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Bridging to see so many of you here again this evening, since you will know the hard work and hard labor to which you were put on the former occasion, and I have to be honest and tell you things will not get easier as we move along. For those of you who were not here on our last session, just let me say that on the first occasion, we decided to take and follow two themes, two major themes in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. In the first place, we noticed how, in correcting the many faults in the church at Corinth, Paul proceeded by calling the believers back to the gospel, not necessarily by quoting this rule and the other regulation, but constantly reviewing the behavior of the believers at Corinth, pointing out where it was wrong, showing it to be wrong by calling back the church to the gospel and to the underlying principles of the
gospel, and bidding the believers remember the gospel and correct and order their behavior according to its basic principles. We noticed in the second place that in doing that, in calling the believers back to the gospel, Paul indicates, incidentally if not intentionally, what his philosophy of man is. By philosophy of man, a somewhat grandiose title, I have to confess, I know not how else to express it. What I mean is this, that in the gospel that Paul brings us back to, we have God's idea of what it means to be truly human.
What is man? What does it mean to be truly human? And on the last occasion, we started by observing the reminder that a human being is not a self-made entity. It is God who has made us, and not us ourselves, not we ourselves. Similarly, man is not only a God created creature, but having fallen, he cannot save himself. So if man is to be saved, then God who created him, that same God, must save him.
Because that is so, it is a fundamental characteristic of being human, that our basic confidence, that core confidence that keeps us together as integrated personalities, that core confidence must always be and remain in God himself. Not even in, and certainly not in ourselves, but in God. We noticed that it was a result of the fall, perhaps also in part the occasion of it, that man was tempted to take hi- withdraw his confidence from God and put it in himself, in his own judgment, to try and be as God, and to that extent independent of God.
We noticed how that f- fundamental mistake has perverted humankind. And then we remembered the seriousness of that for the human personality. If men and women go on like that, with their confidence anchored not in God but in something else, then according to the solemn warnings of Holy Scripture, people who do that will find in the eternity to come that their very personalities disintegrate. They will perish. For there is only one thing that will keep a human personality truly human, and that is the basic core confidence in God.
And therefore we noticed how Paul preaches the gospel once more to the believers in the church at Corinth in the early stages of his letter. He brings before them the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and expounds God's deliberate strategy in saving us not merely by the death of Christ, but by that death what was the death of the cross. Paul explains how that tactic, that that strategy, our salvation by the death of the cross, is explicable on these terms, that it is the cross of Christ that is ca- calculated to smash man's confidence in man by exhibiting the sorry lengths to which man's misplaced confidence eventually leads him.
Out of the cross, then, is God's deliberate strategy to restore a man's confidence back into the only place it should be, into God himself. And with that confidence properly restored, there begins the great work of redemption of the human personality. We have not time tonight to go into all the detail of the first four chapters. We leave most of it now. Our schedule demands that we shall. Allow me simply to remind you that on the fourth occasion, the second session, God willing, will be devoted to questions.
And those interesting and important things that interest you and I didn't mention, well, if you like to write them out on a piece of paper and submit them, the last section of the, uh, uh, fourth session will be devoted to questions. Write them, please, so that I can give them some thought before I attempt to answer them. And then, more important still, where you perceive I am wrong and, uh, I have not understood the bearing and meaning of Holy Scripture, graciously do it, for I'm a very gentle soul, but, uh, graciously do it, but point out to me, if it must be by way of a question, that I didn't get it really right the first time, and I shall be grateful to you.
But tonight we must move on, and we are to consider the chapters five, six, and seven. We shall not now stop to read any particular passage, but have your text open, if you will, please, because we shall be following the general course of its argument as we proceed. So the topic tonight remains, what is man? What does it mean to be truly human? And the first and most important thing to grasp at this juncture is this. Man not only has a body, but the human physical body is an integral part of the human personality.
So if you ask what it does it mean to be human, then part of the reply will be a human being is a being that has and is a physical human body. If you ask what it means to be an angel, then you wouldn't be able to say, would you, an angel has a physical body, but humans have. And I repeat, the Christian view of man is this. The Christian view of his body is this. It is not merely that a human being has a body. That body is an integral part of the human personality and will remain so eternally.
