Throughout history, humanity has had a love-hate relationship with their own bodies.
On the one hand, what we might call ascetics, they renounce and punish their own bodies
for the sake of spiritual gain, what they consider to be spiritual gain,
whether it's through self-flagellation, whipping their own bodies,
or self-imposed poverty and begging.
On the other hand, the hedonists, they embrace and indulge their bodies
as if it had no effect on their spirituality.
Whether it's through gluttony or sexual immorality,
they think that they could do whatever they want to their bodies,
but it wouldn't have any effect on their spirituality.
And both views are well-attested in the history of religion,
and they share a common error. They have the same error.
And that's that they both discount the importance of the body
and view it as something that's unnecessary and extraneous for their spirituality.
The ascetics believe that the body needs to be subdued
and overcome for the sake of spirituality,
while the hedonists believe that the body can be indulged to whatever they want
and it wouldn't have any effect on the spirituality.
Scripture, however, the Christian scriptures,
does not discount the importance of the body.
Rather, it teaches that we ought to glorify God in our bodies
because our bodies have been united with Christ in his death and resurrection.
That's the main point of this passage.
And at first, I'll talk about how our bodies will be raised by God in verses 12 to 14.
And then I'll talk about how our bodies are members of Christ in verses 15 to 18.
And then finally about how our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit in verses 19 to 20.
There's a Trinitarian outline here that Paul gives us.
So the Corinthians were actually guilty of both errors,
both the ascetic error and the hedonist error,
and you'll see both of that as we go through the book.
But here, Paul's concern particularly is with their hedonistic error
because they were indulging in sexual immorality,
thinking that it wouldn't affect their spirituality and their standing with God in any way.
So some of the men were blatantly hiring prostitutes and sleeping with them
and then rationalizing it afterward using certain slogans that we see here in verse 12.
It says,
All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful, says Paul.
All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.
The clause in quotation marks,
the all things are lawful for me.
That's the slogan that the Corinthian believers,
some of them were using to rationalize their immorality.
And they were taking really the spiritual freedom that they have in Christ,
which Paul teaches elsewhere,
and then to use that twist that it distorted to say
that all things are permissible and lawful for them.
I mentioned this a couple weeks ago,
that that's kind of what they were doing.
And it's true that while Christians,
because we have been freed from the law,
we're not under the law anymore because Christ fulfilled the law on our behalf.
So we are not legally bound to it in a sense that we're going to be punished according to the law.
However, that doesn't mean that what the Corinthians are trying to make it mean,
was that all things are lawful for me and you can live however you wish.
And so Paul sharply qualifies their slogan in verse 12
by adding his own kind of qualifications to the saying,
all things are lawful for me.
He says first,
All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.
Sure, you might have the right or authority to do such things,
but that does not mean that such things are helpful or beneficial.
So for Paul, it's not merely a question of what can we do,
but it's a question of what should we do as Christians.
This issue comes up again in chapter 10,
and apparently some of the Corinthian believers were eating food
that had previously been sacrificed to idols.
And that in and of itself is not a problem
because it's just good steak that Paul knows
that Christians have the freedom to enjoy.
That's okay with him, but it's a problem
because Paul is saying that for the sake of Christian brothers and sisters
who have weaker consciences,
who do not think that eating meat that had previously been sacrificed to idols is okay,
that Paul says we should abstain from such things.
And in that context, in chapter 10, verse 23,
Paul says a very similar thing.
All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful.
All things are lawful, but not all things build up.
So that explains really what he means by not all things are helpful.
It doesn't build up.
It doesn't build up the church.
It doesn't build us up as believers.
Because the Christian life is not about our rights,
but about the things that benefit and build up the church.
Our decision-making process, then in all that we do,
all that we're thinking about,
it shouldn't ever be purely self-focused, self-centered,
but it should be oriented toward glorifying God and edifying the church,
building up the church.
That's Paul's first qualification.
The proper Christian attitude is not one of entitlement,
but of selfless service.
We should ask ourselves not merely whether or not we have the right to do something,
or permitted to do something,
but whether or not what we're about to do is helpful and edifying.
