1 Corinthians 6:19
Ps Paul Cheng
~3 min read
Dear Bethelites,
As we consider this topic, “The Temple of the Holy Spirit,” we have discussed Paul's exhortation to (1) understand one’s union with Christ, and (2) understand what a sexual union involves. Today, we will consider the last point, and that is, to understand one’s body is the temple.
III. Understand our body is the temple
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? (1 Corinthians 6:19)
Notice, time and again, Paul had used the exclamation word, what? It simply implies, “do you not know?” He expected the Corinthians to know because he must have taught them that the believer’s body was a temple.
The temple is a holy place. It is the place where God dwells and manifests His presence. If one is a believer, he has the Holy Spirit, the Comforter dwells in him. The Holy Spirit is the seal and assurance of one’s salvation, and His presence speaks of the reality that he is a child of God. Romans 8:9, But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
Dear friend, how should we knowing this truth that the Holy Spirit dwells in us change or affect our behaviour? Is the church-building a temple? No! Fundamentally, the building is not the church (ekklesia, the assembly or gathering of called out ones). Individually, the believer is the temple, and collectively, the believers are the temple.
There are some people who will never consider committing sins in the church-building simply because they associate it with holiness, and they will say, “This is the house of God!” But biblically speaking, the believer is the house or temple of God; for the Third-Person of the infinite Triune Almighty God dwells in him.
Take a moment and consider this. If a believer has been saved at the age of twenty years old, and lives up to seventy, that would be fifty years of a new man in Christ. God has saved him, redeemed him, both body and soul. Jesus is His Master and Lord, and he belongs to Him. The Spirit of Christ dwells in him personally. God is using him to live as a new creature for the fifty years since his conversion; to manifest His transforming power, and to show to the unbelieving world what He can do to a wretched sinner. He has transported him out of spiritual darkness and into His marvellous light, so that the world may come to believe in the one and only true Saviour. Intrinsically, God is going to use him to glorify Himself.
How can this reality not affect the way we view our body? Do we not know that our body actually belongs to “Someone” else? Verse 20, For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s
If I may, let me draw an illustration in conclusion. In Singapore, where I used to live there are government built houses called HDB (Housing Development Board houses). Each apartment is leased to the occupants for a period of 99 years. After 99 years, the government reserved the right to take back the apartment. So, some of the HDB houses may have 80 years left on the lease, while others may only have forty or thirty years, and so forth. The occupants can only live in those apartments for the number of years left.
If we are believers, we belong to God, both body and soul. One day, the opportunity to live and breathe in this physical body will come to an end. It will come to an end when the Lord Jesus comes in the cloud, or when death knocks on our doors. If our bodies belong to God, then we must live our lives (whatever be the remaining years) to serve the purpose for which He has saved us, and that is to glorify Him. Instead of living our lives in sin and fornication, we live as the true temple of the Holy Spirit. All to the glory of God!
In Christ,
Pastor Paul Cheng
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