory to God because it is a miracle that He changes me. How can you take the attitude that it doesn't matter what you do with your body? How can you argue that how you live your life makes no difference? If you are a believer, you are God's work in progress. How you live your life reflects God at work in you. The choices you make, the things you struggle with, the values you hold, your reaction to sin, all of that is a work of God in your life and it matters. How you live your life in your body will bring glory to Him. Those who treat their bodies as if they don't belong to God and it doesn't matter what the what they do with them, well you better wonder whose team you're on and who you belong to, because the reality is if you're a believer, you belong to Christ and you ought to live like it. Now, we don't live like it on our own. We don't have to reach inside ourselves and muster up all this great obedience and patience and mercy and so forth. That is something God gives us as a gift. As we trust Him, as we throw ourselves on His mercy and as His grace, He produces this work in us. Now there are lots of ways we can apply this section, but I just want to leave you with a couple of thoughts. The first one is the biblical purpose of sexuality is to foster oneness in marriage. It is the language of marriage, it's an intimate expression of two lives joining as one. One of the fallouts of the sexual revolution is that we have downgraded sexuality to a short-term physical pleasure. Our culture uses sexuality to bring pleasure, but I think we've lost the joy. We have lost that profound purpose and the rich language of sexuality. Just look at the language we use to describe sex today. It has become crass, gutter talk, and the F-word. We don't even know how to talk about sexuality as the beautiful language God created it to be. In reducing it to pleasure only, we've lost the richness of the language and the commitment that it was intended to communicate. We have pleasure, but we've lost the joy. Add to that Paul's point about immorality is sinning against your own body. It's a really sad picture. Pursuing all that selfish pleasure is ultimately not doing you any good. You're fouling your own nest, so to speak. And his point is flee, run away from it because it's not good for you. If you're a believer, your body belongs to Christ. We tend to think of life from a very me-centered perspective. It's all about how I feel, what I need, what I want, who likes me, who appreciates me, how am I going to grow? How am I going to do what I need to do? And Paul's perspective, I think, is very different. We need to shift our perspective to living our lives in view of these very real relationships. We are members of Christ's body, and if you're married, you are one with your spouse. Jesus is not just out there somewhere as an interesting guru we study in the Bible. Your life is his project, his workmanship. He has an investment in you, and what you become will bring glory to him. Part of the glory Jesus will receive is that one day we will stand before the throne of God clean, new, worthy, and redeemed, and he made it possible. So you are part of his project. We ought not to view him as the ally we have chosen to get us where we want to go. Rather, that we are his project. Jesus is not my best friend in a trivial kind of emotional support way. He is my Lord, my king, and my savior. I belong to him because he bought me out of slavery. I am his project and his workmanship. He is not there to make my life easier or to get me out of jams or make me feel special. I am here to bring glory to his name. That's Paul's conclusion. Therefore, glorify him in your body. The way you live your life today ought to bring glory to his name because you are his in a very profound way. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but how I reach those conclusions. If this podcast has been helpful to you or you've enjoyed listening, please leave a positive comment or a review on Apple Podcasts because it really does help others find this program. And please tell your friends about the podcast. It's very easy to subscribe. Just go to Wednesdayandtheword.com and click on subscribe to this podcast. Our theme music is graciously provided by my friend and favorite musician, Reggie Coates of Heartfeltmusic.org. If you haven't listened to any of his other music, you are in for a treat. I encourage you to go to heartfeltmusic.org and click on the links to his CDs. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krissan Morata, and I will see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.