And Martin Luther, the reformer,
once wrote in his famous treaty on the freedom of a Christian,
quote,
A Christian is a perfectly free Lord of all,
subject to none.
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all,
subject to all.
Yes, we have freedom in Christ,
but with that freedom,
we don't use it to abuse our own rights,
but to serve others,
to build up others in Christ's name.
And most of us probably do not go to the same extreme
that Corinthian believers were going
in justifying fornication and prostitution
with the pretext of Christian freedom.
But this still remains a helpful principle for us
because it has a very wide-ranging application.
So think about it for a second,
and I'm not giving you guys any conclusions at this point,
but ask yourselves,
yes, right,
it is lawful for us to smoke cigars.
It is.
Yes, it is lawful for us to binge-watch TV shows on Netflix.
It's lawful for us to do that.
Yes, it's lawful for us to spend hours every day on video games.
It's lawful for us to drink heavily caffeinated energy drinks every day.
Yes, it's lawful for us to partake in extreme sports
that have exceptionally high degree of risk.
It's all lawful to do.
But let me ask you,
is it helpful?
Does it really tend to the glory of God?
Does it really tend to the good of the church?
Is it good for you?
I'm not going to answer those questions for you specifically
because this is a general principle here,
and I don't want to err by overreaching
with specific applications that are not warranted by this principle.
But this principle is clearly here,
and I think each of us needs to at least wrestle with it,
asking ourselves, is what I am about to do helpful?
Is it edifying?
And I want you to do that, to ask that question prayerfully,
and then do only what your conscience allows.
Because speaking of, right, in Romans 14,
speaking of whether or not Christians are able to eat foods
that are ritually unclean,
he says,
I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus
that nothing is unclean in itself,
but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.
For if your brother is grieved by what you eat,
you are no longer walking in love.
By what you eat,
do not destroy the one for whom Christ died.
This is a really helpful principle.
If you're not fully convinced that whatever you're doing is lawful,
and you do it nonetheless,
then your action does not proceed from faith,
and therefore it is sinful.
Do you guys follow me?
And now, even if you are fully convinced
that what you're doing is lawful,
but you deem that it is not helpful
for building up your brothers and sisters in Christ,
and you do it anyway,
then your action does not spring from love,
and it is therefore sinful.
Do you follow that?
This is an extraordinarily high call for the Christian.
It's the Christ-like road of sacrifice and servanthood.
And Paul also provides a second qualification
to the Christian, to the Corinthian slogan.
He says,
All things are lawful for me, still in verse 12,
but I will not be dominated by anything.
The word dominated is a word play on the word lawful.
They look and very sound similar in the Greek.
And so this is kind of,
so he's saying that while all things may be permitted to you,
they are not to be controlled by it, by anything.
And this is really echoing Paul's teaching elsewhere
in Romans 6, 12 to 16.
He says,
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.
What then?
Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?
By no means do you not know that if you present yourself to anyone as obedient slaves,
you are slaves of the one whom you obey,
either of sin, which leads to death,
or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.
Right?
So this is Paul clarifying really his teaching on the freedom of the Christian.
He's saying that while it is true that those who are in Christ,
because Christ fulfilled the law perfectly on our behalf,
are no longer under the law,
and we're free from the law and its legal demands,
but this did not mean that they could go on sinning,
because to do so would mean that we are still dominated by sin,
under its authority,
and slaves to sin.
Christian freedom, right?
Far from permitting sin,
it's supposed to preclude sin,
because Christian freedom means servitude to God.
That's what Christian freedom means.
So it is a contradiction in terms to say,
oh, I'm spiritual and I have freedom,
and then to be dominated by sin.
And even if the activity in view is not sinful in and of itself,
even if it is lawful,
if our appetite for it becomes inordinate,
and it begins to dominate and control us,
then we violate this principle.
That we would not be dominated by anything.
So let me ask you,
is there a practice,
or a preference,
or a substance in your life that dominates you?
