The Holy Spirit makes your body a temple
Daily Scripture
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
12 I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful. I have the freedom to do anything, but I won’t be controlled by anything. 13 Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, and yet God will do away with both. The body isn’t for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. 14 God has raised the Lord and will raise us through his power. 15 Don’t you know that your bodies are parts of Christ? So then, should I take parts of Christ and make them a part of someone who is sleeping around [Or a prostitute; commonly, women who sell their bodies to multiple sex partners but includes those who are sexually immoral]? No way! 16 Don’t you know that anyone who is joined to someone who is sleeping around is one body with that person? The scripture says, The two will become one flesh [Genesis 2:24]. 17 The one who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. 18 Avoid sexual immorality! Every sin that a person can do is committed outside the body, except those who engage in sexual immorality commit sin against their own bodies. 19 Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? Don’t you know that you have the Holy Spirit from God, and you don’t belong to yourselves? 20 You have been bought and paid for, so honor God with your body.
Daily Reflection & Prayer
In the apostle Paul’s day, the Greek city of Corinth was very rich and VERY immoral. Scholar William Barclay wrote “the very word Korinthiazesthai, to live like a Corinthian, had become a part of the Greek language, and meant to live with drunken and immoral debauchery.” * Paul told believers there that saving sex for committed relationships (which Greeks and Romans seldom did) was a worthy aim. ** He based that on a principle that involved much more than sex: “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you.”
- Every night in Corinth, “sacred” prostitutes (historians estimate 100 to 1000) from Aphrodite’s Temple (Greek goddess of “love”) sold sexual favors. There are clear differences, but how are today’s culture and views like Corinth’s? Paul then taught that in a sexual relationship, each person should actively seek their partner’s good, not just their own pleasure (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:1-9). How can the Holy Spirit guide you to live God’s way, even when the world around you pulls in different directions?
- The image of your body being a temple of the Holy Spirit is both empowering and challenging. It invites you to seriously consider how you live in and through your physical self. What’s one area of your life where you could more fully honor God with your body? In what ways can knowing that God desires to dwell in you and guide you all the time help you think more clearly about your body, and make better choices about what you do with it?
Prayer
King Jesus, make all of me—body, mind and heart—a temple where your Holy Spirit dwells. Remodel me from the inside out in your beautiful holy image. Amen.
GPS Insights
Mikiala Tennie
Mikiala Tennie serves as the Student Discipleship Program Director with Resurrection Students. She has nearly 20 years of volunteer and professional ministry experience and loves walking alongside and encouraging others in their spiritual journey. Mikiala is blessed to be an adoptive aunt and godmother to many kiddos and lives with her 10-pound Yorkie, KiKi Okoye Tennie.
I grew up in an environment that heavily leaned into Paul’s instructions to the church at Corinth found in 1 Corinthians 6. As young people we were taught that it was young girl’s responsibility to dress in a pure and moral way in order to avoid tempting the young boys into lustful thoughts. It was a young boy’s responsibility to—when temptation arose—look away and remove himself from the environment. All of the rules and regulations and ways of dressing and behaving had the intention of upholding the concept that our bodies are God’s temple. Unfortunately, the focus leaned so far into modesty that rules begat more rules and those rules begat more rules to the point that young girl’s outfits were regularly policed for morality and not much attention was paid to… well, anything else. Summer camps and serve trips became to-do lists based on what clothes girls could or couldn’t wear… it was a whole thing. Ultimately it became about upholding rules and policies rather than focusing on what God’s Word actually said.
“I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful. I have the freedom to do anything, but I won’t be controlled by anything.” 1 Corinthians 6:12
If we think critically about what’s being said here, the concept of purity and being moral isn’t gendered and it isn’t based solely on the types of outfits a person of any gender is wearing or not. The concept remains that while each of us has free will and can choose to do any number of things… a numerous amount of things we can choose to do are actually unhelpful. Though we have the ability to make our own choices and do what we like, we are not meant to be controlled by those choices or options. This thought process widens the scope of the rules and regulations I grew up with, and honestly presents us with way more responsibility than how we clothe ourselves and how we respond to the way others are dressed. If sexual morality and therefore sexual immorality, lies within the choices we all make, then it seems like we should all be focusing on how our individual choices, responses, and actions impact our ability to love our neighbor. Living a life that honors God is way bigger than style. May God grant you the wisdom to choose to do what is helpful!
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Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* William Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians (Revised Edition). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1975, p. 2.
** The Greek New Testament never used the Greek word eros. This was likely due to the immoral overtones the Greeks and Romans gave the word. Instead, a scholarly guide for translators referred to “the euphemisms that Paul uses in referring to sexual matters.” (from Paul Ellingworth and Howard A. Hatton, A Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. New York: United Bible Societies, 1993, p. 143.) In his letters, Paul used the Greek word agape (self-giving love) over and over.
