HANDLE WITH CARE: #4 The Stewardship of Body and Spirit

By Dr. Gilbert W. Stafford 
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20

My friend Randy Bargerstock says that there is an aboriginal tribe in Australia called “the Real People” who don’t celebrate birthdays. Why would one want to celebrate getting older? they ask. Instead, they celebrate “getting better.” When a member of the community recognizes some way in which they have improved, matured, or grown then it is that the whole community celebrates with that individual.1

While I don’t buy into the idea that getting older is nothing to celebrate, I do buy into the idea that the primary emphasis should be on whether we are improving with the years.

The Christian understanding is that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. As such we are to take care of them so that they increase in value as the dwelling place of God.

This perspective is set forth in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 where the apostle Paul is dealing with people in Corinth who thought that they could do anything they wanted with their bodies. The particular problem had to do with having sexual relations with prostitutes. Perhaps they thought of the spirit and the body as being two distinctly separated realities. They reasoned that what happens physically has nothing to do with one’s spiritual life. Since they had a spiritual union with God through Christ, what they did with their bodies was immaterial to their spiritual lives, they thought. Not so! Paul contends. Our spirits and bodies, and what we do with our bodies bespeaks our spiritual condition. Spiritual life is physical (remember that Jesus died on a cross), and our physical life is also spiritual. The two are not disconnected, separate departments of the human being. According to the Bible, our spirit can not be right with God if we are misusing the body.

In verse 12, Paul writes: “’All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything.’” Verse 13: “The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” Verse 15: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16>Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her?” Verses 19-20: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20>For you were brought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body.”2

In other words, each of us is to be a good steward of our body as the temple of the Holy Spirit. Even though Paul is talking here particularly about relationships with prostitutes, he sets forth principles that apply to anything and everything we do with our bodies. Let’s look at them:

1) THE PRINCIPLE OF SPIRITUAL BENEFIT 

As Christians we are to be guided not by legal standards but by standards of spiritual benefit. In verse 12, he rejects the idea that we can do whatever is lawful. No, Paul says, that is not a sufficient guideline for believers. Our guideline is this: Is whatever I am doing spiritually beneficial? Is this habit spiritually beneficial? Is this relationship, this practice, this way of thinking, this style of life spiritually helpful? It may be altogether legal, but for Christians that is not a sufficient question. The Christian questions are these: Is it helping me to grow in Christ? Is it assisting me to be more effective in the Lord’s work? Is it enabling me to be of greater service?

I like what my former pastor, Don Johnson, said once, “God never wants back what he has given us without interest.”3 Since our bodies belong to God, it is our responsibility to take care of them so that as we offer them for his service, we give them back with interest. We are to do our part in making them work the best they can, and to do nothing to destroy them.

2) THE PRINCIPLE OF LIVING UNDER CHRIST’S LORDSHIP 

The only lordship under which we should live is the lordship of Christ. Nothing else must be allowed to master us. Christians are to abandon the lordship of addictions, the lordship of appetites, the lordship of habits. Verse 12 of our text says: “I will not be dominated by anything.”

One of the most common culprits exercising lordship over countless people is alcohol. Joel Achenback, writing in The Washington Post, says: “Obviously what we have with alcohol is a form of mass denial. It’s addictive, it kills tens of thousands of people every year, and yet the culture tolerates it like no other drug. The economic cost of alcoholism and related problems exceeds that of all illicit drugs combined. Fetal alcohol syndrome is a major cause of birth defects.”4

No wonder the World Health Organization has moved to crush the idea that sipping an occasional drink may be good for us. WHO has issued a tough warning about the dangers of alcohol. The Geneva based organization says: “It is insufficient and unwise merely to promote the concept of moderate drinking for health reason.” Don’t drink at all, was the strong position taking by WHO. Their report said that instead of aiding health, alcohol causes social and medical problems and therefore should be abandoned altogether.5 And yet, many in the church in recent years have become friendlier and friendlier with the modern culture of alcohol tolerance.