If you are unwilling to give it up for the sake of glorifying God,
and for the sake of edifying the church,
or if you are willing but unable to do so,
those are sure indicators that your appetite for this thing
has grown inordinately to idolatrous proportions.
And when it comes to conquering the desires of the flesh,
and the desires of the eyes,
and the pride of life,
we have to be decisive and ruthless,
and we can do it in the power of the Holy Spirit,
with the loving accountability of the church.
And then in verses 13 to 14,
Paul challenges another one of the Corinthian slogans.
Read with me,
verses 13 to 14,
food is meant for the stomach,
and the stomach for food.
And God will destroy both one and the other.
The body is not meant for sexual immorality,
but for the Lord,
and the Lord for the body.
And God raised the Lord,
and will also raise us up by His power.
The saying,
I know we have some real foodies in the house,
in the church,
so this might be discouraging to some of you,
but it's food is meant for the stomach,
and the stomach for food.
So this is a saying that dealt with
the irrelevance of food restrictions,
and there was no longer,
well I guess this is good for some of the foodies for now,
is that there is no longer need to fret
about what you're eating,
whether some kind of foods are clean or unclean,
ritually speaking,
whether it's appropriate for you to eat,
or inappropriate for you to eat it.
And note that Paul doesn't dispute this fact,
he agrees with the Corinthian slogan at this point,
yes, the food is meant for the stomach,
and the stomach for food.
But their ultimate fate,
ultimate fate for both the stomach and food,
is God will destroy both one and the other.
So food and the stomach
are intended for our sustenance in this life,
here and now,
and they will not be the means
of our eternal sustenance in the resurrection life.
So that they are destined for destruction,
that's what Paul's speaking of here.
And this is similar to what Paul teaches,
Romans 14, 17,
it says,
For the kingdom of God
is not a matter of eating and drinking,
but of righteousness and peace and joy
in the Holy Spirit.
It doesn't make sense in light of that
for us who are destined for heaven
to be so consumed by our physical appetites,
or to be overly concerned with what we eat or drink,
because these are earthly things
that will pass away.
Their ultimate destiny is destruction.
The Corinthians were right in this regard.
They understood this correctly,
but that wasn't the problem.
The problem was that the Corinthians
adapted this line of reasoning,
and they were arguing by analogy
that the body was meant for sex,
or sexual immorality in this case,
and sex for the body.
So our bodily organs,
this is kind of how they were thinking and reasoning,
our bodily organs,
our brains,
our bodily chemicals,
all of these things worked together
to make sex pleasurable.
So clearly,
the body was meant for sex.
It was designed for sex,
and the sex for the body.
So what harm is there
in doing,
in fulfilling,
in indulging this basic biological desire?
That was the Corinthian reasoning.
That's their rationale.
So they're justifying sexual immorality
by saying that,
well, just like the stomach,
and just like food,
they all pass away.
Same thing with our bodies.
They will all pass away.
So why not indulge in sexual immorality
while we still can,
and we still have our bodies?
But Paul exposes the critical flaw in their logic
by formulating a counterpoint
in exactly the same parallel format
to the Corinthian argument.
Verses 13 to 14,
look at it with me one more time.
The body is not meant for sexual immorality,
but for the Lord,
and the Lord for the body.
And God raised the Lord
and will also raise us up by His power.
While it is true that food is for the stomach
and stomach is for food,
it does not follow from this
that the body is meant for sexual immorality
and the sexual immorality for the body.
Instead, Paul argues,
the body is meant for the Lord
and the Lord for the body
because,
and this is his reasoning,
the ultimate fate of our bodies
is not destruction,
but resurrection.
You guys follow that?
This is the reason that Paul gives in verse 14.
God raised the Lord
and will also raise us up by His power.
That's Paul's logic.
The Corinthian believers are wrong
to assume that our bodies,
like our stomach for food,
will be destroyed with death.
They believed in the redemption of their souls,
but not the redemption of their bodies.
And they were wrong.
And Greek philosophy,
along with all the other really major religions,
extant at this time
when the Corinthians were written,
taught the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.
You guys have probably heard of it.
A lot of people would believe it nowadays as well.
