Tuesday August 6, 2024
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Do you not know . . . you are not your own? For you were bought at a price;
therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
If it be true that we are not our own, and I hope it is true of you, then the inference from it is, ‘I have no right to injure myself in any way.’ My body is not my own; I have no right then, as a Christian, to do anything with it that would defile it. The apostle is arguing mainly against sins of the flesh and he says, ‘the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.’ We have no right to commit uncleanness, because our bodies are the members of Christ and not our own. He would say the same of drunkenness, gluttony, idle sleep, and even of such excessive anxiety after wealth as injures health with burdensome care. We have no right to profane or injure the flesh and blood which are consecrated to God; every limb of our frame belongs to God; it is his property; he has bought it ‘with a price’. Any honest man will be more concerned about an injury done to another’s property placed under his care, than if it were his own. When a son of the prophets was hewing wood with Elisha and the axe head flew off into the water, you remember how he said, ‘Alas, master! for it was borrowed.’ It would be bad enough to lose my own axe but it is not my own; therefore I doubly deplore the accident. I know this would not operate upon thievish minds. There are some who would have no further care about it, if it was another man’s and they had borrowed it: ‘Let the lender get it back, if he can.’ But we speak to honest men and with them it is always a strong argument. Your body is another’s; do it no injury.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 