Christian Liberty Issues

So let's take a look at 1 Corinthians 6. So Bob taught last week on this lawsuit issue, the legalism and the law, and everybody walked away from that less likely to go on Judge Judy, right? That's what we learned. And so the funny thing is that I think for most of our lives, we don't spend a lot of time worrying about lawsuits, right? So for when this situation comes up, we kind of have to be faced with this issue. So now we're going to come in from this difficult issue of lawsuits that are going on to Paul returning back to sexual perversion.

This is a topic that is definitely one of those things where I honestly, I warned the Shuts, don't bring Allie in here. I think she's 13. Maybe you want to have that conversation with her about all of these topics, but Paul isn't going to mince any words here, so we want to make sure that parents are aware of where we're going with this. So Paul says in 6.12, all things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. And I just want to say for just a second here, We probably could spend the whole morning on that verse. We don't get to, but there's a lot of important things that are in here.

So, foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise up by his power. Do you not know that the bodies are members of Christ, or your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For the two, he says, shall become one flesh.

But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought at a price, and therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."

Alright, so let's start off with this really peculiar question that Paul forces us to face in verse 12. He says, All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. So why are all things lawful?

Our liberty. Okay, we have liberty. Okay, and so the problem here is that we see all things, and Paul is using exaggeration to emphasize liberty and grace that we have. And let's define those terms real quick, because I think it's important that whenever we use a term like liberty or like grace, that we're not using different definitions for those words and then coming to different consequences or conclusions. So how do we want to define liberty? We're free from the law. We're in Christ. We're free from the law. We're in Christ.

Maybe in a more conversational mode you might say that things that God has not necessarily singled out as being an issue. He lists a whole bunch of sins in scripture. Sometimes he ranks them, sometimes he doesn't. All sin is sin, but there are areas where There's no sin involved, so you're free to do that, but then we're going to see later on, your brother or sister should be involved in that too. So all things outside of, they're not sinful, you can do. But there are other issues that come into play.

So as I wrestled through this this week when I was studying, one of the things that came to mind is again the Galatians 5.16 passage. I'll turn real quick.

Galatians 5.16 says something really, really important. And that is, I say then, walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Gary, there's no handout this morning. Those are from last week. I will actually make one, but I'll have to email it out to folks.

If we're abiding, if we're walking in the Spirit, we will not do the desires of the flesh. Okay, now that's a really important issue when we come in here, because he says all things are lawful for me, but then he immediately goes into things that are not okay to do, right? So how do we know what's okay to do? Because we are not under the 613 laws of the Old Testament, are we? What do the Jews do on the Sabbath? How do they live their life if you're a modern day Jew and you're trying to be somewhat observant of the law? What do they do starting Friday night? Well, probably Friday morning. Maybe even Thursday. They start pre-tearing their toilet paper.

They get all of their food ready and they put it in their oven that has electronics that will randomly turn on and randomly turn off, just in time so that they don't have to push a button, which is work, which is against the law. Well, actually, just a sidelight. I bought a new GE oven, and it actually has a mode for that very feature. Yeah, a Sabbath mode. There was some rabbi who went to GE, and they have a mode for that. Yeah. And put it in that mode, and it will do it something. Yeah. So for the believer who has liberty, and we should get back to defining this term. So liberty is the ability to not walk under legal system that tells you what you can and cannot do, but by the power of the Spirit we also have other things that we should also be aware of. There's nowhere in the law, for example, that accounts for cars. There isn't. There's no law in the 613 that talks about kilometers an hour or miles per hour. It doesn't talk about driving on the Sabbath or not driving on the Sabbath.

Those things don't exist technologically. So we're faced, as believers, all the time with new tools. Roger kind of mentioned that he bought this new thing and it had this feature built into it. But the Internet is a tool. I work on the Internet all day long. I work for a company that makes sure the Internet is a successful technological event or technological tool. But it can be used for great glorification to the Lord, but it can also be used for great wickedness.

I don't think anybody's surprised by that. And I'm not just talking about the 419 scammers that email you and tell you that they've got some deceased person's money that they just need to launder through your bank account. So the technology is there, but liberty is not license. If I were to say that there's a little phrase that you should memorize, it's that liberty is not license. What is our license?

As the Holy Spirit leads. The Holy Spirit is going to take us into places that the law never could. My dad has emphasized that in past lessons. Upstairs in the main service. Liberty is not license. And grace is a motivator, not just a covering for sin. So what's our working definition of grace that we have in the grace class that has been taught here at Holly Hills before? Trust. Be unmerited and limited. Blessings of God. Based on the totally adequate work of Christ. That's right. So the unmerited, unlimited blessings of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross.