How different Christianity is from some of the old Greek philosophies of the ancient world, and how gloriously different it is from some of the Hindu philosophies in the present world. The Christian is taught to respect and to value the body. It is not, as some of the Greeks taught, the body is not a kind of a tomb for the human soul. It isn't to be regarded as something unworthy and demeaning and infradig, so that if we would be spiritual, we must learn to live as far away from the body as we possibly can.
That is false. And we are not to look upon the body as a regrettable material part in our makeup, as Hinduism teaches, so that our ideal and goal would be this, to be able one day to escape a material body and be merged with the universal spirit. That is not Christianity. Christianity teaches the importance, the wonder, the dignity, the worth of the human physical body. It is an integral part of the human personality. You will see that, if you care to, by what our Lord did and said when he came among his disciples in the upper room after his resurrection.
And when first the apostles saw the living risen Lord in their midst, they took fright. They thought he was a spirit. And our Lord calmed their fears by saying, don't be afraid. I'm not just a spirit. Handle me and see a spirit not has not flesh and bone as you see me have. Handle me, it is I myself. Marvelous words, aren't they? For he was now in resurrection. They stand in contrast to what the apostles thought. He was a spirit. No, I'm not just a spirit, says Christ.
Handle me. It's I myself. From what what which you perceive that to be he himself, he had to be have a body. It is the astonishing doctrine of Christianity, that our blessed Lord, who in the beginning was with the Father, pre-incarnate Word and not human, having become human, not only had a body in the time before Calvary, but now in the risen glory has a body still, fantastically glorious beyond our wildest conceptions, but a human body still, and one day, thank God, we shall have a body like his.
Oh, I know that old age, if not other things, tempts you to look with some, something less than admiration on your body, you'll see. And you feel, like Paul put it, that at best it was only a tent and easily collapsible, and one day the winds or the frosts or something will batter it down, and you look forward to the day, as Peter did, when you can step outside your tent and go home to be with the Lord. You say, will that not be better than being in my present body?
It will indeed, my brother, my sister, to be absent from the body, present with the Lord, which is very, very far better. Grant you that because scripture says so. But that shouldn't obscure the fact in our thinking that to be out of the body and present with the Lord is not the final state, nor the ideal state of the believer. The ideal, ideal state is not to be unclothed, but eventually clothed upon with our habitation that is from heaven. And God shall not be complete until the work of redemption is finished, and that will include its great masterpiece and finale, our being made like the glorious body of Lord Jesus.
And then, of course, I must observe what I should have observed at the beginning, that the human body comes in two forms, doesn't it? Male and female. And if only I had been thoughtful enough to be politically correct in my vocabulary, I shouldn't have dared to phrase the basic question, what is man? I should have had to have thought out something difficult, but my brain wouldn't go to it, you know. What is man and woman would have found a little bit odd, wouldn't it? So, what is a human? Well, you know, I, I, I really prefer, uh, and my sisters would bear with an ancient like me, you see.
I've not had time to learn the modern language. If I use the old English generic term, what is man, you'll see. I noticed that in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, God speaks like that, you know. When God made man, says Genesis five, male and female made he the he them and called their name, that is the name of the man and of the woman together, their name Adam, which is Hebrew for man. So when I say man comes in two forms, you won't take insult, will you, any of you dear ladies? Man comes in two forms, his body comes in two forms, male and, uh, female.
And greatly daring with some, I suppose, I'm going to advance the thesis that that too is a permanent form of what it means to be human. We'll say now it's so early to to wander into heresy, Mr. Lecturer. Really, really, really, really? Do you not remember the words of the Lord Jesus? That in heaven they that are counted worthy of that world and that age are like the angels, they neither marry nor are given in marriage. How can you say that the distinctions male and female will survive into eternity? Well, I do accept and believe with all my heart that they won't marry or be given in marriage.
But then I should find it very difficult myself, I stand to correction, but I should find it very difficult myself to think that the differences between male and female are merely for the purposes of, uh, maintaining the human race. In my understanding of these things, that would be a very low view of the difference between male and female. Oh, come now. Our brains are part of our bodies, aren't they? And a great deal of our psychology will depend on our brains.
Are you telling me that the beauty, the gracefulness of the female form, so marvelously contrived of God to express the female personality, that that is mere a temporary something and will be lost in eternity. You're going to tell me that the manly form, suited to those attitudes and qualities that are particularly male, is a merely temporary something that shall be lost in the eternal world?
