1 Corinthians 6:19 What? know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own?… One of the most elementary principles of Christian thought and life is expressed in these words: "Ye are not your own." The sense of Divine ownership rather than self ownership is the inspiration of all Christian dignity and strength. Consider - I. THE NATURE AND GROUNDS OF THIS PERSUASION. There is a sense in which it is true of all men that they are not their own. It is a necessary inference from the fact that they are created and dependent beings. But more than this is meant here. As a mere truth of natural religion, it is lifeless and profitless. As in so many other cases, it must be elevated to the level of a Christian doctrine, linked with, set in the light of, the great facts that belong to the "record God has given us of his Son," before there can be any efficacious force in it. As a reality of Christian life, then, this Divine ownership rests on two distinct grounds. 1. Purchase. "Ye were bought with a price." The apostle refers to a historic fact of the past, viz. the personal self surrender and sacrifice of Jesus, the Son of God, for the redemption of men. This, with all that it involved of obedience, humiliation, and suffering even unto death, was the "price" that bought us. We may differ in our abstract ideas as to the nature of the atonement, but this fact is to the Christian mind indisputable. "The Son of man came to give his life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28); "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse," etc. (Galatians 3:13); "Redeemed with the precious blood of Christ," etc. (1 Peter 1:19). Like the noble Roman youth who, as tradition tells, leaped full armed into the yawning chasm because the city could only be saved by the sacrifice of her best treasure, so did Jesus, the "well beloved" of heaven, the noblest treasure of earth, the "only begotten of the Father," the Head and Chief of our humanity, yield up his life to redeem the life of the world. He gave himself for us. "He suffered, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God." Not that there was any essential moral efficacy in the mere fact of suffering, but that that suffering was the measure of our value in the sight of infinite and eternal Love. Pure love invests its object with a value in comparison with which all that belongs to itself is as nothing. The heart in which it dwells finds its deepest satisfaction in the joy of another. Saving another, itself it "cannot save." All tender human relationships are meant to develop in us this Divine sensibility. How spontaneously does all the thought and care and passion of the mother's soul, the deep exhaustless wealth of her being, flow out towards her child! She loses herself to find a dearer self in him. How instinctively, at any risk, does she shield him from danger! With what sublime self forgetfulness does she surrender her own ease and comfort, to toil through the livelong day, and watch through the weary night, and let her very life ebb slowly and silently away, that she may find a deeper joy, a better life, in nourishing and saving his! So has it been with Christ's more than human, more than mother's love. "Herein is love," etc. (1 John 4:10). It is the memory and consciousness of this, and all that it means, that produces in us a profound impression that we are "not our own." Of all the forces that move the spirit to grateful self surrender, none so mighty as this sense of personal obligation to redeeming love. "The love of Christ constraineth us," etc. (2 Corinthians 5:14). "Love so amazing, so Divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all." 2. Possession. "Your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost." The context requires that we give to this a strictly individual application. It is spoken here, not of the Church as the Body of Christ, "the fulness of him that filleth all in all," but of the physical personality of each individual member of that body. And it is spoken of as a simple, unquestionable element of Christian knowledge and consciousness. "What, know ye not," etc.? The heathen have had their ideas of Divine "possession;" but their possession has been exceptional, transitory, fictitious, the device of priestcraft, the wild dream of mystic superstition. Here the Divine possession is real, reasonable, permanent, fruitful of blessed issues. If we could only realize it more, not with anything like the wildness of a dangerous fanaticism, but with the calm quiet dignity of a spirit that is consciously walking in the light of God, what strength and beauty it would give to our life! Imagine the awful sanctity with which the temple of old must have been invested to the view of the worshipping people as soon as the heaven kindled fire came down, and "the glory of the Lord had filled the house." With what higher sanctity still should we clothe the being of a man in whom the Holy Spirit dwells! Shall not "Holiness unto the Lord" be the acknowledged, manifest, and all pervading law of his life? II. THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF IT. "Glorify God therefore in your body." This is something more than a mere passive, negative abstinence from evil. It is the consecration of the powers of our nature to all holy service, the active expression of the inner Divine life in all possible forms of well doing. It implies: 1. Conscious spiritual freedom. Christ delivers us from all kinds of degrading moral bondage when he thus redeems us and makes us his own forever. And "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Spiritual freedom lies in willing personal subjection to him who is our rightful Lord. Self hood in all its forms and phases is the slavery, the paralysis, and death of the soul. Live in and for yourself, as if you were "your own," and you have a very hard and oppressive taskmaster. Live unto the Lord, and you are most truly and joyously free. 2. The mastery of the spiritual over the fleshly part of us. The apostle has in view a special and most important aspect of the sanctity of the body. But we may take this word "body" as symbolizing the whole form and fashion and habit of the outward life. From the inner shrine of a spirit that has thus become the Lord's, the glory will stream forth through all channels of self revelation. The very outskirts of our being, the very lowest part of our nature, will be sure to be lighted up, spiritualized, beautified by it. We are apt to think of the body as being necessarily the encumbrance and the foe of the spirit. This is not a Christian way of thinking. Rather let us regard it as an instrument that God has wisely constructed, "fearfully and wonderfully made," and through which the holy energy of the spirit may serve his purposes and do him honour. - W. Parallel Verses KJV: What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? |
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