And where in the immortality of the soul,
after death,
the disembodied soul without the body
will either travel to the afterlife
to be subsumed to this divine being
or the nature,
whatever it might be,
or it will be reincarnated
into a new bodily form.
That's kind of what immortality of the soul would teach
because immortality of the soul believes
that the body is gone.
It's just the soul that's immortal.
But the Christian doctrine is not that
because the Bible doesn't teach
that the soul is eternal
while the body is temporal.
Instead, it teaches the doctrine
of the resurrection of the body.
This was so radical for its time
when this was first formulated.
Their bodies will be raised
and perfected
at the second coming of Christ
and we will be made whole again,
soul and body.
That's the doctrine,
the Christian doctrine.
And the final consummation of God's salvation
is not some heaven up there
that's separate from earth
where just our souls dwell,
but it will be the new heavens
and a new earth.
Revelation 21.
The heaven up there for our soul
is merely a layover.
The final destination
is the new heaven and new earth here
where we in our embodied souls,
with our bodies raised again
as Christ was,
will live in eternity with God.
And this Christian teaching
about the resurrection of the body
imbues our physical bodies
with unprecedented dignity
and significance.
Because our bodies
are not some burdensome shells,
right,
that we're just going to shed
or discard for eternal life.
No, God the Father
will raise our bodies
by His power
just as He raised Christ's body
by His power.
For that reason,
our bodies have eternal significance.
And it's wrong to indulge
or abuse our bodies
like it's inconsequential
because what we do
with our physical bodies
have spiritual consequences
according to what Paul
is writing here.
Because the body is meant
for the Lord
and the Lord for the body, right?
Christ died and rose again
to give us spiritual life
in here and now
to guarantee our resurrection life
in the future to come.
He gave Himself to ensure
the resurrection of our bodies
and that's why the Lord
is for the body.
He gave Himself for our bodies.
And likewise,
because Christians are those
who by faith
have been united with Christ
in His death and resurrection,
our bodies are meant
for the Lord,
not for ourselves
or for anyone else.
Our bodies are consecrated to Him,
set apart for Him.
And it's not our prerogative
to do with it
whatever we wish.
This is the first theological reason
that Paul gives
for why we ought to glorify God
in our bodies.
That our bodies
will be raised by God the Father.
Then in verses 15 to 17,
Paul elaborates
on the second theological reason
why we ought to glorify God
in our bodies
and that's this,
because our bodies
are members of Christ.
That's my second point.
That's really an expansion
of Paul's point
that he made earlier
when he says,
Do you not know
that your bodies
are members of Christ?
He writes this in 15, 17.
Shall I then take
the members of Christ
and make the members
of a prostitute?
Never.
Or do you not know
that he who is joined
to a prostitute
becomes one body with her?
For as it is written,
the two will become one flesh,
but he who is joined
to the Lord
becomes one spirit with him.
So verse 15
is Paul's exhortation
that Christians
who are members of Christ
should not become
members of a prostitute.
And then verses 16 to 17
provide the explanation
for why sexual intercourse
with a man,
for a man becomes
a member of a prostitute.
So this is a really
important teaching.
And in Ephesians 5,
22-33,
Paul teaches
the famous passage
you guys know of
that the union
between a husband
and a wife
points to the consummation,
that it points
to the union
with Christ
of the believers,
the union between
Christ and the church.
And after saying
that in that passage
in Ephesians 5
that we are members
of Christ's body,
Paul cites Genesis 2-24,
which he also cites here
as proof of the same point.
And he says this,
Therefore a man
shall leave his father
and mother
and hold fast to his wife
and the two shall
become one flesh.
So Paul's teaching
that that one flesh union
between husband and wife
points to the union,
spiritual union
between Christ
and the church.
And it's significant
that this is a metaphor,
of course,
but this is not just
an analogy.
It's actually pointing
to a spiritual reality,
that church really is
the body of Christ.
Matter of fact,
we're speaking,
but in a real spiritual way.
And we know this
because in Ephesians 5,
Paul consistently uses
the language of comparison
and analogy
to refer to other things.
