Taking a Closer Look at 1 Corinthians 6:19–20

Glorify God in Your Body

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says,

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have within you from God? You are not your own, for you are bought with a price, so glorify God in your body.

That is a majorly counter-cultural statement to say, “You are not your own.” We hear at just about every turn in our world that you are your own. You make your own decisions about your body. And the apostle Paul says you’re not your own. God made your body. He owns it. And in fact, he doubly owns it because Christ purchased it. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

We can come to this major reality of your body being a temple with the wrong starting point. We think about our bodies being or needing to be impressive because they’re temples. But the main thing about the temple is not how the temple itself looks. The temple is a reflection. It’s a covering for the reality that’s inside. So that’s where the apostle Paul starts—with the presence of the Holy Spirit—which is so amazing.

The apostles say this over and over again, that the Spirit dwells in us, that you have him within you. It is almost too spectacular a thought to even have unless the apostles tell us that God himself, in his Holy Spirit, dwells in us. So, this is the most important reality in these verses, that God himself, in his Holy Spirit poured out by his resurrected Son, has drawn near to us who are in Christ. We have the Holy Spirit. So, then we think of ourselves as temples and our bodies as temples because of this treasure that we have in these jars of clay—that the Holy Spirit himself is in us.

But Paul doesn’t only mention the Spirit’s presence; he also mentions Jesus’s purchase. He says, “You’re not your own, for you were bought with a price.” We are doubly his if we are in Christ. Jesus himself, God himself, the eternal second person of the Trinity, took on a human body like ours, and lived and accomplished our redemption in human flesh and blood. Jesus took a body and saved us—soul and body—in his human soul and body. And so we’re purchased by Jesus.

And then the third reality here—which we love and we talk about, but we want to get in proper proportion—is the Father’s glory. So there’s the Son’s purchase and the Spirit’s presence, and let’s call the last one the Father’s praise, perhaps. He says, “So glorify God in your body.”

You don’t need to escape this body so that you might live a holy life and glorify your Father in heaven. Rather, the apostle Paul says right now in your body—with its weaknesses, with its sin nature and its indwelling sin, with all the problems you encounter, the injuries you endure, the temptations you have—you can glorify God in your body. That’s where the calling is. You can’t get apart from this body to glorify him. You’re called, as a Christian, to glorify your Father in heaven and his Son and the Holy Spirit through bodily life.

And so what we do in these bodies really matters. And God sanctifies these bodies by purchasing us in his Son and sending his Spirit to dwell within us. And so we want to live, as Christians, bodily lives that glorify him. And that doesn’t mean that we draw attention to our bodies, with our beach muscles and washboard abs, our great marathon or 5K time, or whatever it would be that would draw attention to us. That’s not the calling.

We want to so use these bodies in a way that our Father in heaven is glorified.

The calling is, in the words of Jesus, to have your light shine in such a way in your bodily life that others see your good deeds and they give glory to your Father in heaven, not to you. They give glory to your Father in heaven. We want to live in these bodies in such a way that we use them, we employ them, we put them to use in seeing and meeting the needs of others, pursuing our joy in God, which frees us up to be ready to love and help others. We want to so use these bodies in a way that our Father in heaven is glorified. The apostle Paul elsewhere talks about being “ready for good works” (Titus 3:1, 2 Tim. 2:21). That’s a great phrase for Christian fitness and use of our bodies.

How might you be ready for good works—these good works that are often accomplished in and through various exertions and uses of our bodies? First Corinthians 6:19-20, in its very counter-cultural statement about your body not being your own, is a great charge for us as Christians in this life, still living in this body and in this age, to glorify our Father in heaven. He calls us to glorify him in these bodies, and it is holy and fitting that we would seek to make the modest and best use of these bodies in glorifying our Father.

David Mathis is the author of A Little Theology of Exercise: Enjoying Christ in Body and Soul.

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