So, does that sound like it just covers sin? It's going to take all creation, it's just setting up all creation for a new heaven and a new earth. Because it's all now possible. because Christ took all of the, not just the sin question, but because everything will finally fall into line according to God's perfect will in the age to come. Okay, but today in a practical sense we don't use grace as just simply a covering for sin with that definition. Unlimited unmerited, okay, that means I can't out sin it, it means I didn't earn it, but blessings of God Well, that's not sin, right?

That's blessings of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. Because Christ died, the sin is paid for. The sin is covered. We've been declared righteous because of our identification with Christ. But we have grace, but the grace is a motivator and liberty is not licensed.

So those are two things that we see here. The reason why I said this verse 12 could probably be its own entire lesson by itself is this latter half here. And this is a stumbling block right here for many day-to-day lives. So let's take a look at it. But I will not be brought under the power of any. How do you know you have a sin problem? right here. How do I know I'm obsessed with a thing? How do I know I'm addicted? How do I know that it's not the right thing I should be spending my energy on? Because it has brought you under its power.

Okay, so for myself, When I think about things, this is funny, I'll use something that's somewhat observed as neutral. On Facebook, they have people whose whole job it is at Facebook to make sure that your eyes are glued to Facebook. Right? So that instead of working, instead of parenting, instead of whatever it is that the Holy Spirit would be directing you to do, you're constantly, I got my smartphone, you know, and there have been some really clever ads where people have like helmets, they have like smartphone helmets, so that when they're walking like this they can, you know, run into things and they'll be okay. There's people that have actually died in accidents with trains and other things because they're staring at their smartphone.

Okay, the technology is there, and it's neutral to a certain degree by itself, but if it brings us under its power that we have to see what's happening next. One of the things that, and I'm just gonna pick on Facebook because it's an easy low-hanging fruit sort of an application, one of the things that they do is they, after a few seconds, show a status indicator that says, you have new things you haven't seen.

And you're like, oh, I wonder if they're important things. What if there is a cat with a clever quote on it and I haven't seen it yet? And you click the button. But it doesn't have to be Facebook. It could be alcohol or drugs or pornography or cars or motorcycles. The thing is that there's always things. It could be money. It could be clothes.

Basically anything that isn't the Lord could be a distraction from what is the Lord. And that's Paul's point here. Paul says, I will not be brought under the power of any. And then to emphasize what would have been common in the culture in Corinth, in verse 13, he says, foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods. The God will destroy both it and them.

So I happen to really like food. Not just a little bit. Like if you come over to my house, And I feed you food, and unfortunately there's faces in this room that I have not fed food to, so we've got to coordinate that and fix it. I really get into that. I want to give you the best of whatever it is. I don't know why that matters, but it just seems like that's the most important thing sometimes. But that precisely might be the problem. Maybe we should come over, or you should come over, and let's eat some shoe leather together. We'll boil it. And we won't worry about the food. It'll be awesome. We'll just fellowship and we'll talk about the Lord together, right?

But if you're a Corinthian, how many of you are familiar with the Roman practice of using the vomitorium so that you can eat more food? Okay, so you'd eat, you'd get full, They have a special room for uneating your food. You go uneat your food and you can come back and you can have seconds or five hundredths or whatever it is that floats your boat.

Now we know biologically that's really bad for your system. But if you're in a culture that is totally focused on hedonism, food is a key element. Obviously sexuality is another element which we're going to get into. But he says, but God will destroy both it and them. Is that scary? Should we be afraid of that destruction? Is that what he's talking about? No. It actually gets to what Tom was alluding to earlier about we'll get a new body in the new heavens and new earth, and this body, as awesomely as it works today, and I say that with some sarcasm because I think all of us as we age become more and more aware of our physical frailties, these bodies will go away. I'm going to put this bluntly.

You can go to New York and pay $1,000 for a hamburger. There's a restaurant that sells a $1,000 hamburger. It has gold foil on it. I feel better about that. At least it's $1,000 and I'm going to eat some gold. Where does that go? Let's just be honest. I'm going to try to dance around saying specific vocabulary, but where does that go? Where does your $1,000 hamburger go? Waistline and the plumbing line. $1,000, down the toilet. So even, let's pretend for the sake of argument that it's not going to be destroyed, $1,000 may be not the best use of your money towards a hamburger. But all of that is to say that Paul wants to remind the Corinthians and us, as readers of this letter now, that being a foodie is not the end-all be-all. What's the end-all be-all? The abiding believer. Christ. Our focus is on Him.

