18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 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.
Tim Chester, in You Can Change:
Imagine you’ve done the cleaning at home because you have guests coming. You’ve scrubbed the floors, cleaned the windows, tidied the rooms, and dusted the furniture. Everything is spick-and-span. And then you pop out to get some flowers from the shops, through the rain and mud. What do you do when you get back? Do you tramp your muddy feet through the house and shake out your wet clothes? No; you carefully take everything off at the door. You want to keep your home clean for your guests. The Holy Spirit has cleansed and washed us. He’s given us a new start and a new life. He’s come to make his home in us. He’s consecrated our lives as his temple. Why would you want to mess that up by bringing in your dirty habits or returning to your filthy sins? Would you want a friend to live in a trash bin? (34)
Tim Chester is trying to do exactly what the apostle Paul was doing in the passage quoted above: using the image of our body as a temple of the Holy Spirit as motivation for living holy lives.
His illustration brings it into our everyday experience and appeals to our common sense, but I think it is good for us to reflect further on the purity and holiness of the temple that he mentions earlier and more briefly. When we remember how important it was for the priests who served in the temple to be undefiled, for the sacrifice that was required even to gain access to the holiest place, and so on, there is not just a common sense logic at play. Any place that would be the dwelling of a holy God must be holy as well.
If we love God and revere his perfect righteousness, there will be a desire to make him welcome in our lives. As long as we remember that, ultimately speaking, only God through Christ can make us fit for the Spirit, we should pursue a life consistent with that holiness.
Chester also said, "Our lives, and our life together as a Christian community, are sacred spaces, consecrated to God." The passage from 1 Corinthians reflects this individual aspect, but the corporate (church body) aspect is seen in Ephesians 2:19-22:
19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
Practically speaking, how should our church (the people, together) reflect the kind of holiness that is fitting for a dwelling of the Spirit of God?
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