If you are a Christian, you must know who you are and what is required of you. You no longer belong to yourself; you do not have authority over you, but the Lord does. At some point after being saved and having walked toward maturity each believer must fully come to the realization that he or she is obligated to glorify God in their bodies. Meaning, everything they do with their bodies and everything they bring into their bodies must point to or bring glory to God. Only the things that are acceptable and desirable to God must associate with our bodies. As individual beings we are chosen to glorify God in our bodies. This means distancing from certain activities. We are God’s slaves while at the same time being His children. In other words, we do everything He says as a slave does for His master as His sons. As long as we obey Him, we glorify Him in our bodies. The apostle Paul insisted the following to believers, because of its utmost significance. “For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:20).
When you work under a boss, it is necessary that you do exactly as he says and that you do not use your position, influence or presence by your own accord. It is because he has bought you for himself, i.e. by paying you. And we pay much closer attention to be as close to perfection as possible to please him. The same should happen when it comes to God and even more that we honor Him in our bodies. If we use our bodies for meaningless and sinful things, we are dishonoring Him; in fact, we shame the very action that paid the price on the cross for our sin. The devil is always our enemy; he’s never a friend of any. He often comes to us with various thoughts and desires that has no bearing with God’s will so we see life from a fleshly perspective. If we consent to him, we literally neglect who we are and neglect God living in us in the Spirit. Through his charm he makes us feel we can be invincible to his thoughts and desires and think we are not being overcome. In doing so, he keeps us in them for a prolonged period until we totally forget the most important things of God and focus on the issues he put before us. As he churns us, he leads us to use our bodies to dishonor God. Our eyes again open up only when the act of sin is completed in us. By now the devil has disrupted God’s work in and through us. We feel helpless. But he does not leave us there; he comes back to us again and again, since he despises the price God paid for us by which he can never obtain perpetual victory. He keeps prying at us that we grieve God as much and as many times as possible. He then reasons with God to act against us and as we come to our wits end, he wins. Once he has committed our bodies to dishonoring God it becomes easy for him to continue the same in us; for we lose the power to restrain. He even guides us to use the Word to our convenience. And many fall to his scheme and cannot rise up. So, the Word reminds us who we are and what our purpose is. There is no better spiritual service of worship to God than to glorify Him in our bodies. By it all our other services to Him find strength. We can save ourselves for an array of sins. “Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah” (Jude 1:11).
What happens when we glorify the Lord in our bodies is safeguard the purity He seeks from us. Therefore, obedience has greater occasion in us and every sin bounces off us. We do not fail in areas where God seeks us to mature, flourish and produce. On the contrary, failing to glorify Him in our bodies has a rippling effect. It is as follows. “A little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough” (Gal. 5:9). It brings one sin after another into play. We will be forced to use all possible evil resources to appear righteous. After a time our entire body, mind and heart become corrupt. But if we are able to make glorifying God in our bodies the little leaven, it turns our entire being into a vessel of God’s choice.
I want you to understand the devastating effect of failing to glorify God in our bodies. We do not have the Lord in our presence now, i.e. in the flesh, but by dishonoring God in our bodies we do the same as they who did not want Him in their lives. “So they cried out, ‘Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!’ Pilate said to them, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief priests answered, ‘We have no king but Caesar’” (John 19:15). We take their place and fulfill their cry. Whether it is immorality or any act that amounts to dishonoring God in our body, it is denying the Lord His place in us. There is nothing more painful to Him than us kicking Him out of our life. Forgiveness, consequences and rebuilding are a thing of later time, but the grief we would cause Him is immeasurable. It has various effects, for He knows how much He must labor again for us.
I want you to consider three things that can help keep your body for a continual glorification of God.
- Have a fighting spirit. Jesus spoke the following parable. “Behold the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they put forth leaves, you see it and know for yourselves that summer is now near” (Luke 21:29-30). Each time you encounter a temptation to dishonor God in your body, resist it by believing that God has called you and kept you for something great. Such an act is your fighting spirit. It always has a blessing. Resisting the temptation will help you grow faster in the knowledge of God and mature so God can do that which He willed for you. You will experience this firsthand by the strength that appears in you.
- Treasure God’s kingdom. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matt. 13:44). As much as you learn about God’s kingdom treasure it. Keep it close to your heart and let your mind dwell on the priceless details and principles in it. Give your all for it so that you can receive untold and unimagined things. Each time you learn something about the Kingdom sacrifice the thing that opposes it. You can garner more treasure regarding it by studying the Word daily. Pray that the Spirit guides you for it and God will provide it. The findings of the kingdom of heaven are life-giving assets.
- Continually love the Lord. “and standing behind Him at His feet, weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the hair of her head, and kissing His feet and anointing them with the perfume” (Luke 7:38). You can do all this by daily spending a good amount of quiet time with the Lord. Every tear your shed is for His feet. Your thanksgiving is kissing His feet. Your praise of Him is the perfume that anoints His feet.