Well, think it if you must. Uh, convince me if you feel you should. I want to suggest, while I have the liberty, that these essential parts of the human body as we now know them shall most certainly survive into eternity. How differently our blessed Lord on times spoke to women from what he spoke to men. On the road to Emmaus, he called them fools, you'll say, because they hadn't read and understood properly. Faced with Mary in the garden, he didn't begin by calling her a fool, nor did he necessarily give her a long theological diatribe, but spoke to Mary in ways that were suited to her feminine personality.
Oh, what our Lord did here on earth, recognizing in his ministry these lovely differences that he has made, he will, in my understanding, most surely do for all eternity. Anyway, forgive that if you must, and, uh, feel you must, and, uh, now let's come on to our topic. What does it mean to be human? It means that man has, as an integral part of his personality, a body, and that body can be either male or female. I shall not need to remind you that as a result of the fall, this basic fact that a human body, it can be male or female, has led to the most horrible perversions.
On the one side, human beings have gone to extremes of permissiveness and immorality, which is a peculiar mark, perhaps, of our own generation. Till humans use their bodies sometimes as if they were mere animals. That extreme of perversion, perversion in the one direction has from time to time led to the other extreme. A handy name for it would be asceticism.
That has come to regard the human body as something basically bad, unhealthy, unspiritual. It is a perversion equally as the other extreme is a perversion. It is a perversion that sometimes has troubled the church, as people in their, in, uh, in their desire to be godly and holy and spiritual have picked up heathen ideas and therefore have regarded marriage and married love as something unhealthy and positively sinful, and therefore have encouraged people to think that if you really want to be spiritually minded, you must avoid marriage, and those who manage so to do belong to a special deluxe super duper, uh, range of Christians.
That is both nonsense and in the end evil. So tonight, as we study together Corinthians five and six and seven and note its leading ideas, we shall find Paul is aiming to correct false ideas and false practices with regard to the human body. And in chapters five and six, he is basically correcting the one extreme of permissiveness and immorality. And then in chapter seven, he goes to the other extreme and is trying to protect the believers at Corinth from asceticism and despising of the body and despising of marriage.
Let's follow then the argument as best we can, picking out its chief points, and we're beginning at chapter five, where Paul tells us it is actually reported, says he, that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as not, as is not even among the Gentiles, that one of you has his father's wife. Now the Greeks, the ancient Greeks, were much given to immorality. It would have surprised a Greek i- i- that fornication was wrong. He never thought it was wrong, and if you thought it was and wanted him to think so, you'd have to tell him it was wrong.
You see it in this letter written to Christians at Corinth. Paul has to tell the believers that fornication is wrong. It would be an insult, wouldn't it, for you who are senior Christians if tonight here I labored the point that fornication is wrong. You had to do that to the early believers who were Greeks. They'd never imagined it was wrong. I fear, my brothers, my sisters, that we shall have to begin saying it in public now, because, because of the tidal wave, our permissiveness in our schools and in society general- generally, there are young believers these days who don't necessarily think that fornication is wrong.
But the Corinthians were guilty not only of fornication, they were guilty of an immorality that would have shocked even pagan Greeks, that a man should have his father's wife now as his own wife. The trouble was that not only had the Corinthians com- one of them committed this sin, but the Corinthians, says verse two, were puffed up about it. The Corinthians, as you will gather from your reading of the epistle, were puffed up about a lot of things. A mighty haughty, tauty people they were, shall say.
They were puffed up about this. And presumably they were puffed up because they regarded it as a point of Christian freedom. They weren't judgmental. They were Christian. They were free. They weren't under the law. Salvation is free, isn't it? Is it not true? Salvation is free. We don't get into heaven because of our good behavior, we get there through the blood of Christ. They were free, they said, and what did a little bit of immorality now and again, uh, matter? And they were puffed up, regarding it as their, their s- a a sign of their Christian spirituality and liberty and freedom.
That they could commit this kind of sin if they wish to. And Paul calls them very quickly to book, doesn't he? And insist- insists in the following verses, one to five, that the church must exercise godly discipline and excommunicate the person that has sinned in this fashion. Why so? For a number of reasons. First of all, verse, um, six: your glorying is not good.
