2002-09-10
Good Morning Dear Ones,
I'm led to continue sharing what God has to say about righteousness, the breastplate of God's full armor in EPH 6: 14. We don't have to wonder what God's will is concerning our physical selves. 1 COR 6: 18-20 makes that crystal clear. "Avoid immorality. Any other sin a man commits does not affect his body; but the man who is guilty of sexual immorality sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, Who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; He bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God's glory." There are so long-standing issues brought up in this verse along with some more historically recent ones. As long ago as the establishment of the Jewish people, God took steps against the practice of sexual immorality. At that time, it was the practice of the idolatrous religion, Baalism, that disgusted God and led Him to establish a people, the Jews, who were monotheistic (believed in only one God) and who eschewed the practice of public displays of sexual acts and the burning of babies at the stake as offerings to their gods. The worship of Baal and his wife, Asherah [JG 3: 7]. was the prevailing religion of the Canaanites and other tribes living around the territory in which Israel was established.
God's will in the matter of sexual immorality is very consistent throughout mankind's history. That is why He inspired King Solomon to spend a number of the early chapters of the book of Proverbs dealing with a young man's propensity to have trouble recognizing an immoral woman, for engaging in improper sexual behavior, and to have difficulty making wise choices. The more historically recent element of 1 COR 6: 18-20 is the reminder that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. The inherent reminder in this is for us not to waste a drop of the blood Christ shed for us on the cross and to remember just how great a gift to us the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is. Of course this passage is by far not the only place where this teaching against sexual immorality is found in the either the OT or the NT, but it certainly clarifies God's will without room for equivocation. The use of the word "God" in reference to the One Who bought you for a price, rather than "Christ" demonstrates two important truths. The first one is that God and Christ are two personalities of the One and Only God. The second one is that God made the greatest sacrifice of all, His Only begotten Son, and that Christ demonstrated the kind of friend He is to us by giving up His own life for us [JN 15: 13]. The inference here is that this tremendous sacrifice had to be made before we could be given this great gift of the indwelling of our Helper, our Counselor, the Holy Spirit. We must remember that as the third personality of God, He was giving us His very own Spirit. That's reason enough that we shouldn't defile the temple in which that Spirit was to dwell!
In EPH 5: 1-13, God, through Paul, wants us to understand what it means to live in the light of God. In (1-2), we are told to live our lives in love, as Christ modeled it for us "as a sweet smelling offering and sacrifice that pleases God." After all, pleasing God is the reason He created us in the first place. For those committed to faith, pleasing God is a driving force in our lives. Verses (3-5) begin a list of what we should not do if we are living in the light of God. This includes things like being sexually immoral, indecent, use obscene, profane, or vulgar language, or being greedy (for it's a form of idolatry). The penalty for engaging in these practices is not to inherit the Kingdom of God. One very important thing to do mentioned here is to give thanks to God. This goes hand in hand with James' warning in JAS 3: 10, which tells us "words of thanksgiving and curses should not pour out of the same mouth." In (6-13), we are clearly told not to let anyone deceive us with foolish words, because God's wrath shall fall upon these people. We should have "nothing to do with the worthless things that people do that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out into the light." When a light is shining on a person, it is much harder for him to steal, lie, and commit other acts of evil. The truth of what they are doing is made known. People living in God's light should have no desire to get into this kind of behavior, the kind that must be kept under cover of darkness. When there is no sin, there also no reason to worry. RO 12: 1, "So then, my brothers, because of God's great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to His service and pleasing to Him. This is the true worship that you should offer." This is the way that God can give each of us the peace that goes beyond human understanding [PHIL 54: 7], and we can bask in the warm glow of God's beautiful light. Satan is rendered unable to succeed when the light of God shines on our lives.
PRAYER: O Lord, we are so grateful that You have made Your will on Satan's temptations so clear to us. If we were to be ruled by our natural instincts, as so many worldly people are, there would be rampant sexual immorality in the church. The same awful consequences of broken families, AIDS and other forms of VD, never knowing the joy of healthy commitments, and eventual spiritual death would plague the set of believers as they do the outside world. When You give people faith and the willingness to truly repent of their sins, the door to their spirits is opened to Your Spirit. That is how they become joined to Christ as "new creations, the old being gone and the new having come" [2 COR 5: 17]. This aspect of the grace You give us, that grace which is sufficient to supply us with all our needs [2 COR 12: 9], allows us to understand how very evil sexual immorality, perversion, greed, crafty behavior, and all the things that You abhor really are. It also gives us the courage of faith to avoid being lured into them by Satan and his followers. We can testify, if we have endured in our obedience and faithfulness to You, to the happiness and peace making Your will our own really gives us. We suspect that it is only a hint of the happiness we will have when that Day comes when we answer the last trump and have that meeting with Christ in the air [1THESS 4: 13-17]. Dearest Abba, Your guidance is a blessing in our lives, even when it requires us to do what we didn't know we could at a time we see as inconvenient, and/or takes us to a place we didn't think we wanted to go. Our eyes and ears are focused on You; we are dedicated to listening for Your commands. We humbly confess our sins and ask You to fill us with Your Spirit. We give You the heartfelt pledge of our trust, obedience, adoration, worship, loyalty, diligence, glory, honor, praise, and thanksgiving. In Christ's holy name, we pray. Amen.
God has even more to say about the issue of righteousness, and I am led to write about it. All around us, Satan is that "roaring lion waiting to devour its prey" from 1 PET 5: 8. But, when we endure in our faith, that lion is brought to his heels unable to spread evil. That is because our loving Abba made the greatest sacrifice of all, that of His Son on the cross, and then granted us the gift, His very own Spirit, to dwell within us. The temple of the Spirit is His house, a compelling reason for us to keep it clean with godly decisions and behavior. The power that God used to raise His Son from death to life is the same power we have to fend off Satan when he attacks [EPH 1: 18-20]. We should comforted by that and willing to invoke that power whenever necessary. Our God loves us so much that it's what He deserves from us. Peter and I send you our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn