Reformed Doctrine Daily Devotions

Today’s devotion comes from 1 Corinthians 6:12-20.

 

“¹² All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable.  All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.

 

¹³ Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them.  Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.

 

¹⁴  Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power.

 

¹⁵ Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?  Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?  May it never be!

 

¹⁶  Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her?  For He says, “THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.”

 

¹⁷  But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.

 

¹⁸  Flee immorality.  Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.

 

¹⁹  Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?

 

²⁰  For you have been bought with a price:  therefore glorify God in your body.”  1 Corinthians 6:12-20.

 

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How do we so glorify God in our body? 

 

Do we diet and exercise more?

 

 

Do we do more good works?

 

Do we worship more?

 

Although we do have the duty to so glorify God in our body, these questions only focus on “we”, and these questions are like the question that the Jews asked Jesus:  “…. What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?”  John 6:28.

 

But, notice Jesus’ response to them which also has application to our questions today.  “Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”  John 6:29.

 

In other words, instead of only focusing on “we” and what we should do, more importantly, we also need to focus on God and what He has done.  We need to live by faith, seeking and praying and believing, that God will do the work that He wants to do in us to best glorify Himself. 

 

And, God does not want us to be identical.  As members of Christ’s body, He has made and placed some of us to be eyes and others to be ears etc.  He has given gifts for some of us to be teachers and others to be administrators etc.  1 Corinthians Chapter 12.  “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”  Ephesians 2:10.

 

And, God does not just make us and then fold His arms to watch what we do.  “for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”  Philippians 2:13. 

 

Because we belong to God, it does not just create a duty in us, in addition, it motivates God to finish the good work that He has begun in us.  “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 1:6.

 

Here is how The Heidelberg Catechism states it in part:

 

Question 1.  What is thy only comfort in life and death?

 

Answer.  That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, hath fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head;  yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

 

In summary, our hope is not in our body.  Our hope is in our faithful Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.  “If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.  But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”  Romans 8:10-11.

  

“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;  who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.”  Philippians 3:20-21. 

 

“Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever.  Amen.”  Hebrews 13:20-21.