Your Body Belongs to God - Guard it!

Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
1 Corinthians 6:18-20

There are those that say that sexual immorality is simply fornication (having sex before marriage) but it is much more than that. Before getting into that though, let’s look at why the Apostle Paul told the Corinthians to flee sexual immorality. Paul preached the Gospel during the first century after Christ and during those days there were many cultures and many pagan religions mixed in with the Hebrews. Corinth was part of the Greek Empire before the Roman Empire and now is part of Greece. Therefore a large part of the population spoke the Greek language and was of Greek descent. Although during Paul’s time the Roman Empire had taken over Corinth, the Romans adopted the gods of Greece changing only their names to Latin to differentiate between the two cultures. The Greeks/Romans had many gods and did not obey or even consider the commandments of the One True God until Paul preached the Gospel to them and they were saved. Before giving their lives to Jesus these people were sexually immoral and needed to know that they could no longer practice these habits because it is sin before God. Paul wanted to correct them as their spiritual father.

So what is sexual immorality?? It is: fornication (sexual relations before marriage), adultery (sexual relations with someone other than your spouse), homosexuality (sexual relations with someone of your same sex), prostitution (sexual relations in exchange for money), masturbation (sexual self-gratification), bestiality (sexual relations with animals), sexual perversions (acting out fantasies, role reversal, bondage, erotica), incest (sexual relations with a family member), sexual molestation (sexual advances usually to a minor), rape (forcing someone to have sex against his/her will – the victim is not included in this), orgies (sexual relations with more than one person in one session, usually done in party like atmospheres), ritualistic sex (sexual acts done in worship to demons or Satan), promiscuity (sexually enticing and known to be easily given to physical desires), pornography (sexually explicit images in magazines, or other forms of media for self gratification), and even lust. Jesus said that if a man looks at a woman with lust, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Why? Because with his eyes he saw the woman was attractive and with his mind he imagined himself with her. A desire will first enter your mind as a thought and when entertained enters the heart and becomes a desire.

Paul describes this particular sin as sin against the body. Sexual sin ravages the body in various ways. There are sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortions or worse and fatal sexual diseases. However Paul points out the main reason for Christians to stay away from this practice – your body is no longer your own. Your body was created to be the temple of the Holy Spirit! Whether you are saved or not, your body was created for this purpose, to worship God. There is something that happens when a man and a woman join together sexually. The man becomes the giver and the woman the receptor. Whenever a man and woman are joined in this most intimate of intimacies, the woman is receiving a part of that man and the man is giving a part of himself to the woman. So using this point, if a man gives himself to ten different women in a six month period, wouldn’t you say that that man is not complete? If a woman receives from 10 different men in a six month period wouldn’t it be kind of crowded when she finally decides to settle down with one man? People need to be delivered not only from the bondage of sexual sin, but from the soul ties acquired through sexual sin. God has to come in and heal, restore, and make that person whole again whether it is the man missing pieces of himself or the woman that has too many attachments to know who she really is.

Sex was created for the marriage bed. It was created for the husband and wife to have an intimacy that as a couple or individually they could not have with anyone else. It was created for man and woman to procreate, to be fruitful and multiply as God had commanded Adam and Eve. Today it is something that people hold little regard for and use and abuse their bodies as if they could go to the store the next day and trade it for a new one.

With so much sexual perversion in this world today, Christians especially youth and single people, need to remember that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t belong to you!! It belongs to God!! Therefore you cannot just do whatever you want with your body. Just as you need to take care of the outside by eating right, exercising, and being clean, you need to take care of the inside by abstaining from sexual activity before you are married. Wait for that one person and save yourself for that moment when it will be all worth the wait to have done it right than to pay consequences for satisfying your flesh and doing it when you wanted to. This does not exclude the married couples. Remember that you have children who are following your example, if your marriage is united and God is at the center of it then your eyes will not wander and your hands will not touch what does not belong to you. You will not indulge in self gratification when you have a loving husband or wife who is willing to tend to your needs and you will not have to worry about your children straying from the principles of God because of your bad example because you are giving a good example. Sex and marriage go hand in hand. It is the most beautiful thing God has given a husband and a wife. The husband releases stress and the wife receives comfort in the most intimate way possible. It was only designed for the marriage bed not for just any bed with just any one. Be careful, flee sexual immorality! Stay away from people who seek to entice you and make you fall. Hold fast to your integrity and your faith. Remember that you are to glorify God in your body and your spirit because both are His. Praise God!