Our Bodies

Posted on by korgrocker

“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. 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. And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead.”
1 Corinthians 6:12-14 NLT

The Corinthians seemed to have a warped logic. They thought that because of God’s grace, it didn’t really matter what they did, so, consequently, getting involved in any form of sexual immorality would be permissible. Really? But before we say that such a logic wouldn’t happen today, consider how sometimes our human minds take one thought and twist it to apply to something else. We all do it, I’m sure. We make excuses such as “Just one more glimpse at that magazine won’t matter because it’s only for research”. Or, “I’ll watch this film, but if there is any bad language I’ll switch it off”, but never do. Or even, “I’ll just borrow a pen from the office and return it tomorrow”, but somehow the promise is forgotten. The human mind can get involved in convoluted thought processes that somehow do enough to appease a conscience that otherwise is shouting out, “Don’t do it!”.

How do we pilgrims view our bodies? Extraordinary attempts are made by many people here in the West to maximise physical fitness, with a plethora of gyms and leisure centres available and full of all sorts of equipment designed to hone muscles and improve fitness. A professional athlete often dedicates several hours a day, most days a week, to intense, regimented training to gain the stamina, strength, and speed required to succeed. Near where I live, there is a weekly Park Run where the runners do three circuits of the park, puffing and panting in their lycra-clad attire, some giving concern for the health of their hearts. Joggers abound in most towns and cities, pounding the streets to improve their fitness levels. Other people go through processes to lose weight, attending “fat clubs” such as Slimming World and similar. There is a huge market for weight loss jabs and foods designed to reduce calorie and carb intake. People constantly battle between their bodies’ appetites for all the wrong foods and the need to shed the weight they consequently accumulate, for their own longer-term health. And then we have the people who don’t care about their bodies at all, abusing them with smoking, drinking alcohol and taking drugs. Sometimes it is amazing how much punishment a human body can take before it gives way to illness, and death at an early age. In a town in Scotland’s Central Belt there is a particular drug problem, and to go with it, the tragedy of young men and women who find that their lives are cut short through an overdose. One mother I know lost three sons to drug-related deaths. Such a tragedy.

But back to the Corinthians. In this part of his letter, Paul wrote, ” … 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” (1 Corinthians 6:13b). Regarding “sexual immorality“, Paul earlier in the chapter singled out “adultery“, “male prostitution” and “homosexuality” as being “sexual sin”, but Paul contrasts using their bodies for such practices was at odds with the fact that they were “made for the Lord”. Of course, we know that one day everyone’s body will die and end up in a situation that degrades it to the point that it becomes nothing more than dust, given enough time. But from how our body was will come our new bodies because God will raise us “from the dead by His power, just as He raised our Lord from the dead”. Jesus’ new body was recognisable with the crucifixion scars still present, but it was a body with astounding capabilities, being able to walk through walls and locked doors, and travel distances very quickly. And our Heavenly bodies will be like that as well. 

Paul went on to write about a specific problem that was prevalent in Corinth, and that was the use of prostitutes. He wrote, “Don’t you realise 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! And don’t you realise 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”” (1 Corinthians 6:15-16). The Corinthians may have been a bit puzzled by Paul’s scathing tone because how could their bodies be joined to Christ? The answer lies in the truth that one day the Church that Jesus established here on earth will become His Bride. When people, men, women, and children, accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, believing in Him and taking on His righteousness, they became God’s children and part of a great assembly of souls that one day will be the Bride of Christ. Revelation 19:7, “Let us be glad and rejoice, and let us give honour to him. For the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb, and his bride has prepared herself”. Think about it for a moment. Why were we chosen by God in the first place? Ephesians 1:4, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes”. Being joined to a prostitute, Paul was saying to the Corinthians, was hardly an act of holiness. How could anyone guilty of sexual immorality of any kind ever be a part of the holy assembly that one day will be living in God’s presence? The same questions hang in the air today, as churches and denominations grapple with sexual sins on a similar scale to what was experienced in Corinth two thousand years or so ago. God has provided a design for correct and holy sexual relationships between a man and woman, involving marriage and sexual faithfulness. Anything else is abhorrent to Him, and as Paul wrote, “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. Don’t you realise 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, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honour God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:18-20).

