Don’t you know?
If you have trusted in Jesus Christ for salvation, then your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
- 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (GW)
Don’t you know that your body is a temple that belongs to the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit, whom you received from God, lives in you. You don’t belong to yourselves. 20 You were bought for a price. So bring glory to God in the way you use your body.
I have to admit that I must answer “yes” and “no.” I mean I know; I really do. But what a concept – God living in me. Here is how I know this to be true and how I can accept it to be true.
I believe without qualification what God says in his “Book” …
Because of my unwavering belief in the truthfulness of God in his book, the Holy Bible. This is the only way that I could believe something such as this to be true, something so beyond my human comprehension.
I believe this to be true and accept it to be a part of my life because my God tells me this is what he has done when I came to believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and received his gift of eternal life.
The John 3:16 “package” …
This is one of the many-splendored aspects of the John 3:16 “package,” the gift of eternal life. Allow this same Holy Spirit to teach us as he unwraps the gift and be amazed. And fall down and worship. And serve.
We must remember that we are holy temples because of God, what he has done, the righteousness that he gives us through Jesus Christ.
Not because of who we are and what we have done.
Remember the filthy rags …
Let’s listen as Isaiah describes our goodness before we came to know Christ.
- Isaiah 64:6 (NIV84)
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
We stray from God’s course of righteousness and choose our own standards of what is right and wrong. Often building our man-made excursions into the holy right on top of God’s words. So it must be okay, right?
Of course it is not okay because we have forgotten why the temple is holy and what the “temple” was before God brought his presence into our lives.
Before God: Filthy rags.
After trust in Christ: Holy temple.
Here is how we remember:
When we do whatever we do apart from God, it is filthy rags. No exceptions. The works we perform and the standards we set won’t seem like filthy rags to us. Other like-minded people will not tell us they are filthy rags because they, as we, are blind to this particular affliction. The self-righteous person does not typically identify himself or herself as self-righteous … Unless they are bowing before God confessing their sin of self-righteousness.
- John 15:5 (NIV84)
I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
We will not know unless God is in the room and we are bowed before him listening with repentant hearts. Clean hands before a holy God.
So I desperately need God speaking to me in both of these areas of truth.
Holy temples and filthy rags.
Just think. The Holy Spirit now lives in us because Jesus Christ paid the price of admission. Glory to God as in his love he has entered the “temple of the filthy rags” and made it a dwelling place for himself.
This thought is a treasure to me: I am bought and paid for by the Lord and King of the universe. Once again I bow in worship and awe before my God and my King!
