Respect Your Body
“Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without [outside of] the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.”-1 Corinthians 6:18
The two seem to go hand-in-hand: sexual immorality, and a disrespect for one’s body; yet why is this the case?
An example: the eye
©iStockphoto.com/AdamG1975
How much are your eyes worth to you?
Suppose in a hypothetical situation, someone offered you a billion dollars for your eyes. You would have them painlessly removed, and hand them over to the other person, and you’d collect $1,000,000,000. Would you do it? Unless you were very poor or very desperate (or blind), I don’t think that any reasonable person would sell their eyes for money.
Yet, do you not sell the worth of your entire body in exchange for a short moment of pleasure, when you commit sexual immorality?
But let me comment on a small side-note that I mentioned above: suppose that you were blind, and someone made the same offer to you. I’d venture a guess that a lot more people would be inclined to sell their eyes if they were blind. And why is this? Because to the blind, the value of their eyes is almost zero. They don’t have much to lose, and so the deal for them seems much more sensible.
The devil is in the business of making people think that they are blind. He is in the business of making people think that their bodies are worthless, and that they have nothing to lose by engaging in self-destructive behavior. If we can’t see the value that our body has, then it becomes much easier to sell it for temporary thrills, or for what we think and hope might be “love.”
Yet true love, as God intended it between a man and woman, is only found in marriage: that is, God intended for two partners to make a vow to each other, and to the rest of the world (through a wedding ceremony) that they promise to remain faithful and true to each other for their entire lives.
“Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” -Hebrews 13:4
To make such a promise usually takes at least a little bit of planning and thinking ahead. It certainly is not done in a surge of passion or impulse on any given night. To sell one’s body for only a temporary “love” that may or may not remain in the morning, is to commit fornication, and bring much sorrow and heartache. Just as if a person had sold his/her eyes, (and for far less than the one billion dollars mentioned above), regret at the enormity of value that has been lost in giving up one’s body brings much regret in the long run.
Your body: far too valuable to sell
The Bible says that God created us in His own image. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). This means that we are of exceptional value to God: for who else is created in His very own image? Not the earth. Not the plants. No bird, fish, or any animal is ever mentioned in the Bible as being made in the image of God.
“For thou hast made him [man] a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.” -Psalm 8:5
Yet though we are created in the image of God: being crowned with glory and honor, there is a downside to all of this. The downside is that there is a powerful adversary—the devil—who hates God and wars against him with hellish passion.
“And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, . . . And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” -Revelation 12:7, 9
Because of this great struggle which Satan wages against God, (which we see from the verses above that the devil ultimately loses), we are caught in the middle of this battle. And since the devil is powerless against God himself, he instead directs his anger at us.
As was mentioned before, one of the chief ways that the devil directs his attacks against us is by cheapening and devaluing our bodies. Yet so much of this attack is merely psychological: we are made to think that our bodies are of no value, and that it is pointless to try and hold out or keep them in high esteem.
Already bought with a price
Yet God values our bodies so much, that when we are born again, God chooses to live within us. The apostle Paul reasons with the believers at Corinth that they ought to keep and maintain their bodies in all purity and righteousness:
“What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.“ -1 Corinthians 6:19-20
In essence, Paul reasons that beyond the value and respect that you ought to show to your own self by keeping your body pure from immorality, you also ought to keep it pure because it is really the property of God. The Bible says that we have been redeemed:
“Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:” -1 Peter 1:18-19
What does it mean exactly to be redeemed? Basically, it means to buy something that was being held for ransom. So when we were held captive by sin, Jesus Christ came and shed His very own blood to purchase us and deliver us from the inevitable fate of hell.
Since we have been bought by God, we have no right to “sell” ourselves to anyone or anything that God does not condone. And in this context, God only intends for us to be united with another believer in marriage, and only according to God’s will. We are not to use our bodies in a way that is disapproved by God; both for our own sake, and for Christ’s.
“Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.” -1 Corinthians 6:15
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