Glorify God in Your Body

 

Jesu Juva

1 Corinthians 6:12-20                                         

January 14, 2024

Epiphany 2B                       

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        Grocery stores are places where food is bought and sold.  Schools are places where learning and teaching transpire.  Barns are places where livestock are kept.  Hospitals are places where the sick receive care and treatment.  Temples are places where God is glorified.  Each place has its own distinct purpose—by design.

        And if you dare defy that design, or deviate from that design, the results will not be good.  If you try to re-purpose a place for which it is not designed, well, you’re undertaking a fool’s errand.  Who would be so foolish as to care for the sick in a barn?  Or keep livestock in a hospital?  Could you glorify God in a grocery store?  Or buy and sell food in a temple?

        Today’s reading from 1 Corinthians is all about God’s design and purpose for a very unique structure:  your body.  Your body serves many purposes.  Your body is fearfully and wonderfully made.  God Himself has given you your body and soul, eyes, ears, and all your members.  He’s the One who knit you together in your mother’s womb. 

        But of all the purposes your body has been designed for, one purpose outshines them all.  One function rises above the rest.  One task takes the cake:  Glorify God in your body.  That’s the final sentence from today’s epistle reading.  Glorify God in your body.  Touching, tasting, seeing, hearing, and smelling are great; but you’ve got a sixth sense that surpasses any other bodily purpose:  Glorifying—glorifying God in your body.

        To glorify God in your body is to order your bodily life around God—to continually draw strength and nourishment from His holy Word, and His holy Baptism, and His Holy Supper, and His holy Absolution.  You glorify God in your body whenever that body stands, sits, or kneels to pray, praise and give thanks.  When you lift your voice to sing God’s praises, you are glorifying God in your body.  You glorify God in your body when you kneel down low to serve and support the other, broken bodies God places in your pathway. When you forgive as you have been forgiven—when you love as you yourself are loved by Jesus—then and there your body is doing what it has been designed to do.  God is glorified in your body.

        To help you grasp this tremendous truth about your body, today’s epistle tells us even more.  It turns out that your body and this building have something in common.  Your body and this building are a lot alike.  For this building is a temple; and your body is a temple too.  Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God.

        What’s true for this building is also true for your body.  This is God’s dwelling, and so is your body.  This is sacred space, and so is your body.  This is holy ground, and so is your body—from the top of your head to the tips of your toes.  To look in the mirror you’d never know it.  In a million years you never would have guessed this glorious truth about your body—your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, designed above all else to glorify the God who created you, redeemed you, and sanctified you.  Your body has been under new management since the day of your baptism.  In your flesh there now resides a Resident who transforms you.  The Holy Spirit has re-purposed your brains and your brawn to do holy things and glorify God.

        This truth determines everything we do with these bodies.  These temples are designed only for sacred purposes.  Deviate from that design and you’ve got trouble with a capital T.  You can’t keep livestock in a hospital (chickens in the children’s ward, pigs in pediatrics.  I don’t think so.)  Every earthly structure has its own unique purpose, by design.  Deviate from that design and you are courting disaster and destruction.

        First Corinthians chapter six addresses some of the most destructive ways that we are tempted to misuse these bodily temples—how we deviate from God’s good design.  It’s summed up nicely by Saint Paul in one, simple sentence:  Flee—flee from sexual immorality. Literally, it says continually flee from sexual immorality.  And don’t stop fleeing from it.

        “Sexual immorality” pretty much includes any sexual behavior with someone to whom you are not married.  It includes fornication and prostitution, adultery and pornography, homosexual behavior—premarital, extramarital, it matters not.  God does design our bodies for sex, but only within the loving commitment of marriage.  Why do we have such a hard time understanding this? 

        On the one hand, sin is sin.  But on the other hand, 1 Corinthians 6 makes it clear that sins of sexual immorality are uniquely damaging and destructive.  Sexual immorality defiles your body in ways that other sins don’t.  You cannot glorify God with a body that is being misused for sexual immorality.  It prevents you from doing what you were designed for –namely, glorifying God!  And you risk evicting that Holy Resident who resides in you—the Holy Spirit who makes your body His temple.   

        Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.  And that Spirit isn’t there simply to police your every thought, word, and deed.  The Spirit helps us in our weakness!  The Spirit is in you to help you!  One of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is self-control.  So take what the Spirit gives you.  Make use of His help.  Exercise self-control.  Bodily discipline is the name of the game.  Remember whose you are—in whose holy name your body is baptized:  In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

        With water and those Words the Holy Trinity took possession of you—soul and body.  With water and those words you were adopted into the family of faith.  All your sins were washed away.  And because God has claimed you in your baptism, that means something revolutionary and countercultural:  You are not your own.  Your body is not your body.  I’ve used the phrase “your body” many times in this sermon.  But that “your” doesn’t imply possession, but reception.  The body you have is a gift received.  It belongs to the Lord, not you.  You are not your own. . .

        For you were bought with a price.  Real estate is super-expensive these days.  But no property has ever been purchased with the price Jesus Christ paid for you.  You were bought with a price.  And that price?  Not silver.  Not gold.  No, you were bought with the holy, precious blood of Jesus, and His innocent suffering and death.  And this price was paid so that you (in both soul and body) might be His own, and live under Him in His kingdom.  And serve Him.  Jesus died to redeem you.  Jesus died to pay the debt you could never pay.  Jesus died . . . so that you might glorify God in your body. 

        Jesus has a body like yours.  The baby boy born in Bethlehem is your brother in the flesh.  He knows the weaknesses and frailties of the body.  He knows how tempting it is to misuse the body God has given—to live life in the reckless pursuit of pleasure, and so deviate from God’s gracious design.  Jesus was temped in every way, just as we are, yet He is without sin.  And that sinless record now counts for you and for all who turn to Him in repentance, who trust in His power to save.  In Him is forgiveness for every sin.

        Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.  He has defeated death.  He now reigns from God’s right hand.  But Jesus—He’s still got a body.  And that saving body and blood He gives to us to eat and drink for the forgiveness of sins in His holy Supper.

        St. Paul writes, God raised the Lord [Jesus] and will also raise us up by His power.  That’s a not-so-subtle reminder that your body is not destined for destruction.  Someday this temple—with its Lannon stones and broad wooden beams—this temple will be reduced to rubble.  The finest hospitals, grocery stores, and school buildings—they all have a date with destruction or demolition.  Every structure on the face of the earth faces a sure and definite demise.

        But your body is different; your body is destined for resurrection.  Jesus Christ brings you life and immortality through the gospel.  And then, and there, with a glorified and resurrected body, you will finally and forever be able to do perfectly what you have been designed to do:  Glorify God in your body.  

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.