A Word in Season: Not My Own (1 Corinthians 6:19)

The Spirit of the Age and the Slogan of Self-Ownership

To whom do you belong? That might in itself seem like an offensive question. The slogan of our age might be considered to be my body, my choice, and although that might rise to the surface in particular contexts, you could really write it across so much of our behaviour, so many of our principles and our practices.

It's very much the spirit of this age, and in truth it's been the spirit of every age. I belong to myself and therefore I can do what I like, when I like, with whom I like, how I like. No one can tell me what to do with my body.

I belong to myself. But that is not a Christian's testimony. The danger is that too often that spirit of the age can seep into the church and we begin to drink the attitudes and the appetites of the world which is around us and we begin to imagine that it's up to us to call the shots.

Christian Liberty Turned into License in Corinth

We turn then Christian liberty into an excuse for license. That's the kind of thing that was happening in Corinth. There was a church there in the midst of that depraved city with a reputation for godlessness across the ancient world.

It was a place where all kinds of lusts and passions were indulged and it seems as if the Corinthians had taken the idea that they were free in Christ and had used that to run into all kinds of sinful indulgence up to and including sexual immorality.

And so when he is trying to pull them back from the brink, when he's pleading with them to turn their backs upon sin and to pursue righteousness, the Apostle Paul reminds them of this in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 from verse 18.

Not Belonging to Ourselves but to God

What a radical departure, not just from the spirit of Corinth but from the spirit of our own age. I no longer belong to myself. In truth, I think you could say, I never really did. I was always God's creature.

He made me and he made me to know the joys and the blessings of communion with him. But I lost those joys and blessings. Sin entered the world and death through sin. And by nature, I now am a slave of Satan.

And until Christ redeems me, until I'm bought out of slavery, into true freedom by the purchase price that has been paid, then I remain in the chains of my sins, driving after my own lusts and passions.

Redeemed by Christ's Death and Purchased for His Glory

My body, my choice, is no longer a slogan that a Christian can use. God's body, God's purchased redemption, what God has done for us in Christ, the laying down of Christ's life for us, who loved him and loved us and gave himself for us, who purchased our life by his death, who paid that ransom price so that we might go free, whose spirit now indwells us as those who have been united to him in the call of God to bring us to himself.

We are now his by every tie. And that's not something that we should resent, not something to be bitter about. Yes, there may still be those sinful lusts that bubble up the sin that remains in us. But here is the great response.

I will not go where I might have once wished or go with whom or to do what I might once have desired. But I am a new creature in Christ. My body is now his. My spirit is now his. And my whole aim is to glorify him who saved me from my sins.

And if you cannot and will not say that, it is because you do not know the saving power of Christ in your life. If you still imagine that you are free to do what you wish, go where you wish, with whom you wish, to do whatever you desire, it is because you do not understand what it means to be redeemed at the price.

The price of Jesus Christ's own life. This is what it means to belong to God. And now we live for him who died for us.