January 14,2024 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 Series B
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who loves you with his very life. Amen.
One of the big hurdles in understanding the bible is being comfortable with tensions. Not like dramatic tension you might see in a movie. But more like a rope. When you have a rope that’s pulled tight you have to pull both sides in order to keep that rope in tension. And you have to find the balance in it so you don’t pull it too far one way or another.
There are a lot of teachings from the bible that we practice in our daily lives that involve a tension, a balance. For example, how much time do you spend doing anything. How much time do you spend at work vs with your family, vs relaxing vs in prayer, and so on. Trying to find the balance. God wants us to work, he wants us to spend time with our families, he wants us to pray, but he leaves it, for the most part, up to us to find that balance in our lives. What my life looks like is different than yours, as we seek to live in this tension.
Our text today from 1 Corinthians has a tension for us to live in and we want to find that right balance in this text. Today’s tension is about our bodies as we live in the tension of what we can do and what is helpful, or beneficial. And then a bit later he talks about the things we are not supposed to do. Don’t worry,we’ll unpack this today, and by the end, prayerfully, the tension will become clear for us as we seek to live out our lives in a way that pleases God.
The church in Corinth had some problems. Like, problems that are shocking even to a secular world. For example, there was this guy who divorced his wife in order to marry his step mom. Yeah, problems. There was fighting, and church splits and all kinds of stuff. There were people who would eat so much of communion, and get drunk on the wine, that like, other people in the church didn’t get to take communion. It sounds strange to our ears. The way we do communion now is a result of combating the problems the church in Corinth had.
So half of this book deals with specific problems in the church, like the mother in law thing. Then the other half of the book is like an F-A-Q section, a frequently asked questions, where the apostle Paul answers questions that Christians have, questions that we still have to this day. One of those questions as part of the FAQ’s is our text today. The question is about Christian freedom in regards to our bodies. How do we live in the tension of Christian freedom.
I’ve said it before and I promise I will say it again, the phrase, “You are free in Christ to do…something.” Like, mow your yard, I don’t know. So what is Christian freedom? Well, Jesus Christ, through his death and resurrection has set us free. Truly free. Your sins do not stick to you anymore because of what Jesus has done. Now don’t here to go and sin. That the sinner in you being dumb. No. CHristian freedom means you have atomony in how you live your life.
Like with my example earlier. You are free in Christ to set your schedule. You can determine, with the reason that God has given you, how much you work, where you work. How much time you spend with your family. Where you go on vacation, what you do in your spare time. There isn’t a list in the Bible that says, “Thou shalt spend 11 hours a day at work, 9 hours a day sleeping and the rest to be determined by whatever.” It’s not there. You are free in Christ to make those choices.
You are also free in Christ to make choices about your body. Like, what color clothes you wear. How often you go to the doctor. Your hair style or color. Like you can choose those things. You can choose to dress up for church as a form of worship, presenting yourself as your very best before God. You can also choose to come to church in your regular clothes, presenting yourself before God as you truly are, not trying to hide anything. There isn’t a right or wrong. You are free in Christ to choose.
Or as Paul says in our text today, ““All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be enslaved by anything. 13“Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other.”
So here we have the tension. What do we do with our bodies? How do we manage the freedom we have in Christ with doing what’s best, or helpful. Right? You are free in Christ to eat whatever you want. You can eat bacon double cheeseburgers. It’s ok. You can eat deep fried candy on a stick at the state fair. You are free in Christ to do that. But is that helpful? If your diet is only state fair food exclusively, it’s going to cause problems. Find the tension. Find the balance.
In the same way that we are free in Christ to eat whatever we want, and free in Christ to spend our time doing what we want, not everything is good for you. If I can paraphrase the apostle in our text today, is your body a playground or a temple? Do you use your body to just gratify your desires or do you use it in service to God and your neighbor? And so ultimately, the question of Christian freedom becomes one of the first commandment - who is your God? Who do you worship? Do you worship yourself? And the reality is that we do, we worship our own thoughts, our own ideas, our own bodies.
Verse 19, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body”
You are not your own. What comforting words! You belong to Christ. Jesus came to die on the cross to set you free. And he has. You are truly free. You are free from the wages of sin, from eternal separation from God. And it means that you have been set free from being a slave to your desires.
Because of what Christ has done, you are more than just going from one urge to another, from one bad decision to another. You have been set free in order to do something great, to glorify God.
God has placed each of us here, in this time and this place, for a purpose. And that’s to bring glory to him. To show others through our actions, not just our words, but through our actions what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves. God has set us free from the sinful idolatry that would hoard everything and we can care for those around us. We share our time, our gifts, our talents, our possessions with others.
In your daily life you can use the skills that God has blessed you with to serve other people, to fulfill your vocations to the best of your abilities. Not because you are bound to your base desires, but because the Holy Spirit is at work in you. God himself is at work in you and through you.
So live in the tension. Enjoy the freedom God has given you, but use the freedom in a way to bring glory to God. Christ has set you free. Your sins are forgiven, your eternity is with Christ in paradise, you are not your own, you are God’s temple. So bring glory to God, as he uses you to do his works. Amen.
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