Know you not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For our Passover also has been sacrificed, even Christ. Wherefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. If it was that the Corinthians were puffed up and glorying in their freedom, then it was a very apposite, uh, quotation from the Old Testament, was it?
Was it not? To remind them of the ancient Passover. For Passover was the feast in which they celebrated God's liberation of his people. They once had been slaves. Through the blood of the Passover lamb, they were free. But yes, says Paul, but will you not remember that when Israel were freed, liberated, redeemed from Egypt, it was laid down that from the very moment of their liberation, they had to celebrate the feast of unleavened bread.
So closely were they intertwined that you couldn't keep the Passover feast unless you were prepared to keep the feast of unleavened bread. And what was true of Israel is true, says Paul, with us at the higher level. You have been redeemed by the blood of the Passover lamb, set free from the wrath of God, set free from the domination of Satan and sin, to be free. But what do you mean by freedom? Allowing yourself to commit such immorality is not freedom.
It's falling once more under the ruin and wreckage and disgrace, and bondage of servitude. There is no salvation that says we can be delivered from the wrath of God, and it doesn't matter if we go on living immorally. There is no such gospel anywhere. And if we imagine that we can, it doesn't really matter if being saved we commit fornication, then somewhere along the line we have misunderstood the gospel.
Why must they excommunicate? They must do it also, verses nine, uh, uh, 9 and ten and eleven indicate they must do it socially, presumably so as to make it very clear to the non-Christian community that the church disapproved of this behavior and indicated by their discipline that this was not Christianity. You think of the damage to the gospel that would have been done if at Corinth they had allowed such shocking immorality in the church.
Ha! The next time they went out, if they did go out to the streets to preach to the old pagan Greek, you must be born again, my dear fellow. You ought to be saved, you ought to be redeemed. Do we really? And then carry on like you carry on in your group. Well, if that's how you can carry on, then why should we need to be saved? If at Corinth they had allowed such shocking immorality in the church, ha, the next time they went out, if they did go out to the streets to preach to the old pagan Greek, you must be born again, my dear fellow. You ought to be saved, you ought to be redeemed.
Do we really? And then carry on like you carry on in your group. Well, if that's how you can carry on, then why should we need to be saved? Discipline has to be done, not from some narrow-minded reason, but for the very honor and truth and definition of what the gospel is, that the church stands for. How shall we ever bring the world to repentance if the head of the church is a known, open, public adulterer?
Yes, there have been objections, haven't there? All down the centuries, still are, in some Christian circles. That we oughtn't to be judgmental, that is perfectly true. That discipline, when it is, uh, done, must be done with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes. But some of the objections against discipline ha- have been false, haven't they? People have said, look, did not our Lord tell a parable once of the wheat and the tares? The Lord planted the wheat, an enemy came and planted the tares, the servants came along and said, sir, would you that we root up the tares?
And the master said, no, don't root them up yet, lest in rooting them up, you root the wheat up as well. Let both grow together till harvest, and then we'll deal with them. And people have said that's the true attitude to take in the church. You must never try to excommunicate anybody because, one, that would be judgmental, and who are you to decide who is wheat and tares? That the divine recipe is that we allow both to grow together in the church, if you please, till harvest. Saint Augustine was of that frame of mind, and many have followed him, and justified churches that are a mixture of believers and unbelievers, of holy and absolutely profane.
But the objection doesn't stand, does it? For there is a very important difference between what, uh, our Lord said in the parable of the wheat and tares and what Paul is saying here. In the parable of wheat and tares, the field was not the church, it was the world. And the workers who were eventually to root up the old tares were not elders in a church, nor the church members. They were the angels. And the purpose of their rooting up the tares was that they should be put into the furnace of fire and destroyed.
Well, that parable is talking about the ultimate end of the wicked, to be consigned to the lake of fire and to perdition. Paul is talking about a very different thing, not the world. The people whom he is calling on to root out this offender are not angels, but they are the members of the church. And the point of the excommunication is not so that the offender shall be precipitated into the lake of fire. It is the very opposite way round, is to save him from ever getting there. To save him that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
If he cannot brought, be brought to repentance over his sin by any other means, then for his own sake and for his final salvation's sake, he must be disciplined. So, says Paul, sin against the human body of this order is not only sin, it would be a denial of the Christian gospel. In chapter six, Paul starts off by talking about what seems on the surface to be another matter altogether.
