INTRODUCTION
One day the great nineteenth century
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, was sitting on a park bench in the center of
town. He had been sitting there most of the day, deep in thought. Eventually a
policeman came along, tapped him with his nightstick, and asked, “Come, come,
now, who are you, and what are you doing here?” Schopenhauer’s answer: “Would
to God that I knew!”
“What am I here for?” is maybe the
greatest question that has puzzled thoughtful people—and not only philosophers—down
through the ages.
Each
of the world’s great religions tries to answer that question.
One
of the most famous answers is in the Westminster Catechism, which was published
in 1647, and memorized by generations of children.
The
question: “What is the chief end of
man?”
And
the answer: “Man’s chief end is to
glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
We
could translate that into modern English as: “What am I here for?” “I am here
to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”
I
would like to call your attention to three little sentences at the end of the
sixth chapter of 1 Corinthians. Here they are:
Do you not know that your body is a temple
of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own;
you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Several
weeks ago at a service at Village Place I spoke on these verses and told some
of you why they have been so important to me. Those words are important to me
because they showed me what it truly means to follow Jesus.
When
I understood what it means—I am not my
own but I was bought with a price, I realized that following Jesus wasn’t
just believing certain things about Jesus, but following Jesus means that I
belonged to him. And knowing that, it remains for me to live my life as one who
belongs to Jesus. Jesus is not only my
Savior, but he is also the Lord of my life.
But
last Sunday as our pastor spoke about glorifying God, and I realized that I didn’t say anything about
that last part, and this is very important: “…you
were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
I
didn’t explain what it means to “glorify God in your body.” And that’s really
important. Because that is what we’re here for. And now I want to talk about
that part.
I.
Jesus bought us for himself with his own
blood—so that we might glorify him.
A.
We glorify God when we make God look
good—when we enhance his reputation in our world.
If
our lives are full of kindness, holiness and humility, we honor God in the eyes
of others. Maybe they will see God’s
love in our lives. If we are truly
glorifying God, other people won’t think we are wonderful; we hope that they
will see that God is wonderful.
We
glorify God when we give him the credit for everything good we have experienced
from God.
B.
We glorify God when we rejoice and
delight in him.
God
means for us to be joyful. When he sees us rejoicing in him, he is satisfied
that his purposes for us are being fulfilled. God’s greatest joy is seeing his
children prosper. He rejoices to see our hearts filled with love for himself
and for those he loves.
A
little girl had opened all her Christmas presents. She sat among them and
whined, “Is this all there is? If I had known that this was all there would be,
I wouldn’t have waited so long for Christmas!”
Now,
imagine how her parents felt
Joyful
gratitude glorifies God.
C.
We glorify God when we please him by our
obedience.
Do
you know that you can make God happy?
The
apostle John wrote in his second letter: “I rejoiced greatly to find some of
your children following the truth, just as we have been commanded by the
Father.”
Just
so, our Father rejoices to see his children following the truth. When we live
in obedience we become a real part of God’s happiness, just as the greatest
happiness of a mother is to see her children living useful lives, and blessing
all who know them.
D.
And we glorify God when we accomplish
the work which he has given us to do.
Jesus
is our example. On the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus prayed a long prayer to
his Father. On the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus addressed his Father with a
long prayer, which is recorded in John 17. In this prayer Jesus tells his
Father: “I glorified you on earth,
having accomplished the work which you gave me to do.”
So
we also glorify God when we obey him, when we praise him, and when we partner
with him in his work of redemption by loving and serving those he loves—all
those whom it is our power to serve.
II.
Now I would like to turn to the last words of our text: “So glorify God in your body.”
A.
Now I have wondered why St. Paul didn’t write, “So glorify God in your heart
and mind.” But Paul writes, “So glorify God in your body.”
Surely
we can honor God in our thoughts. We can honor God when our hearts are bursting
with love and gratitude for what he has done for us.
B.
To see why Paul emphasizes glorifying God in our bodies, we need to go back and
see the context in which these words occur.
To
the Jews “body” meant the person as a whole. The Jews wouldn’t have said, “You
have a body” or “You have a soul.” They didn’t divide people up that way.
But
the Greeks did. They thought of the soul as the really important part, because
the soul would last forever. The body, to them, was just a temporary thing that
would soon perish and free the soul.
These
early Christians in Corinth didn’t have the advantage we do of having centuries
of tradition behind them. Christianity was new to them, and they were making
their way into unknown territory.
