Holy Vessels

1 Cor 6:13-20

"The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, "The two will become one flesh."   17 But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. 19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body."

Sin is sin. Any sin no matter how minor in our eyes is enough to keep us from fellowship with God. We tend to group sin in different categories and we view them differently.  While the fact remains that the wages of sin is death, the Apostle Paul was talking to believers in this passage. He was talking to people who have accepted Christ as their Savior and are no longer in fear of the eternal consequences of sin in their lives. To them it is that he wants to highlight the seriousness of sexual immorality as opposed to other types of sin.

We have been united with Christ through baptism and as a result of our regeneration we are now vessels for the Holy Spirit.

Let me put this in perspective. When I was a child I used to visit my female cousins and they would always insist that I sit with them and play while they served "tea and crumpets". I put them in parenthesis because there was no tea in the plastic tea cups and the "crumpets" were made from mud. While that is acceptable child's play, my aunts would have had a fit if my cousins would have used their fine china for the same purpose. Plastic play toys are one thing, fine china was only for when company came over. They were always kept immaculate and displayed in the china cabinet when they were not in use. We had regular tea cups for everyday use. The teapot, tea cups and china dishes were "holy", they were set apart for a particular use.  They would never be soiled or sullied by using them any other way.

Our bodies are the same way, holy, set apart for God and yet, we insist on using them the same way we did before we were set apart.

Would you drink tea out of a cup that a moment ago had mud in it? Would you add mud to your tea? Well Jay, you could wash it. That is what God did for us through regeneration. Why would we then want to dirty them again? If someone urinated in a tea cup, would there be enough washing that could take place before you decided to drink from that cup again?

Maybe you are not as particular about your china as my aunts were. Maybe you don't care about your china. Let's say that you decided to sell your china and my aunts bought it; would you still feel at liberty to treat them any old way? Of course not, they now belong to them. Their china, their rules.

We are not our own. We belong to Christ. We need to remember that and treat our bodies accordingly.