He suddenly says, dare any of you, having a matter against his neighbor, go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Or know you not that the saints shall judge the world? And if the world is judged by you and you are unworthy, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? And you might think at first sight that Paul is a bad preacher, like the one stands before you. He's liable to go off at a tangent, you see, and uh, forget what he was talking about and start some other unrelated topic. Well, not here he isn't anyway. The touch word is the word judge. He's just rebuked them in Corinth that they had not been diligent to judge this evil practice.
And with that thought in his mind, another occurs to him that in another area, the Corinthians were all too ready to judge. Marvelous how we have our selections of sin, isn't it? Some sin. sins we choose to regard as not all that important, and some are very important. And in this area, they were hailing one another to the law courts, and Christian striving against Christian before the ungodly. And once more, Paul seriously rebukes them. First of all, why?
Well, it really is a contradiction of the gospel. It is really, you know. So what on earth has that got to do with the gospel? These were business matters. What business matters have got anything to do with the gospel, have they? By one man I heard of who, being challenged by another Christian for telling a lie, said, oh, but it was a business lie. Oh dear. How does this kind of behavior, uh, affect the gospel? Well, you believe, don't you, that the gospel includes not merely that you were forgiven when you trusted Christ, but one day the Lord shall come. Your body shall be changed to his glorious body, and you shall reign with him.
You believe that? And reigning with Christ, you will judge the world and judge angels. Would you be qualified, do you think, to judge an angel? Well, if I know the difference between right and wrong, as you'll see. Sometimes these things get a bit more complicated than just knowing the, the difference between right and wrong, but at least I know that. Yes. The church shall judge angels. If that's part of our gospel, is it credible that in the church at Corinth there was not one man wise enough to settle a business dispute between two members of the church?
Suppose there isn't. Well, why don't you suffer wrong? You say, listen, come, come, Paul, this is impossible. I mean, it's all right to be saved, but we're not called to, to, to suffer wrong, are we? Yes, you are. Didn't you know that was in the gospel? It is, isn't it? Paul talking to the slaves and telling them, if need be, to put up with beatings for Christ's sake, says, for hereunto were you called. Called to what?
Well, called to follow the Savior. How were you saved according to the gospel? You were saved because Christ was prepared to suffer for you, the just, for the unjust, and did it without complaint and without reviling, and without threatening. Isn't it so? If Christ had insisted on having his pound of flesh out of me, where should I have been?
But he put up with it, without threatening, without reviling, and somehow managing to respect me still. He died for me. That's the gospel. And in accepting that gospel, my brother, my sister, we are called to follow his steps, and where necessary, to suffer as he suffered. No, you not only are not prepared to suffer, are you? He says you positively do wrong, do injustice to your fellow Christian.
Being an academic who all his life lived in ivory towers, you'll see, and knew nothing of the world. How I am tempted to say things about businessmen, but I know if I did, they would turn their finger at me, you'll see, so I have to refrain my speaking. You do injustice to your fellow believer. Well, why is that wrong? Why is that serious? It is a dog-eat-dog world, isn't it? And it's business anyway. Oh, wait a minute, what about the gospel? What gospel? Well, you know the old story, don't you, that when Israel were, was redeemed out of Egypt through the blood of the Passover lamb and kept the feast of unleavened bread, they started to journey, did they not?
What for? They were journeying towards an inheritance flowing with milk and honey. That was all part of the gospel, wasn't it? In that same way, when we were redeemed with the blood of Christ, we were begotten again to a living hope by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fades not away. It is an essential part of the gospel we have believed. You believe it surely, that there is this great inheritance lying ahead in all its undefilable beauty.
And what shall make that heaven heaven? Well, not just a golden street, surely. It'll be the way that people behave that will make it heaven, won't it? How are you going to behave, my brother, my sister, when you get there? Oh, I'm going to be, I'm going to shine like a saint when I get there. Oh, you, you know, I shall really be on my best behavior when I get there. Yeah? You surely you won't go around stealing any of the gold off the streets, hey, what ho? Ha ha. Or making a corner in the silver. Mm-hmm.