That
is why the letters in the New Testament were so important to them. In the
preaching of the early apostles and in the letters that have been preserved for
us, they learned things that we have known since childhood.
Some
of the Christians at Corinth, to whom Paul wrote his letter reasoned that since
the soul was eternal and the body was temporary, it was the soul that was
important. God saved our souls, and our souls were going to live forever. So
what we do with our bodies isn’t really very important.
Some
of the new believers were getting drunk. Some of the new believers were
actually going to the heathen temples and having sex with prostitutes! “After
all,” they reasoned, “what we do with our bodies isn’t what counts!”
This
news horrified Paul, and he wrote this letter partly to teach them that
holiness concerns what we do with our bodies.
If
I am to glorify God in my body, I need to care for and cherish my body.
I
need to love my neighbor with my body:
It
is with my feet that I hasten to those in distress.
It
is with my hands that I care for those who need my help.
It
is with my arms that I embrace the sufferer.
It
is with my lips that I speak words of comfort and strength to those God loves.
It
is with my eyes that I weep with those who weep.
“No,
no!” Paul says, “you are your body
and your body belongs to God.”
In
fact, even in heaven you will have a body—a renewed and glorious body, but a
body nevertheless.
The
New Testament doesn’t teach about an eternal life of sitting in the clouds like
ghosts. No, the New Testament insists that we will have glorious resurrected
bodies, and those bodies will last forever.
So
what we do with our bodies here on earth is really important. That is why
Christians emphasized the care of our bodies.
Good
eating habits, exercise, and enough sleep are important parts of living for
God.
So
we are to serve God with our minds,
our affections, our strength, and the members of our bodies.
CONCLUSION
A
missionary-translator related: “For a long time we were looking for a word for
‘obedience’ in the language into which we were translating the Bible. One day
as I went home from the village, my dog stayed behind. I whistled and he came
running after me at top speed.
An
old man by the roadside said in admiration: ‘Your dog is all ear.’ I got hold
of that expression at once and found I had a beautiful word for obedience.”
May we be “all ear” to our Lord. The most common Greek word in the New Testament for
“obey” is hupakuo, which is built on
the word for “to hear.”
To
glorify God in our bodies means obedience to Christ.
A
Muslim’s first prayer as a Christian was this: “O God, I am Mustafah the tailor
and I work at the shop of Muhammad Ali. The whole day long I sit and pull the
needle and thread through the cloth.
“O
God, you are the needle, and I am the thread. I am attached to you and I follow
you. When the thread tries to slip away from the needle it becomes tangled and
must be cut so that it can be put back in the right place.
“O
God, help me to follow you wherever you may lead me. For I am really only
Mustafah, the tailor, and I work at the shop of Muhammad Ali on the great
square” (Oxford Book of Prayer, p87).
To
glorify God in our bodies means to follow wherever Jesus leads us.
In
some churches—especially in the past—pastors would call Christians to the front
of the church to give them the opportunity to publicly acknowledge their
decision to commit their lives to God.
I
have no complaint about those services. Sometimes those “altar calls” are the
beginning of a life lived for God.
But
to commit our life to God isn’t like taking a $1000 bill and laying it on the
table—“Here’s my life, Lord, I’m giving it all.”
The
reality for most of us is that God sends us to the bank and has us cash in the
$1000 for quarters. We go through life putting 25¢ here and 25¢ there.
Usually
giving our life isn’t glorious. It’s done in all those little acts of love 25¢
at a time (Pheme Perkins, in The New
Interpreters Bible on Mark
8:39-9:1).
It’s
in the little things of every day that we can give glory to God.
I
found this in the biography of a great preacher of long ago. He writes,
“I
have been interrupted by the visit of a lady of my congregation who came to me
and told me the delight, the tears of gratitude, which she had seen in a poor
girl, to whom in passing, I gave a kind look on going out of church on Sunday.
“What
a lesson! How cheaply happiness can be given! What opportunities we miss of
doing an angel’s work! I remember doing it, full of sad feelings, passing on,
and thinking no more about it. And it gave an hour’s sunshine to a human life,
and lightened the load of life to a human heart—for a time!”
You
have heard me quote this saying of Mother Teresa before: “We can do no great things for God. We can do only little things with
great love.”
And
that is what it means to “glorify God in our body.” And that is what we’re here
for.
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