To Encourage You

1 Corinthians 6:20 “So glorify God in your body.”

Are you one of those people that thinks that if they only had more money, more talent, or more intelligence they could do so much more with their life?  If we aren’t careful, such a mindset can tempt us to become people who are focused on what we don’t have rather than on what we have.  We can become people who can think, “I’d do so much more if only . . .” and we can miss so many opportunities that are ours to experience right here and now. 

You see, God would have us to focus our lives not on what we don’t have but on what we do have.  While Christians are to always have an eye on eternity, it is only in the present that we can do anything about it. Jesus said, “do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34). Our focus is not to be on tomorrow in the sense that we be those who say that we’ll do this or that then, for God Word tells us “do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” (Proverbs 27:1). James had this to say about this issue: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ’If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (James 4:13-17).  Notice how James tells us to couch any talk about the future with these words: “If the Lord wills.”  And notice the emphasis he places on the current moment, for if we know right now of some right thing we should be doing, to wait until the future to do it is a sin.  It’s called a sin of omission – something that those who are so proud about not doing this or that sin so often overlook.

Which brings us to the verse above. It tells us to “glorify God with our bodies.”  That means glorify God with our bodies right now.  To the extent that we have control of this body God has given us, we should do everything we do each and every moment to glorify Him with it.  After all, as believers, we should know that although God calls it “your body,” the words immediately before this verse say this: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.”  It’s a paradox in that although it is our body, it really isn’t.  Incredibly, God views it as His holy temple, and just as every item in the Old Testament temple was consecrated to God, set apart to His service, so we are to view our bodies in the very same way.

So, how do we do this? Well, in the immediate context of 1 Corinthians 6, it is referring to the topic of sexual immorality. Any time we are engaging in such sexual behavior with our body (and this includes our mind, which is part of our body), we are not glorifying God. We are sinning against Him with the holy vessel He’s given us.   So, if that’s something we have been engaging in or in which we are involved right now, we should obviously stop – and stop right now! 

But then to break this teaching down further, we should remember that every member of our body is to be consecrated to God. At any moment we can glorify God with our members . . . or not.  For example, what are we thinking about right now? Is it that which a Christian should be focused on? What are we doing with our mouth?  Are we speaking words that glorify God, or are we using our mouth to gossip, curse, lie, or do other behaviors that God condemns?  How are we using our hands?  Are we serving the Lord with them by reaching out and helping someone in need, or is most everything we are doing self-centered with no thought given to the God who gave us our hands? What about our feet? Where are they taking us?  Are we going places that bring honor to God, or are they taking us places that we’d rather that God not know about?  We can glorify God in all these ways . . . or not. It’s all about what our body and the individual members of our body are yielded to.

In Romans 6:12-14 God addresses this same topic with these words: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” It’s such a wonderful truth that those who love God can glorify Him each and every moment of each day with something they fully possess, i.e., their body.  It is a wonderful truth that because of this, “whether (we) eat or drink, or whatever (we) do, (we can) do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

So, how are you doing in this area? How are you doing right now? Are you choosing to make the most of your life by glorifying God with your body, or are you waiting to do something until tomorrow, a day that may not ever come?