So he says,
for example,
he uses the comparative
particle as,
when he says,
Wives,
submit to your own husbands
as to the Lord.
In other words,
husbands are not
the lords of their wives,
but the wives are called
to submit to them
as to the Lord.
So that's the comparative language.
It also says,
for the husband
is the head of the wife,
even as Christ
is the head of the church.
Meaning,
the husband is not
the head of the wife
in exactly the same way
as Christ is the head
of the church,
but it's comparable,
even as, right?
It's true in an analogous way.
Similarly,
it says,
Now as the church
submits to Christ,
so also wives
should submit
to their husbands.
Husbands,
love your wives
as Christ loved the church.
In the same way,
husbands should love
their wives
as their own bodies
as Christ does the church.
Meaning,
the wife is not literally
the body of the husband,
but they do form
a one-flesh union,
but this doesn't mean
they don't have separate bodies.
Nevertheless,
the husband should love her
as if she were
his own body.
Right?
You guys follow me?
It's a comparison.
It's an analogy.
So consistently,
he uses the language
of analogy
throughout Ephesians 5,
22 to 33.
But notably,
in verses 30 to 32,
when he's speaking
of how the church
is the body of Christ,
he discards the language
of analogy and comparison
and uses the language
of identity and being.
He says,
We are members
of his body.
Therefore,
a man shall leave
his father and mother
and hold fast to his wife,
and the two shall become
one flesh.
So in the same way,
the real way husband and wife
really become one flesh
in their union,
the church and Christ
become one through
the spiritual union.
So it's not just an analogy.
It's a reality,
and that's what kind of
grounds Paul's argument here.
Unless we think that crudely
that our union with Christ
is similar to sexual intercourse
between a husband and a wife,
he qualifies it in verse 17.
He says,
He who is joined to the Lord
becomes one spirit with him,
right?
Which is different from
the man who sleeps
with the prostitute
becomes one body with her,
right?
So that's different
because this is speaking
of a spiritual union,
but it's not just
a figure of speech.
It's real.
It's a real spiritual union
between Christ
and the church
because Christ
didn't just save our souls,
but he saved our bodies.
And when we
renown our sins then
and believe in Jesus Christ
for salvation,
we're united with him,
Christ in his death
and resurrection.
And through that,
we are given
spiritual resurrection life
in the present
and we'll be given
physical resurrection life
in the future.
And Christ's bodily resurrection
is the guarantee of that.
He's the first fruits
of the resurrection.
So then,
to take the bodies
that we have been given
to unite it
with a prostitute
in sexual immorality,
to do so is tantamount
to joining Christ,
the Holy One,
the righteous Son of God,
with a prostitute.
And just the thought of it
is so revolting to Paul.
He exclaims,
never.
Absolutely not.
May never be so.
The two options
are mutually exclusive.
Of course,
Paul's not arguing
that sex in general
is forbidden, right?
In the next chapter
in 1 Corinthians 7,
Paul writes that
in order to avoid
temptations
for sexual immorality,
that the husband
should give to his wife
her conjugal rights,
and likewise
the wife to her husband.
For the wife
does not have authority
over her own body,
but the husband does.
Likewise,
the husband does not
have authority
over his own body,
but the wife does.
So sexual union
between husband and wife
is a good thing
because that picture
that is a one-fleshed union
is a divinely appointed picture
of Christ's union
with the church.
However,
sexual immorality,
sexual union
with the prostitute,
profanes the sanctity
of marriage,
and it's a flagrant
contradiction
and violation
of our membership
in the body of Christ.
For this reason,
Paul writes in verse 18,
flee from sexual immorality.
Every other sin
a person commits
is outside the body,
but the sexually immoral person
sins against his own body.
And what does Paul mean by that?
Every other sin
a person commits
is outside the body.
What about sins like
gluttony,
drunkenness,
drug abuse?
Aren't these also sins
against our own bodies?
By this,
I don't think Paul means
that only sexual immorality
affects the body.
Other sins affect
our bodies as well.
But in a particular way,
sexual immorality
is against one's body
because it brings about
a profane,
one-fleshed union
and makes one's body
an illicit member
of another person's body.