We pilgrims also have bodies that are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. He lives within us, gifted by God when we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. So, the question is, how are we treating our bodies? Is it in a way that honours Him? Hmmm…

Dear Father God. We confess that we need to seek Your will and purpose for our bodies daily to ensure that we are honouring You in all that we do. Please help us, we pray. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

The Sanctified Ones

Posted on by korgrocker

“This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from our brother Sosthenes. I am writing to God’s church in Corinth, to you who have been called by God to be his own holy people. He made you holy by means of Christ Jesus, just as he did for all people everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.”
1 Corinthians 1:1-3 NLT

Paul wrote that the believers in Corinth were chosen and called by God for a specific purpose – they are to be His holy people. Paul went on to write how this was going to happen, “He made you holy by means of Christ Jesus” and, this is the good bit, “just as he did for all people everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours”. So Paul wrote that all believers everywhere are “God’s holy people“, and that includes us pilgrims, nearly two thousand years after Paul put pen to paper (actually, he probably dictated his letter to his “brother Sosthenes” who theologians think was his scribe, or at least had some part in crafting the letter). 

So what does it mean to be one of God’s own holy people? In some translations, we read the letter was addressed to those, “sanctified in Christ Jesus”, using a word with a special meaning for Christians – to be sanctified is to be set apart for God. This happens when someone becomes born again, that point when they become a believer and follower of Jesus. In His High priestly prayer, Jesus said about His disciples, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:16-17). There is only one Source of absolute truth, God Himself, so it is only He with the authority to make anything holy. But being sanctified is not just a New Testament experience. The Israelites were also commanded to be such in Leviticus 20:7-8, “Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God. And you shall keep My statutes, and perform them: I am the Lord who sanctifies you“. The Jews were a people set apart for God, and it is remarkable that through millennia, God’s people still exists intact as a distinct nation. The Bible sets out a number of things set apart, or “sanctified” for God’s purposes, not just His people. We read about the items used during the sacrifices in the Temple, for example. But in this world, there is a distinction between worldliness and Godliness, and this is something we pilgrims work hard to honour. We must remember who our Father in Heaven is and be clear about what that means. “So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters” (Hebrews 2:11). There is something precious and very important about being in God’s family and with Jesus as our older brother.

Another outworking of being sanctified involves our physical bodies. I regularly see people, mainly younger ones, looking after the physical fitness of their bodies, as they jog and run around our parks and streets. Others frequent the gyms that seem to have sprung up everywhere, that offer a variety of pieces of equipment, all designed to develop and strengthen our muscles. Nothing wrong with any of that, but sadly people also use their bodies for things that are not quite so honouring to God. Paul warned the Corinthian church about the importance of their bodies. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “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, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honour God with your body“. These verses are the conclusion to a passage referring to the practice, rife in Corinth at that time, of people using the services of prostitutes. But it is not just the physical act of prostitution that is wrong but also any practices that head in that direction, such as the use of pornography. We are set apart from the world and all its temptations and practices, as a holy people, saved and sanctified in accordance with God’s will.

“God invites us sinners to come to Him “just as we are” and receive His mercy and forgiveness. When we are saved, the Holy Spirit begins His amazing work of transforming us into the image and likeness of Christ. To be sanctified means that God loves us too much to let us stay the same” (quote from gotquestions.org). It is a serious business being a believer and follower of Christ. Peter wrote, ” … for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. “Once you had no identity as a people; now you are God’s people. Once you received no mercy; now you have received God’s mercy”” (1 Peter 2:9-10). As God’s people we have attained royal status and that has responsibilities. We don’t live in the way that we used to. The stark contrast between the two kingdoms is clearly set out by Paul in Ephesians 4:21-24, “Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy”. The good news is that the Holy Spirit, working within us, undertakes the process of cleaning up our lives and sanctifying us, but we have to co-operate with Him. He works through those gentle whispers, those pricks from our consciences, those verses we read in His Word, all the while helping us to see that what we might be doing is sinful, and not appropriate behaviour for someone who is a child of God. Thankfully, God in His mercy, doesn’t set out a detailed list of rules and regulations that we have to follow all from day one. It takes a lifetime, and more, to become holy as God wants us to be. His grace prevails every day.

So we pilgrims stay close to God and His thoughts and ways. Paul wrote, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Retraining our minds to only think thoughts that are sanctified is a challenge, but it is a challenge we much accept. In our own strength we don’t have a hope, but with the Holy Spirit’s help, we cannot fail.

Dear Father God. You are the amazing God who graciously and lovingly helps us through our perilous days on this planet and in this life. It is help that we need but through Jesus we have all we need. Thank You. Amen.

Jesus @ Jerusalem

Posted on by korgrocker

“It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration, so Jesus went to Jerusalem. In the Temple area he saw merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices; he also saw dealers at tables exchanging foreign money. Jesus made a whip from some ropes and chased them all out of the Temple. He drove out the sheep and cattle, scattered the money changers’ coins over the floor, and turned over their tables. Then, going over to the people who sold doves, he told them, “Get these things out of here. Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace!” Then his disciples remembered this prophecy from the Scriptures: “Passion for God’s house will consume me.”“
John 2:13-17 NLT

The previous verses place Jesus in Capernaum with His mother, brothers and disciples, so the next event in John’s Gospel was Jesus’ visit to Jerusalem for the Passover celebrations. In the Temple He found a sad scene of materialistic mayhem as the local merchants engaged in practices designed to supply pre-approved animals for sacrifice and converted money into the only coins acceptable to the Jewish priests. To the Jews, the Temple was a sacred place – just read the accounts of its inception and the dedication ceremonies that took place. Jesus must have made a fearsome sight, as He whipped His way towards clearing out all those who shouldn’t have been there.