The second half of this verse, now, the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. Now, how many of you are reading the news at all in the last several weeks where we talk about bathrooms and genders in bathrooms right that's been all over the news lately because some people are bigoted and some people are not bigoted and some people are perverts and some people are not perverts and you see all you see all the stuff on the news from the different angles the truth of the matter is is that when we talk about sexuality and gender what What is it right here that Paul says the body is for? It's for the Lord. Now I'm going to cross a line here. This is not where Paul is going, but I want to connect a dot for you.

In marriage, biblical sexuality, God is involved. God's involved with your sex life. Why? Because it's his body. And here we have this relationship that the world is telling us all the time. Hedonism. Your body is not God's body. It's your body and you should make sure that your pleasure neurons and your neurological network are maximally stimulated as much as you possibly can be. Because it's your body, and pleasure is the ultimate good, according to secularism. Well, wouldn't you say that even as we sit here now, the Lord is in each one of us, and this is His body? This is His body.

And is the Lord against sexuality within marriage? No. But what He is focused on, it's almost like He's restating verse 12. The things that bring us under them, that are not Christ, are the problem. Whether it's sexual, or food, or whatever else. Because it's the Lord's body, and what's He doing? These are His members. If we were to look at Romans chapter 6, Paul tells the believers in Romans chapter 6 about the members of their body.

Romans 6.13, "...and do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God." So, what we see here as we're building up into this issue of sexual Immorality is it's not that sex is the problem, it's the immorality that's the problem. It's not license when it's liberty.

What's the outworking of Christ in the body? If we had to pick one word that started with L? Love. Oh, that's an important word. We're going to see that love is one of the things that is going to be going on, not lust, not license, but liberty empowered by the Holy Spirit. And so sexual immorality here is not It's not to be the normative behavior of the believer because the believer should understand that their body is the Lord's.

Now let me ask you one really important question. Did the Corinthians get that? No. Just like us today. The culture today doesn't get that. And so I think it's important for us to recognize that Paul's not writing to these people that were radically far off from where we are today because we have this issue of liberty and license that we face today that can be promoted through being a foodie or being sexually active or whatever else.

The fact that this is the Lord's body is a perspective that changes our worldview when we look at the world. Alright, so let's keep going because Paul has a lot more to make us ponder here. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. And I'm going to continue on to 15 because those ideas connect. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? So, again, the body is the Lord. Your bodies are members of Christ. And that's convicting for me.

I have to say that if I'm not paying attention, if I'm not abiding, I'm surrounded all the time by messages that are telling me I should spend more money or more time on things that will give me more pleasure more of the time. And I don't stop to ask, what's important now? What is the Lord doing? Am I abiding? instead I'm constantly, you know, I work downtown and so when you work downtown I take the light rail so there's advertising on the light rail, there's advertising on the buses, there's billboards, there's signs on buildings and I get into my office and I've got a gray cube and I know it's like that somber joke of the corporate environment, you're in a cube, but then I turn on my computer and I I get more advertising from more things that are on the internet.

And so we're constantly told all the time that these bodies are not the Lord's, they're yours. Paul reminds us very explicitly, because of the resurrection, which we again can see in Romans chapter 6, because of the resurrection, our bodies are members of Christ's. And so then Paul gets very blunt. Shall we then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot?

Certainly not. There's no ways to mince that. If we're practicing sexual immorality, and I'm going to own up to this having been a problem when I was in junior high and high school, I went to church every Sunday, almost never missed, And everybody thought I was a good little boy, but secretly I was looking at pornography all the time. Okay? And nobody had to know.

So this passage is hard for me because it resonates and it reminds me. But we can't look at this passage without having already looked at 1 Corinthians 3, where we see that those works of the flesh are burned away. So we don't have to dwell on that. But that's still not licensed, right?

To put it bluntly, I don't get to run around naked with John 3.16 painted on my body and say, I was just preaching the gospel, right? Instead, we have here, Paul says, that's not the way it should be. That is not how we get to behave.

In verse 16, Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For the two, he says, shall become one flesh. Now, Paul is quoting something. Who is he quoting? Actually, it goes back to Genesis. Genesis. And then Matthew repeats it as well. Yeah. Throughout the scriptures, we have this principle of the two becoming one. So if we turn to Genesis chapter 2, we'll look at 23 and 24. Actually, let's look at 25, too, because I think it proves the point. In verse 23 it says, And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of me. And in 24, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. So nakedness was not a sin issue and they were not ashamed. And as Moses articulates, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. Sexual behavior makes two people one flesh.

