1 Corinthians 6:20 NIV
20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
If there is one truth we must accept when we receive Christ is that we no longer belong to ourselves. This reality is completely contrary to everything we hear in the world today. There are many messages we take in every day, all telling us we are ultimately the masters of our own destiny. The idea of being bought with a price is off-putting or even offensive to the unbeliever.
In an effort to pursue itself, the world has come up with some slogans to make itself feel good about who it bows down to; itself. Some common statements seen and even shared by Believers go something like this:
You need to put yourself first.
You need to look out for #1.
You need to take care of you.
You do you.
You need to make yourself happy.
There are many others, but if you look at each statement there is one person in common with all of them. Can you guess who it is? The world is consumed with itself, its own best interests, and building its own reality. What it won’t do is consider anything that might tell it that what it’s doing is wrong.
What Bought With A Price Doesn’t Mean
You have to admit, the phrase ‘bought with a price,’ does make one hesitate just for a minute, doesn’t it? I mean, if someone bought us then that means someone else is telling us what we should do. Humans don’t like being told what to do.
God isn’t here to order you around. He’s not about forcing you to do His will. This isn’t a slave/owner type of relationship. You are not shackled to God, unable to move. He imparts free will on all of us. That means we can certainly not follow what He says is right. That comes with a price too. Making your own destiny as it turns out costs a lot; it costs everything you have and more than you realize. Turns out there is no way to get out of being bought with a price. It just depends on who’s doing the buying that matters most.
The Truth About Being Bought With A Price
We know that someone paid an awful lot to call us His own. Jesus paid it all. Maybe you would die for a friend. Would you die, give up your own life, for a perfect stranger? What if that stranger was a murderer or a bank robber? Jesus died for them too. He did what we are very unlikely to do for all who would call on His name to be saved. Saved from what?
When we say we are saved, it should make us realize that there is something that we need to be saved from. That thing we need to be saved from is ourselves. We endanger ourselves every time we don’t choose God. If we don’t choose God, we choose sin. It’s perfectly simple.
The progress into sin is plainly spelled out by James in the second half of the first chapter. First, we decide to pursue something other than God and then the enemy brings the things we love to choose instead of God right in front of our faces. It’s so easy. It’s exactly the process we go through every time except for one thing; the intervention of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus’ decision to pay for us with His life didn’t enslave us. It ransomed us from the bondage of sin. Without the Holy Spirit, we are helpless. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot control our own will to the point of choosing God’s way over our sin. To be honest, we wouldn’t want to. Pride says we can elevate ourselves above God. It says we can be our own God. We don’t need God. The Holy Spirit has to interrupt this way of thinking too. This is why we can’t even take credit for our own faith. Faith is a gift from God.
The truth about ransom is that not only does it save you from yourself, but also gets you to see why you’d want to be set free. Pretty amazing isn’t it?
Why Honoring God With Your Body Is Important
Why does God tell us to honor God with our bodies because we were bought with a price? Jesus offered up His body as a living sacrifice so we should offer up our bodies as an act of worship to Him. That sounds weird, doesn’t it?
How do we honor God with our bodies? What does He want us to do? God’s word interacts with us when we read it so we understand what it means to honor God. The Bible tells us what honoring God with our bodies looks like in a way we can understand because the Holy Spirit reveals the truth to our hearts. Thankfully, it’s not up to our own intellect to understand the Bible.
Do you have some ideas of what honoring God with your body would look like? Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. When we accept Christ, He imparts His spirit into our bodies. Our spirit communes with the Holy Spirit living in us. It counsels us on what to do as we read and take in God’s word. Studying God’s word is critical to understanding how to honor God, particularly with our bodies.
The Practical Part Of Honoring Your Body
The very short answer to a serious question is this; if it makes you feel badly for doing it, if it harms your body in any way, don’t do it. Treating your body like it is sacred is a good thing to keep in mind when you are asking yourself, “How do I honor God with my body?”
Treat your body like it’s special. Don’t put things into it that are bad for you. Keep your body free from sexual sin. That’s usually a big stumbling block for most people, but God has some very good reasons why sex when you are not married is not good for you; physically, emotionally, and especially spiritually. Sex is a major distraction from us doing the things God wants us to do because it gets us to focus on physical pleasure instead of spiritual pursuit. This is something to watch out for even in marriage. Nothing should be put above God. Not sex. Not even sex with your spouse. Nothing.
Honor Jesus best by putting Him first; in everything, every day. Being focused on Him will go a long way in keeping you from the things that don’t serve to honor Him.
How Does This Verse Speak To You?
6The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.
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