Why It’s Important//

As believers, we are called to be pure and holy—or as Jesus puts it, “be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). But what does purity and holiness mean in a culture where it is all too common for people (Christians and non-Christians alike) to engage in impure/immoral thoughts, activities, and practices that dishonor God? We often find it difficult to resist the temptation to be like everyone else, giving into fleshly desires and pleasures that compromise the commands given by God...and yet are we not called to be set apart?

With the Holy Spirit comes power, not just to cast out demons, but to resist the flesh and live in wholeness, fullness, and holiness, that we may truly love God with all of our heart, mind, and strength. It is then that we can truly obey the calling to “offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to the Lord” (Romans 12:1). 

What It’s Talking About//

Written by the Apostle Paul to the young church in Corinth, this first series of letters addresses many of the moral issues Corinthians wrestled with: marriage and divorce, paganism, lawsuits and sexual immorality. All this in a world (then and now) where values are based on sinful desires and popular opinion, how should the church (and the people in it) live in accordance with God’s will? 

This particular passage speaks about the value of purity: what does it mean to treat our bodies as instruments and temples for the Lord, not as slaves to sexual desires? What does it mean to acknowledge that we are indeed not our own, but belong to God, the one who has saved and set us free for His glory? We honor God when we surrender our bodies to His will and His pleasure, not our own.

1 Corinthians 6:12-20 NLT

12 You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything. 

13 You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. 

14 And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead.

15 Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! 

16 And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.” 

17 But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.

18 Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. 

19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 

20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.