The Jewish religion had become hijacked by customs, materialistic expediencies, that assisted the outward form of its practices but had totally missed the whole point of why the sacrifices were taking place in the first place. Religion had veered away from what God intended into a box-ticking process that must have broken His heart. In Hosea 6:6 we read what God said to His people. “For I desire and delight in [steadfast] loyalty [faithfulness in the covenant relationship], rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Amplified version). 

Today there can be a tendency to focus on denominational liturgies rather than the spirit that should be behind them. The more traditional facets of Christianity major on the recital of established prayers, and singing familiar hymns. Nothing wrong with this until liturgies replace relationship with God. Customs become more important than being in God’s personal space. 

We read that Jesus was passionate, zealous even, for the integrity of His Father’s house, the Temple. But we pilgrims know that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Paul wrote, “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, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honour God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Do we share Jesus’ passion for the temples in which we live? How do we treat it? The list of harms that we can do to our bodies, corrupting this sacred place, doesn’t bear thinking about. But before we embark on the latest diet fads and fancies, it’s not just about foods but about our attitudes to something special created by God in His image (Genesis 1:27). We pray that the Holy Spirit will guide us to the sacred rather than the secular.

Dear Father God. It is a sobering thought that You cared enough about us to install within us somewhere for You to dwell. Please help us to keep it sacred. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Temple of the Holy Spirit

Posted on by korgrocker

“Then I looked and saw that the Temple in heaven, God’s Tabernacle, was thrown wide open. The seven angels who were holding the seven plagues came out of the Temple. They were clothed in spotless white linen with gold sashes across their chests.”
Revelation‬ ‭15:5-6 NLT

God’s house in Heaven is open. Wide open. But why should there be a Temple in Heaven? One reason could be that it has been ordained by God. He gave Moses detailed instructions about what would be a suitable place for Him to live in when on earth. It’s a fascinating set of ancient blueprints delivered, not as a set of architectural drawings, complete with material specifications and fabric requirements, but as a written set of instructions, embellished with guidance from the Holy Spirit when needed. In Exodus 25:8-9, God said to Moses, “Have the people of Israel build me a holy sanctuary so I can live among them. You must build this Tabernacle and its furnishings exactly according to the pattern I will show you”. Perhaps God gave Moses a picture of how the Tabernacle would look and he wrote down the “pattern” for subsequent generations to follow, if necessary. But notice it wasn’t either God or Moses who built the original Tabernacle – it was the people. Ordinary, everyday, people who used to be slaves in Egypt. The instructions that God gave Moses for building the Tabernacle were incredibly detailed, even down to the quantities of materials. Don’t forget that Moses was not a qualified architect, designer or quantity surveyor – he had been a sheep farmer for most of his life. But God is our Heavenly Architect who knows everything. So Moses, and the obedient people, built a home for God.

Are we pilgrims Tabernacle builders or do we lack interest in doing such a thing? Do we need a Tabernacle today, to act as a home for God, or do we find such a concept unnecessary? Of course, in these times of the New Covenant, there is no need for a physical building to focus our worship, though this has not always been the case. Just look at the amazing cathedrals and churches that have been built over the centuries, to act as places of worship. That fact that so many of them are still standing today is a testimony to the skills of the architects and construction workers of bygone years. 

So we can, rather smugly perhaps, look back at the paraphernalia of the Old Testament accounts of the Tabernacle and the Temple and think such things are of no relevance for modern day pilgrims. That is, until we read in 1 Corinthians 6:19, “Don’t you realise 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,”. The Temple of the Old Testament becomes our bodies in the New Covenant. And all of a sudden, as the penny drops, as the implications of what this means hits us, we see the importance of the Temple, God’s Tabernacle. There was nothing impure and unholy in the Old Testament Tabernacle and Temple. And the Temple within us has the same requirement. We are called to be pure and holy, a fit place in which God can dwell. In 1 Peter 1:14-16 we read, “So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy””. Of course, no-one can ever achieve this holy state, totally conforming to God’s definition of holiness, through their own efforts. It is only through faith in the cleansing power of Jesus’ blood that we can stand righteous and holy before our Heavenly Father, becoming a temple fit for Him to live in.

Dear Lord, how can we ever thank You enough? You gave up Heaven to join mankind on earth so that You could show us the way home. Thank You. Amen.