And taking some of the jewels that belong to your neighbor surreptitiously. What? No, no, you say no, no, not there. I'm going to be like the Lord when I'm there. But this is different. Is it really? So it's okay if you behave like the world behaves now, is it? You'll say, Mr. Preacher, I've been told that salvation is by grace. Entry into the inheritance does not depend on how I behave. You've got it absolutely right. It is by grace. And that means what? You can say, can you, therefore, I'm saved by grace, you know, so I'm looking forward to the day when I get home to heaven.
I'm going to behave beautifully when I get there, but I'm not prepared to behave like that now, not just yet. Oh, so do you want to behave like Christ, or don't you want to behave like Christ? You can't have it both ways, can you? He that hath this hope in him, says John, that one day we shall be like him, purifies himself. That is a fact, not an exhortation, that is a fact. And if a man doesn't purify himself, it could be, couldn't it, that he doesn't have the hope.
Ah, but now we get back to what you may recognize is the, uh, is the question with which we started. This, the Corinthians' false idea of freedoms. And in verses twelve of chapter six to the end of that chapter, Paul deals with what seemed to me to be two expressions of freedom, such as the Corinthians might well have fastened onto them. But two concepts of freedom which were in themselves perhaps true, but they were making the wrong deductions from them.
Here comes number one. All things are lawful for me. Yes, so they are. We are not under law, but we are under grace. So I can do anything I like then? No, you can't. Why not? Well, because while all things might be lawful, they are not expedient, not beneficial. And more than that, I will not be brought under the power of any. You see, we must never confuse things, must we?
When it comes to the penalty of sin, that's been paid by the Lord Jesus, hasn't it? There is no penalty for a believer in Christ, no condemnation. Every believer is legally quit, accepted for Christ's sake. But the penalty of sin is one thing. The consequence of sin is another. If I yield my members to sin, says Paul in Romans six, and constantly do it, believer or no believer, it will make a slave of me.
So say, what's the good of my saying I'm free to do what I like? If I then proceed to indulge in some practice that by its very nature, in the end, enslaves me. We are free from the penalty of sin. We're not yet free from its consequences. Oh, do be warned, says Paul, that God is not mocked. What a man sows, that he reaps. If a believer sows weeds in his garden, it's no good saying, well, I'm a believer, so God will wave a magic wand over it and it will come up beautiful flowers.
No, no, if you sow weeds, you'll get weeds. Believer or no believer. If we engage in immoralities and self-indulgences of various kinds, they can make slaves of us. The next thing they said, meats for the belly and the belly for meats, but God shall bring them to naught, both it and them. There was a certain amount of truth in it, was there not? Our blessed Lord Jesus himself, when he discussed the food laws, said to the Pharisees, you know, food goes into you through the stomach and out.
It's not what goes into a man defiles a man, it's what comes out of him. That perfectly true. It might be true that meats for the belly, the belly for meats, it's only a temporary arrangement that we shall need when we're down here on earth, and eventually God will do away with both the meats and the belly. Mm. And we shan't have to get the breakfast anymore, shall we? Jolly good, you'll say. That may be true, but wait a minute, what were you wanting to deduce from it? Well, immorality just involves a different part of the body, that's all.
It's one of these earthly things, one of these earthly appetites. And you know, it's neither here nor there, like food is neither here nor there. But when the Lord comes, all that part of our anatomy will be, uh, uh, destroyed and done away with. So this is merely for time, and it doesn't matter how you behave. So? Oh, like a thunderclap. Paul comes down on that misapprehension. That is absolutely false. For the body, yeah, perhaps the stomach and so on will be one day done away with, but the body itself is not a temporary thing.
The blessed Lord Jesus died, and God raised him again. His body is an eternal thing, and God shall raise up us too, our very bodies. Our bodies are not temporary things. Secondly, food for the stomach is a way of keeping your body alive in the present. But what is the body for? The human body, says Paul, is for the Lord.
That's what the body is for. Is now and ever shall be. What an awesomely marvelous thing that is. It's not merely that when I get home, my glorious body will be for the Lord, but my poor old body now is, by his grace, for the Lord. Now listen to this stupendous bit of gospel. Your bodies, says Paul, are members of Christ. It's not just that in the body of Christ I have a spiritual gift, and as a spiritual gift I'm a member of Christ, but my poor body as is of now, by the amazing condescension of our blessed Lord, my body is a member of Christ.
