Honoring God with your body.

In 1 Corinthians 7:1-16 Paul is literally advising people how to live according to the moral standards of the time, because there is an unnamed immoral practice that is occurring among Christians that has to do with intimacy. 

These scriptures have been used to keep married Christians in bondage within toxic relationships by quoting specific passages from 1 Corinthians 7:1-16 specifically that husbands and wives have authority over each other’s bodies, that they should not divorce and that men should be in relationships with women and women in relationships with men. While this is practical advice for the time it not fully understood in these terms alone. 

It is not the role of the church to advise on marriage. And since it is not this scripture can instead be interpreted from the spiritual connection that all members of the body of Christ have with Jesus, as a spiritual wife. 

The term wife is insufficient to describe what the body of Christ means to the kingdom of God, but it is useful to describe the body of Christ as a spouse to better understand God’s role and the church’s role in the relationship. 

In 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 Paul is describing the role of the believer saying that when you put your faith in God it is like coming into covenant of a marital relationship, and although you have the right to do whatever you want, as a person who has put their faith in God and has come into relationship with him, your body, which includes your mind, should be used to honor God. 

An act of spiritual adultery is putting your faith in your own ability or in any other idea, be it money, your family, or the security of modern social structures like government. 

Paul writes that when you commit this kind of spiritual adultery you unite with them in your body, which includes your mind. You take on their ideas and you function how they say you should function. 

As a member of the body of Christ, Paul is advising that you unite instead with the Lord and be one with him in your mind, body and spirit, taking on spiritual ideas like faith and functioning in spiritual ways the way that faith says you should function, such as trusting in the Lord. 

Paul makes this suggestion, to unite yourself with the Lord, as a reminder to the believer that once you commit to your faith, your body is no longer your own, but a temple for the Holy Spirit to dwell. Our bodies are not our own because we were bought at a price. Our new body, the one that is holy before God, righteous before God, forgiven by God and an heir of eternal salvation is connected to God through Jesus’ sacrifice, because of the thing that we have done with our body: have faith.

Jesus paid for you to be connected to God, so Paul is saying don’t be connected to anyone else in this way. This may be why Paul then shares the human example of the family structure of marriage, in 1 Corinthians 7:1-16, because in the traditional structure of marriage the husband provides security for the wife and a structure to create a family and heirs to pass on their wealth. 

Spiritually, Jesus, as husband to the body of Christ, is in covenant with believers and it is the husband’s responsibility to fulfill his marital duty and this intimacy is beyond physical connection it is the spiritual connection back to God, the Father. 

When Paul gives the example of a husband not having authority over his own body but yielding it to his wife, he is painting the picture of the love ethic Jesus had for the body of Christ, that he would fulfill the promise to provide for her to the point of death through his sacrifice and life, salvation, forgiveness, righteousness and holiness through his resurrection. 

And when Paul gives the example of a wife not having authority over her own body but yields it to her husband this is painting the picture of the commitment of the body of Christ to trusting in God alone, putting her faith in him alone and not yielding her faith to any other idea. 

The image of husband and wife is not intended to create a way to condemn and put chains on people in the body of Christ but to help illustrate a human structure, marriage, that mimics the heavenly and spiritual one. 

In life, adultery is socially immoral. It is considered breaking a commitment of love that provides security and legacy. These ideas translate to the spiritual relationship that we have with our God, through Jesus.

When we trust in our selves or in other forms of security with our faith and put our hope in those things, that is an act of spiritual adultery. Taken spiritually, the command Paul gives from the Lord that a wife must not separate from her husband and if she does, should make every effort to be reconciled, is not a command to bind women to men or create a specific structure for marriage, but to remind the body of Christ that we are his spiritual spouse in covenant with him and our security, wellbeing, legacy and provision is the responsibility of our husband, Jesus and as people of faith, we are to make every effort to stay married to this husband and to remain intimately connected and united to him. 

Honoring God with your mind.

“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from this love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then be likeminded having the same love, being one in Spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interest of the others. In your relationships with one another have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 

Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:1-11).

Honoring God with your life.

“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer” (Romans 6:1-2)? 

The sinful nature of humanity is anything that is in opposition to God, so if we are dead to opposing God how can we live a life in opposition to him?

“Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:3-4).

“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin” (Romans 6:5-7). 

And this death is a spiritual death, we have died to our old way of thinking and have been resurrected into a new way of thinking. Our faith in Jesus sets us free from our old selves. 

“Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives he lives to God” (Romans 6:8-10).

“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to live a life for God through your faith. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires (desires to commit spiritual adultery and put faith in everything but God). Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness (that you have through faith). For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace (Romans 6:11-14). 

Paul is talking about the death to the sinful nature of ourselves so that we can be alive to our righteous nature. The sinful nature is not honoring God as God. Our faith in Jesus says that we receive the connection and life back to God through Jesus and die to our disconnection and die to anything that we believe in above God so that we can live and be united with God’s will and his way of being. 

The life that God gives through Jesus is a life that is forgiven. The life that God gives through Jesus is a life where we are heirs of righteousness. The life that God gives through Jesus is a life abundant in God’s grace towards us. The life that God gives through Jesus is a life that he promises to be eternal even after physical death. A life that God gives through Jesus is a life whose ruler is Jesus. 

So when Paul says do not be slaves to your sinful nature, he is speaking about being bound to hopelessness, bound to meaninglessness, bound to ideas that do not nourish, bound to a life of condemnation and separation from God.

Paul is saying that through Jesus we died to that life to inherit the riches of grace that Jesus’ resurrection gives. Offering every part of ourselves to God as an instrument of righteousness, (Romans 6:13) means offering your mind, body and spirit as someone who belongs to a different ruler. The sin that is opposition to God’s will is no longer your master, but God’s grace that gives you freedom and life (Romans 6:14). 

Take Jesus at his word when he says, believe in me and you will live, like the official whose son was ill and he believed when Jesus spoke “your son will live” (John 4:43-54). Have faith in him that you are righteous and not condemned. Have faith in Jesus that the spiritual well-being that he gives, gives life to your mortal body as well as your spirit, more than anything or anyone else can.