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Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.“
[i]
Walking through a pet store the other night, something unusual caught my eye and I had to look twice to make certain of what I was seeing. Now, I don’t get out much and this may be old news to you, but this was . . . different. Think: Hermit Crabs, those little guys with the crabby fronts and soft behinds that move into the shells of other sea creatures. As they grow, they simply find larger shells to back in to. Got it?
Somebody got the great idea of “designer shells” for these puppies, er, crabs. That’s right! Little plastic shells with designer paint-jobs. Hermies’ home is not a typical sea-shell anymore. He can now have a little pink house with a white picket fence painted along the sides. Or a jet black shell with flames or racing stripes. Or a Hawaiian sunset. How about a monkey face for a costume?
I am getting the impression that many today live with a Hermit Crab mind-set, changing the outer shell for something (literally) different. Consider the tattooing and piercing phenomenon today. Clearly people are not satisfied to be as they are, so they modify that which they’ve been given. Clearly folks are convinced that their bodies were not designed properly so they must accessorize. I have two tattoos that I deeply regret and my own set of piercings from way back that, for the most part, only gave me grief—those will never go away. Why did I do it? Because it was “bad” and it was “cool.” Now it’s neither.
John Angell James (1785—1859) in his sermon on this passage called “
Self-Renunciation” reminds us:
“It is for you to recollect that the renunciation of SELF, as well as of SIN, was one of the solemn transactions of that scene, and that time, when you bowed by faith at the foot of the cross, received mercy through Jesus Christ, and yielded yourselves to God. You then abjured—not only self-righteousness, but self-seeking, self pleasing, self-living. Self, as a supreme object, was in every view of it renounced. Self, until then, had been your loftiest aim; self-love your highest affection; but then you transferred your aim and your affection to another object. The Christian has no right to ask what he will do with himself; or to what he will give himself; or how he will employ himself. He is no longer at liberty to inquire how he shall spend his energies, his time, his properly, his labor, and his influence; for he is not his own, he is bought with a price.”
The teaching of scripture is plain: your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own. In the spiritual sense, when we are made new creations, we have a new shell waiting for us. Putting racing stripes on it now does, well, nothing when it comes to eternal matters. We’ve slapped the creator in the face for doing an inadequate job, we’ve wasted time and money, perhaps spilled a little blood—for the sake of decorations? The truth of the matter is when we were born again, we have passed from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. We were made new creations! We have a new "inside" while we wait for the day we shed this old flesh on the outside! Our satisfaction should be in the creator, who creates anew, and not get hung up on this old flesh.
Certainly the passage is dealing with areas much different than those discussed here: fornication, idolatry, adultery, perversion, homosexuality, thievery, covetousness, drunkenness, reviling (verbal abuse), swindling, immorality. Where do you want to go from here? As Paul says, “all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable.”
Listen to James again, “self is the most subtle, the most stubborn, the most tenacious foe with which grace has to contend, in the soul of the believer. Self lives, and works, and fights—when many other corruptions are moritified. Self is the last heart—which is reduced to the obedience of faith.”
“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds.”
[ii]
Let’s return to the water a moment. Remember when early in His ministry the Lord Jesus told His disciples they would be fishers of men? This is not simply a hard task for those who do the fishing. Consider the fish. This imagery is not pleasant for the fish, for the fish is to be sought out, caught or gathered and removed from his element. If he is not netted, he is hooked. The fish fights, gasping for air, tossing about in attempts to be free. He is not anticipating being cleaned, stripped of his skin and put to uses other than those he had already planned for that day. He becomes the property of the fisherman. He is not his own, but removed from his school and re-enrolled in a new school where he no longer swims, but dies. He cannot live for himself.
I bought something once and someone thought they had to have what I had, so they broke in and stole it. A thief now has what I still own. Perhaps it has been sold again, but it is still mine. A Christian’s body belongs to God. It has been bought with a price. You are not your own, but God’s. Consider what a privilege it is that we who are worthless creatures and we are purchased for a price, so we are not our own!