To be good stewards of our minds, bodies, and spirits is to be liberated from anything and everything that keeps us from being at our best for the Lord all the time.

A public official who had been charged with erratic, alcoholic behavior during daytime hours defended himself by saying that most people who know him realize that he does not drink during the day. That was a curious statement for two reasons: first, it was an admission that he could not be at his best if he were drinking, and second, that he thinks that it is alright not to be at his best at night.

Public officials may feel that it is acceptable for them not to be at their best after dark, but for Christians that is an unacceptable position. Christians are never off duty. As 1 Thessalonians 5:5 says, we are “children of the day” not children “of the night.” We are on duty for the Lord twenty-four hours a day. Therefore, whatever it is that keeps our minds and bodies from being of optimal use for the Lord is always off limits.

3) THE PRINCIPLE OF GRATITUDE FOR A COSTLY SALVATION 

We were bought with a price, verse 20 says. The price was the blood of Jesus Christ. Billy Graham, perhaps the most widely known Christian of our time, tells about his conversion. According to a biographer Marshall Frady, Graham puts it this way: “’It was…a sense that I had sinned grievously against God and needed salvation…I…felt a tremendous need to escape the judgement…And it was to know that this guilt…would all be forgiven… ’Specifically, of course, there was that simple heart-impaling drama of Jesus, the inexpressible sweetness of that self-willed anguish and slaughter of divine innocence ‘all for the sake of a wretch like me’--…’the fact that he, the son of God…would go to such lengths to save me.’”6

Many of us resonate with Graham’s testimony. We know that we are forgiven and set free from the guilt and power of sin not because of anything we have done, but all because of God’s costly salvation in Christ Jesus. In Paul’s words, we were “bought with a price.” That being the case, we have a grave responsibility to take care of that which God at so great a cost has saved.

4) THE PRINCIPLE OF APPROPRIATENESS FOR A SANCTUARY

We are lively temples of God’s presence. Some things are appropriate for places of worship and others are not. Where I teach, college students from time to time use our seminary chapel inappropriately. For instance, sometimes we find them taking naps under the pews, or having a study session in the space around the altar rail. Sometimes we find couples having private conversations somewhere in the chapel. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with taking a nap, or studying, or having private conversations, but the chapel is not the place for those sorts of things. Using it for those purposes discourages those who want to use it for prayer and meditation. And so, we have to ask those who are misusing it to exit so that it can be used for its intended purpose. We do that as good stewards of the chapel. Being good stewards of the chapel means saying no to some otherwise perfectly good things.

The same is true of our bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit. As a temple it has an intended purpose which rules out using it for other things. It means that as good stewards of the temple of the Holy Spirit we have to say no to what under other conditions might be perfectly good. Paul says, “therefore glorify God in your body” (emphasis mine)—that’s what our body is for, to glorify God.

As the contemporary chorus puts it, “Let my life be a sanctuary.” That should be the daily prayer for all who committed to being good stewards of their bodies, minds, and spirits.

PRAYER 

Let us pray:

Gracious Lord, you who have redeemed us by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, so work in our hearts and minds that we will offer our bodies to you as a living sacrifice for your service. Forgive us for those times when we have misused our bodies and minds. Empower us to use them only to glorify you from this time forward. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.

1 Randy and Rhonda Bargerstock, letter to friends and family, January 1996.
2 New Revised Standard Version used here and throughout.
3 Donald Johnson, sermon at Park Place Church of God, Anderson, Indiana, April 11, 1993.
4 The Washington Post (December 31, 1993), B5.
5 Anderson, Indiana Herald Bulletin (November 2, 1994), A3.
6 Marshall Frady, Billy Graham: a Parable of American Righteousness (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), p. 85.

Script 2600 (GWS)
October 27, 1996
SERIES: HANDLE WITH CARE
4. The Stewardship of Body and Spirit
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20