I don't want to get into all of the potential ways that that happens today. In our culture, marriages don't last in our culture. We have this, my generation and those who've come after me, or us, not me, no one comes after me, has this term called friends with benefits, where it's basically people who are not in a relationship have a sexual relationship because they don't have anything else to do. That would fly right in the face of this. And the two shall become one flesh. He says you shouldn't be joined with a harlot. You shouldn't be using your body for harlotry. You shouldn't be involved with those things.

Now we should also point out for just a second here that there were temples in Corinth that were dedicated to prostitution. So the Corinthians had a a very Carson City, Nevada or Las Vegas, Nevada like environment. I grew up in Carson City, Nevada for a period of my growing up and we could drive for about five or ten minutes and get to brothels. That was normal. My dad told me it was wrong. Okay, that's fine. I moved on. Didn't really think about it.

But it turns out that that's a really a really serious problem that the Corinthians had. Because they had that availability. And they're in a rough community. Shipping towns are not known for their pristine moral culture. So Paul is facing this, and he's correcting them. Unfortunately, in 2 Corinthians, we're going to find he's going to repeat many of these same messages. Because they didn't listen, they didn't get it.

Alright, in 17 he says, but he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. This is another one of those verses where we could probably talk through for a whole class if we wanted to spend enough time and look at connecting all the dots. How many of you are keeping up with the political world today? I'm not going to make a political statement about any particular candidate, but the thing that concerns me the most is that the frontrunners that are running right now don't have a tendency to reflect that they understand this verse. Even the ones that are running under the Christian flag don't seem to emphasize this particular principle here. They're joined with the Lord and they're one in spirit with him.

Now, let's step outside of the global or the national scope. Let's talk about in our own homes, in our own lives. This is probably something that we could encourage one another with, right? When, let's say, we stumble and we sin in some capacity, It doesn't matter what the sin is.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you sin, you get down? Nobody in this room gets down. That's phenomenal. You guys are walking in a better way than I am. Sometimes when I discover I've been walking in sin, I'm a little disappointed in myself. But instead, I can come alongside when I see that my brother or sister in Christ is discouraged and say, Let's take a hike over to 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and let's look at verse 17.

We are one spirit with him. Paul does not bring into question their salvation. He didn't say, oh you stumbled, you sinned, you're disconnected. He says, you're one spirit with him. If you believed, you were one spirit with him. Fact. Rest in it. That's encouraging. Right in the middle of this passage where he's talking about sexual perversity is a truth that's very encouraging. But as a consequence of that is verse 18. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits a sexual immorality sins against his own body. Now why is it that he's sinning against his own body?

As it turns out, we've got way more science since Paul wrote this. So there's truth in what Paul wrote. But then there's truth that even Paul didn't know, that I think is reinforcing this. He's kind of indicating here, he doesn't talk about that you may harm your body, that it may be harmful to your body. That's not elaborated, but it's implied there, that harm can come to your body by engaging in that activity.

Yeah, well there's diseases, there are neurological problems that we've found out since then, As it turns out, addictive behaviors tell your brain something feels good, and they train your brain rapidly, anytime something sends a positive hormonal release, that you should do that again. So the problem with sexual immorality is that it feels good, so you do it again.

And boy, it was a rough day. I'll turn to this thing that makes me feel good, whether it's the food, or the sexual immorality, or alcohol, or drugs, or whatever it is. We have these patterns where it was a rough day, or it was a good day, and I deserve to feel good-er. So in this case, this is something that happens on the inside, and the thing is that it's in your head, it's in your heart, it changes the way that you think and the way that you behave.

And what happens with sexual immorality? Is it something that for the most part is done out in public? No, it's stuff that happens in privacy and we think we got away with it and so we reinforce these behaviors but it eats us up on the inside. Trust me, I know it eats you up on the inside. And whose body is he sinning against in 18? His own body. But whose body is it? Who bought it with a price? It's Christ's body.

So we need to recognize that, for the sake of argument, we know people in Corinth have committed sexual sins. That's why he's writing this. He's not questioning their salvation. He's questioning their thinking about the acceptability of the sexual sin. So he comes in here and he says, remember that it's Christ's body. And so you shouldn't keep doing that. So the sexual immorality which has taken place, Paul's correction is to say, stop doing that.

And he's going to take them to the next level here on 19, where he's going to continue to say, okay, not only is the temple Christ's body like you did in 13, but also, I'm sorry, 15, but then also in 18, sorry, 19, or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God and are not your own? So it's God's temple. It's God's temple. Now, what have you heard about God's temple? There are some common ideas in Christendom that are related to this being God's temple.

