The Epistle lesson this morning was 1Corinthians 6:19-20, about the body being a temple of the Holy Spirit. The children’s sermon was about eating apples, taking care of your body by getting exercise, brushing your teeth, getting good sleep. I got annoyed, thinking “That is not what the verse is about. I am so tired of evangelicals (and others) extending the interpretation to that.” Then I remembered that what the verse is really about is not sleeping with temple prostitutes. A tough children’s sermon to preach.
So I guess apples weren’t such a bad idea after all.
What this is really about is what everyone of us has discovered at one time or another, and that is we ultimately have no control over our lives. It’s a good thing, too, that ‘you are not your own’ because our out-of-our-control lives ultimately would have no meaning if there is no God. Not just sexual morality but any morality. Even whether we live or die today doesn’t mean a damned thing. Compare verse 18 ‘sins against his own body’ with Mark 3:25, ‘a house divided can not stand.’
See also what Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans
For none of us lives to himself, and none dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord. Or if we die, we die to the Lord. If therefore we live or die, we are the Lord’s
The purpose that God infuses into our lives sets us free from the meaninglessness of individual sovereignty and connects us to something greater than ourselves.
Ain’t apples what got us all into this mess to begin wit’?