Read 1 Corinthians 5 & 6
Verses chosen for meditation: 1Corinthians 6: 19, 20 ESV:
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Reflect
How grey is immorality?
How should it be judged or handled if a brother or sister falls prey to its seduction?
What does it mean that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?
Relate
Some think that there are fifty shades of grey when it comes to immorality. To them, it is never as clear - cut as black and white.
When it comes to judgement, however, the purity of the colour is usually taken as the gold standard.
The Corinthian church was a case in point, which subscribed to the grey shades of immorality. Since it was inherent in the pervasive social culture of theirs, the tolerance of immorality led to a blurring of lines, or should we say, shading of colour.
The Corinthian church seemed to handle matters the same way the public would have them dealt with, especially those not of the faith or outside the church. To a large degree, they depended on their own understanding, which was not surprising given how they were greatly influenced by the social norms of the time. Secular wisdom, too, has in it the tempting tendency of puffing up its self - professed owners.
By doing so, they diluted the purity of the church and gave the church the same parity as the outside world.
Paul, therefore, had to take measures to maintain the purity of the church by laying some ground rules. If misread, these rules could cast Paul in a different light as someone trying to instigate the church to deal harshly with an errant individual or whitewash the church.
If that was the case, it couldn't be further from the truth. For it was for the sake of the individual and the whole church that he made those hard comments. He was not pandering to the whim and fancy of the leaders and congregation.
So, in the final analysis, it is really a question of what is at stake. The spiritual body of the affected believer was at stake here. And so was the body of Christ, the church on the larger scale.
The last two verses of the chapter serve as a sombre reminder of the sacredness of our body, and by extension, the church.
It needs no further elaboration, but a deeper reflection. How is our body a temple of the Holy Spirit? And how is it a temple?
Rest
Lord, let us know what it means to be a temple of the Holy Spirit. Be the judge of the purity of our colour. And may we seek to edify the greater body, that is the church.
Naville Chia
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