You are Not Your Own
Sometimes I have conversations with my smart watch. It usually goes like this: “You are my servant; I am not yours!” Maybe those of you who have smart watches can understand!
Personally, one of my favorite features of my smart watch is that it tracks my exercise. As I run, walk, or hike, it keeps track of heart rate, mileage, speed, elevation, etc. I love that shows me my progress. But tracking my activity also has a downside…more on that in a moment.
A few years ago, my sons and I set out to hike the Adirondack 46 High Peaks (a mountain range in upstate New York). In one summer alone, we hiked 16 summits, 120 miles and almost 35,000 feet of elevation gain. It was a great activity to do with my sons, and accomplishing the goal together was extremely satisfying!
As we hike, my watch tracks my exercise. One day during a 15-mile hike, it recorded 380 minutes of exercise. I hadn’t even activated an ‘Outdoor Walk’ or ‘Hiking’ activity to record it. It was simply tracking my movement, heart rate and steps. That was over 6 hours of hard work (which makes sleeping on the ground much easier)!
The challenge is when my watch tells me the next day, ‘Keep it up! Let’s see what you can do today!’ Or gives me a challenge based on what I did last month. At some point, it feels humanly impossible. I don’t think the programmers know about the Sabbath rest either. Every day my watch tells me to move, achieve, go further than yesterday, or at least do it again! Often, I feel like I’m being bossed around. So, I have to remind my watch that it is my servant… I am not my watch’s servant!
The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So, glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, NIV)
In the context of the chapter, Paul was correcting a few Corinthian slogans. Apparently, they would say, “All things are lawful for me!” “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food!” These statements are true. In Christ, we are free. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13), and we are not under law but under grace (Romans 6:14). It is for freedom Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1)! And yet, we do not want to make the mistake of indulging the flesh in our exercise of freedom. That would be taking for granted the tremendous purchase of our freedom.
Craig Blomberg, in the NIV Application Commentary, recounts William Barclay’s words: “The great fact of the Christian faith is, not that it makes a man free to sin, but that it makes a man free not to sin. Furthermore, the man who has to express his freedom is actually in bondage to the need to show he is a free man. The genuinely free man has nothing to prove.” (p. 127-128)
I’m so grateful to be free in Christ. I hope you are enjoying being free in Christ. At the same time, our freedom is not to be used for our own purposes. Our culture says, ‘Your body is your temple.’ Do what you want with it. But this is not a Biblical understanding.
What Scripture says is that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Huge difference!
As Rankin Wilbourne says in his book Union with Christ, “the temple was the unique dwelling place of the one God, the meeting place of heaven and earth, kept protected behind curtains and approachable only through elaborate sacrifices, only once a year, and only by the high priest.” (Kindle edition, location 554)
Let that sink in!
Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
You are not your own.
You were bought with a price.
So, glorify God in your body.
Dear Saints, we must not get this backward even though we are free in Christ. We are instruments in the hands of a good, loving, all-powerful and all-knowing Master who provides guidance and direction for our lives.
Let’s not forget Who is in charge here. Just like it is a mistake for my watch, an instrument I purchased, to determine my agenda, so too it is a mistake for us to forget that we are instruments purchased of God meant to bring Him glory.