It's for him. Oh, my young Christian, can you get hold of it? I can't, after all my years, scarcely. My body, a member of Christ, designed to be for him. Shall I take the member of Christ and make it a member of a harlot? For it is written, if you're joined to a harlot, you become one flesh. There is no such thing, strictly speaking, as casual sex.
It involves the uniting of two human bodies. So I take a member of Christ and make it a member of a harlot. Or flee fornication, says Paul. Whatever sin a man does is outside the body, but the one that commits fornication sins against his very body. A difficult phrase. I take it to mean this, that all other sins do not affect the purpose for which the body was made.
Fornication does. Let me illustrate it. One of these days, in your great generosity of heart, madam, you decide to give me a Rolls-Royce. Oh, can't imagine. Fit for the Queen to drive in, fit for yourself to drive in. You give me this Rolls-Royce. Oh, I say thank you very much. I can't believe it's true. I should be up every morning in my pajamas to see the thing is in the garage. I can't, I, I just flabbergasted. You mean you've given it to me? Yes. I should like a ride in it now and again myself, you say?
Oh, marvelous. You can have a ride in it any day of the week. It was mine, yes, you can indeed. Yeah. But I'm, uh, you know, a shiftless kind of a fellow. I don't put the best grade petrol in it, and I then fill it up too full of oil and mess up the innards, do they? And I don't keep the tires pumped up and don't take it for its regular service. Poor old thing isn't going as it ought to be going quite, you know, but at least I kept the purpose of it quite clear. It's for riding me about the town and you when you want to ride in it. Yes? I've not treated it too well, but the purpose still remains.
Suppose one of these days you come to visit me and say, where's the Rolls-Royce? I notice it's not in your garage, old chap. Where is it? Oh, I said, come and see. I, I, I got it in the back garden. What have you got in the back garden for? Well, you see, I, I got these two dogs, and they're beautiful dogs, and the kennel was getting a bit small for them, you see. So I had an idea. I thought if I, if I put the Rolls-Royce right next to the kennel, you see, and I cut a bit out of the side of the Rolls-Royce so the dogs can eat their bones in the kennel still, and there's more room for them at nighttime. You know what dogs are when they want to play, so they're using the Rolls-Royce. I'll admit what you would say.
That's different from putting cheap petrol in, isn't it? Now I have perverted the very purpose for which the Rolls-Royce was made. What a sad, sad thing. It's a sin against the poor old Rolls-Royce itself, isn't it? And your body, says Paul, was made for the Lord. What to be? A temple of God, that's what to be. For you have been redeemed and bought with a price, and you are no longer your own.
You're designed as a temple for God's Holy Spirit to dwell in. We're not our own. When God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt and saved the firstborn in the nation by the blood of the Lamb, thereafter he claimed the firstborn for himself. They were no longer their own. If they objected, the answer was simply this: well, you ought to have stayed in Egypt then. You say, if I'd have stayed in Egypt, I would have perished. Well, quite so. Now you're alive?
How do you manage to be alive? You say, well, I sheltered under the blood, Moses. Well, that means, doesn't it, that, uh, the life you now have, you wouldn't have it at all. Except it had been for the blood of Christ, the blood of the Lamb. And the parable comes to our hearts, doesn't it? But not our own. Bought with a price, that our very body be the temple of the Holy Ghost. Member of Christ, made for the Lord.
Oh, what a sad, sad, sad thing it will be. If I so perverted the purpose of my body, that I took a member of Christ, and by fornication joined it to the body of a harlot. God help us. God so suffuse and infuse our minds and our hearts with a staggering wonder, not only of his creation of our human body, but the even more staggering wonder of the redemption of our body and the indescribable glory that the blessed Lord gives to our body when he says he made it and redeemed it for himself, that it might be a temple for him.
O God, so suffuse our hearts that in spite of our weakness, by his grace, we might learn to glorify God in our bodies. So may he help us, shall we pray? Lord, now we thank thee for thy word. Thou has said enough to us, Lord, that we should come back to thy word ourselves quietly, and between thee and us. Each one think for himself and herself of these important and wonderful things.
Lord Jesus, by thy redeeming blood, we pray, help us to glorify thee in our bodies. And now for the food that we are to have and the fellowship we are to enjoy, on them both we ask thy blessing, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