And in that way,
it's unique,
it's singular,
and it violates
the spiritual union
of the believer with Christ.
So in that sense,
it is a unique sin.
And this exposes
really the foolishness,
right,
of the hookup culture
that we live in.
Not only is sexual immorality
a sin against God,
you're sinning
against your own bodies.
This is the second
theological reason
that Paul gives
for why we ought
to glorify God
in our bodies.
Our bodies are members
of Christ.
And then in verses 19 to 20,
Paul gives his third
and final reason
why we ought to glorify God
in our bodies.
And that's that our bodies
are temples
of the Holy Spirit.
He writes,
Or 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 are bought
with a price.
So glorify God
in your body.
Right,
earlier in chapter 3,
Paul spoke of the fact
that the whole church,
right,
is the temple
of the Holy Spirit,
right?
But now Paul tells us
that what is true
of the church corporately
is also true
of believers individually.
And so we could say
it's appropriate to say
if we are together
as the church,
the temple
of the Holy Spirit,
it's appropriate to say
that each of us individually
is a temple
of the Holy Spirit.
And this is also pointing
to a spiritual reality,
right?
And it runs counter
to the Corinthians'
misunderstanding
that whatever they do
to their bodies,
it doesn't matter,
that it's inconsequential,
because the body
is destined for destruction
and therefore has
no eternal significance.
Because they believe
themselves to be
so spiritual
that they were above
such encumbrances,
that they can do
whatever they want
to their bodies.
But Paul corrects them
saying,
if you are indeed spiritual,
if you really have
the Spirit of God
like you claim to have,
then you should be
all the more careful
what you do
with your bodies
because your bodies
are the temple
of the Holy Spirit.
And the consequence
of that reality
is you are not
your own, right?
When the Bible speaks
of being filled
or being indwelled
by the Holy Spirit,
it's speaking of our
possession by the Holy Spirit,
that we are owned
by Him.
Remember what we learned
from Ephesians 1, right?
That when we believe
in Jesus Christ
for salvation,
we are sealed
with the promised
Holy Spirit
who is a guarantee
of our inheritance, right?
The Spirit of God
seals us, right?
He is, we might say,
He is Himself
the seal as well
as He seals us.
So He's the one
that declares over us
that we are His,
God's treasured possession.
So we could think
of the Spirit
as God's inscription,
His signature.
The Spirit is God's mark
of ownership over us.
And indeed,
sexual immorality
is a sin
against one's own body,
but this offense
is made worse
by the fact that,
properly speaking,
the Christian's body
is not even our own.
It belongs to God.
So do you live then
as if your body's,
indeed your whole life,
your every decision,
rightly belongs to God?
Or,
life is not about
eating what I want,
buying what I want,
doing what I want.
The true Christian posture
is to ask always,
Lord, what would you
have me do?
And to labor every day
to try to keep in step
with the Holy Spirit.
And why do we belong to God?
Why does God own us,
as Paul's talking about?
Paul's reason is given
in verse 20.
For you were bought
with a price.
This is the language
of the slave market.
And this, of course,
makes us feel
a little bit uncomfortable,
right?
Because,
for one,
our nation's history
is stained with
the heinous evil
of race-based
and kidnap-sourced,
greed-driven,
lifelong slavery.
So when we think of slavery,
that's what we think of.
But the Bible knows
of no such slavery.
That's not what's in view here.
And then secondly,
here in the U.S.,
we're also all about independence
and the right
to self-determination,
right?
So we have a natural aversion
to any language
of being owned.
In fact,
that's like a,
it's not like a punchline,
like you got owned
or something, right?
So it's like,
so it's like,
so we don't want that.
We dislike that.
Just have a natural aversion
to it.
But being the slaves of God
is not oppressive
or restrictive.
Rather,
it's when we are truly free.
God is our creator.
He designed us,
right?
And His will
is perfect and good.
And it's within
His will
and not outside of it
that we experience
true freedom
and joy.
In his book,
Orthodoxy,
G.K. Chesterton
writes about this paradoxical
aspect of Christianity.
