DEVOTIONAL
“ Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”
1 Corinthians 3:16 NASBS
May the Holy Spirit give us the wisdom to lay hold of this solemn truth; as Christians, we are the temple of the living God.
Though God manifested his glory in a temple for a period, the scriptures give us more understanding of this during Stephen’s appeal to the Jews just before they put him to death, saying, “The Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands; as the prophet says: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?” What a great responsibility we have as children of the living God, Who, out of His hatred of sin, sacrificed His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ that we may live. And not only did God sacrifice His only begotten Son for us, but He made it possible for us to have His very Spirit to dwell in our bodies contaminated with sin. This is one of the greatest of all the mysteries found in the Holy Scriptures, as Paul explains further in the letter he wrote to the church of Rome, saying, “If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.”
What can be more dishonoring to God when we, the children of light, whom He redeemed by His effectual love, entertain darkness by living and acting as if we do not know Him? How easy it is for us to be lured away by the attractions of this world and find ourselves engaging in such illicit acts of sin that pierced our Savior to a tree. But, as we evaluate our own heart, let us not forget that the Apostle James says that partiality is just as damnable as murder or adultery in the eyes of the Most High. We agree that the consequences of these sins are different here on earth, but apart from the atoning sacrifice of Christ, they will send you to the eternal fires of hell. Therefore, Christian, those who are the temple of the living God, let us not classify ourselves as altogether different from the sinner who is given over to the grossest of all immorality. Instead, let us be brutally honest in all our dealings, and inhumanity come before the throne of grace with a heart of true repentance, present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God. The Lord Himself will not deny such open acts of honesty but will empower this mortal body to honor Him even in the greatest of all temptations.