James Denney wrote “what we may legitimately insist upon is the idea that the work of man’s salvation was a costly work, and that the cost, however we are to construe it, is represented by the death of Christ. ‘Ye were bought with a price,’ means, ‘Ye were not bought for nothing.’” Our salvation is a difficult, incredible, impossible thing; nevertheless, God took the necessary measures to ensure it’s transaction. Since the Christian becomes under new ownership, he must get out of the way.
[iii] Consider 2 Timothy 3:2 (“people will be lovers of self”) and
Richard Baxter, “Self is the most treacherous enemy, and the most insinuating deceiver in the world. Of all other vices, it is both the hardest to find out, and the hardest to cure.”
John Angell James again, “Self-love is the most active and reigning principle in fallen nature! SELF is the great idol which mankind are naturally disposed to worship; and selfishness the grand interest to which they are devotedly attached! Selfishness is contrary to the habitual temper of our Lord Jesus Christ. ‘For even Christ did not please Himself.’”
[iv]
So in one sense the Christian is like the fish, having been caught by men-fishers. In another sense we are like the Hermit Crab when it comes to taking off the old and putting on the new. But we are no longer our own. We cannot live in the school. We were bought. A price was paid.
The Christian is not merely exposed to Jesus, exposed to God in that an intellectual consent seals his eternal happiness; rather the Christian is espoused to Christ, united with Him and the body becomes the dwelling of the Divine through the Holy Spirit. By right of creation, redemption, presentation and possession, the Christian belongs to God.
“But what is it that the Holy Spirit operates in the hearts of believers? Truly, He is not there as a dead and lifeless image. Let no one suppose so. Oh no! He continually works one gracious work after another. First, He reveals Jesus Christ in our hearts, according to the word of the Savior, “When the Holy Spirit is come, he shall glorify me” (John 16:14). But what is meant by the expression, “He shall glorify me?” I reply, He will give us to know and experience Jesus in our hearts, as a most inwardly present Savior, whilst making His love, His grace, and His treasures appear to us so great and glorious that we are as much astonished as rejoiced at the unsearchable riches of grace in Christ Jesus.”
[v]
We have one purpose in life: glorify God. Final words from our great fore-blogger, Jonathan Edwards
[vi]:
“Consider that what you have is not your own; i. e. you have only a subordinate right. Your goods are only lent to you of God, to be improved by you in such ways as he directs. You yourselves are not your own; 1 Cor. vi. 20. “Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price; your body and your spirit are God’s.” And if you yourselves are not your own, so then neither are your possessions your own. Many of you have by covenant given up yourselves and all you have to God. You have disowned and renounced any right in yourselves or in any thing that you have, and have given to God all the absolute right; and if you be true Christians, you have done it from the heart.
Your money and your goods are not your own; they are only committed to you as stewards, to be used for him who committed them to you; 1 Pet. iv. 9, 10. “Use hospitality one to another without grudging. As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” A steward has no business with his master’s goods, to use them any otherwise than for the benefit of his master and his family, or according to his master’s direction. He hath no business to use them, as if he were the proprietor of them; he hath nothing to do with them, only as he is to use them for his master. He is to give every one of his master’s family their portion of meat in due season.
But if instead of that, he hoards up his master’s goods for himself, and withholds them from those of the household, so that some of the family are pinched for want of food and clothing; he is therein guilty of robbing his master and embezzling his substance. And would any householder endure such a steward? If he discovered him in such a practice, would he not take his goods out of his hands, and commit them to the care of some other steward, who should give every one of his family his portion of meat in due season? Remember that all or us must give account of our stewardship, and how we have disposed of those goods which our Master has put into our hands. And if when our Master comes to reckon with us, it be found that we have denied some of his family their proper provision, while we have hoarded up for ourselves, as if we had been the proprietors of our Master’s goods, what account shall we give of this?”
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[i]New American Standard Bible : 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), 1 Co 6:19.
[ii]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Mt 16:24.
[iii] Denney, James.
The Death of Christ. Paternoster: Cumbria, 1997.
[iv] John Angell James, "Christian Love" 1828.
www.gracegems.org
[v] Tersteegen, Gerhard (1697-1769) “The Believer, The Temple of the Holy Ghost.”
[vi] Edwards, Jonathan. “Christian Charity: or, The Duty of Charity to the Poor, Explained and Enforced.”
The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 2.