He says,
the more I considered Christianity,
the more I found
that while it had established
a role and order,
the chief aim of that order
was to give room
for good things
to run wild.
The freedom to sin
to freedom
to disobey God
is no freedom at all.
It's what derails
the good things
in this world
to run headlong
into cliffs.
So it makes us fearful
and then it forces us
to put artificial,
man-made boundaries
that's even more restrictive
than what God had for us.
Perhaps you're not yet
a follower of Jesus,
right?
And you've always felt
that Christianity
is like a straitjacket
that just restricts you
and tells you what to do.
This is the paradox
of Christianity.
It's that Jesus Christ,
the only person
in the history of humanity
who did not deserve
to be punished by God,
his whole life,
he had perfectly obeyed
God the Father.
Yet he willingly died
for our sin,
for our rebellion.
He died on the cross
so that we can be saved
and forgiven
and freed.
And that righteous one,
he died so that
the guilty ones can live
and because Jesus
humbled himself
by becoming obedient
even to death,
to death on the cross,
therefore God exalted him
to the highest place,
gave him the name
that is above every name,
right?
Jesus rose again
from the dead,
ascended to his Father's right hand
and now reigns with him.
His death brought about our life
and his humiliation
led to his exaltation.
That's the ultimate paradox
of Christianity.
It's what we call the gospel,
the good news of Jesus Christ.
And that same principle
now applies to us.
Those who submit themselves
to Christ
will find that they are
truly free
as they never were before.
And those who die to themselves
and to their selfish desires
and pursuits
find that they are now
truly alive
as they never were before.
So stop living for yourself.
Start living for God today.
So we can run wild together
in the goodness
of God's will for us.
And if you are already
a Christian,
then let this
remind you
at what cost
you were purchased
by Christ for God.
1 Peter 1, 14-18
says,
When Christ ransomed us
for God with His own blood,
He purchased our bodies
as well.
That's why Paul says
in verse 20,
You are bought with the price,
so glorify God
in your body.
We were all once slaves
to sin,
but as Romans 6-18 says,
we are now slaves
of righteousness.
Think about it this way.
So Hannah and I,
we often buy things
cheaply off Craigslist
or we get it for free
off websites
like Buy Nothing Cambridge
in Cambridge.
You guys know about that.
And so one of the things
we got off of
Buy Nothing Cambridge
for free
was a rocking chair
that Hannah used
really well
for nursing
our second daughter.
It was a serviceable chair,
but the fabric on it
was wearing off,
and the rocking mechanism
had gotten rusty.
It was really old,
so it would creak
really loudly,
and sometimes it would
wake up the baby
and just put to sleep
by rocking her.
So it worked most times,
but it didn't work
all the time.
But we weren't
dissatisfied with it.
And why?
Because we got it
for free.
I mean,
it was worth the price
we paid for it.
But imagine
if we had paid $200
for a new rocking chair
at Babies R Us,
that thing better glide
like it's on ice.
Right?
I mean...
It better be worth
the price
we paid for it.
Do you know
your worth
as a Christian?
That you were bought
not with perishable things
like silver or gold?
That's rubbish
compared to what
he paid for us.
He bought us
with the precious blood
of Jesus Christ.
Do you know
your worth?
If he gave
his very life
up for you
and we have been
united with Jesus
in his death
and resurrection,
we better live
up to our worth.
Would you squander
a life that Christ
purchased with
his very own life?
So let's remind
ourselves of this
truth daily
so we can live
up to our billing.
We ought to glorify
God in our bodies
because our bodies
have been united
with Christ
in his death
and resurrection.
Let's pray together.
God,
you love
us so dearly
and we cannot
fathom how precious
you treat us,
how precious
we are to you
that you would
pay for it
with the blood
of your own
son,
Jesus Christ.
We pray
that that truth
would motivate us
into holy living
and we pray
that that truth
would motivate us
into evangelism.
we pray that you
would conform us
to this truth
with which you
have addressed us
this morning
from your word.
In Jesus' name
we pray.
Amen.