Anybody have something they remember hearing about this? Destroy this body and I will raise it up in three days. Christ said that. That's not what I was thinking of, but that's an interesting parallel. How many of you have heard that suicide is an unforgivable sin because you destroyed God's temple?

Paul's not going there with this. That's not what Paul's saying. How many of you have heard that you should Because you shouldn't commit any sin with your body, you should always be healthy. There should be no fat people in the church. I'm just going to put it bluntly. I've heard that before. I, however, am not following that. I'm just going to own that. I'm working on trying to be healthy, but I know that if this is the Lord's temple, I'm making it bigger. We'll just put it that way. And it's a joke, but at the same time, there is a stewardship, isn't there? There's a balance of that stewardship.

Does the Lord know the number of your days? I know people who eat incredibly healthy food, according to current conventional wisdom about healthy food, that the Lord could take them home. for sin, for not sin. You know, when we look back in Genesis in chapter four, we discover that, oh, hey, there's a guy that didn't die there.

Why? Because he was righteous. Okay. So he's not, he's not going to be around anymore. Didn't matter if he ate good or not. The Lord says, your days are numbered, and I'm ready for you to come be with me, and your brakes go out, or whatever it is, right? Something happens, somebody else's brakes go out, right?

But all those things come about here, but your body's a temple, there's a stewardship that's here, so we wanna make sure that the, turning back to verse 12, that we're not brought under the power of any of those things, but instead we're submitting our bodies to the Lord, but we recognize who's in charge of the temple. The Holy Spirit is.

The Holy Spirit is the one directing our thoughts, directing our steps, and just like we saw in Galatians 5.16, that should cause us to rest, because we know He's the one that's directing our steps. In verse 20, He says, For you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."

You were bought with a price or bought at a price here? What is that a reference to? What are we bought from? From the slave market of sin. Now, here's the important part, because this is where the theology often gets skewed off. Do you owe Jesus anything for having been bought? Do you need to repay Him? You can't. You can't repay Him. That's not the point. But you are possessed fully and entirely by Him. No one else can pay that price. There's nothing that is equivalent to a life. Your life and my life are precious lives, they're the Lord's lives, and there's nothing equivalent to them. So you're bought at a price, and as a consequence, do something that is totally unexhaustible.

Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. glorify God in your body. So, what things glorify God? This is an important question. Okay, beholding a son absolutely glorifies the Lord. What glorifies God? We need a list. That way we know we're doing the right things. I'm saying that sort of as a joke, but I want us to have a tangible understanding of what things glorify God. So what things glorify God? When we say glorify God, what are we saying? So that we know what that is.

Let's put some tennis shoes on this. conform, be transformed, conform to his image. Okay, that definitely brings glory to the Lord. I have one of my all-time favorite verses. I have a very long list of favorite verses. But in Ephesians 1 verse 6, let's take a, or we'll start in, well, the problem with Ephesians 1 is it's a run-on sentence. We'll start in 3, we'll go to 6.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. So, already Paul says they're holy and blameless, despite whatever sin issues may be in their lives today that the Holy Spirit's working on. Verse five, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.

The adoption story is a beautiful one because the adoption story in Rome had special legal consequences. Your life was preserved in special ways. If I had biological children, Abby and Evie, that are mine, and I adopted a third or a another child, that adopted child would have legal priority over my possessions, over my own biological children, because adoption was a special thing. According to the good pleasure of His will, it pleased Him to adopt us and to bless us with every spiritual blessing.

And then in 6, and this is one of my favorite verses here, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved." Now, what's our working definition of grace? The unmerited, unlimited blessings of God, due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. And grace is not just a covering for sin, but it's a motivator, right? but it does also cover for sin, right? Because it was unmerited. So what does verse 6 say brings glory or praise? Grace. Grace brings praise to the glory of God and His graciousness.

So which actions in your life are not covered by grace? I need a list. Lucky for you, it's a short one. Nothing. Grace covers all things. It's unmerited. It's unlimited. So let's ask this very important question. What did Satan want sin to bring about? Destruction. Perfect word. Satan wants to bring destruction and wrath and guilt.

And so that every time we sin, God has to look at us and be disappointed. But what did God work out? God worked out that when His grace was poured out, which is all the time, He's glorified. So now, we can either be abiding in bringing glory to the Lord, or even when we aren't abiding, His grace is poured out, and God is glorifying Himself.

Just like Romans 6 tells us, we don't want to continue in sin. This passage tells us we don't want to be joined with immorality. We want to be bringing glory. But our list of things that bring glory to God because of what Christ did on the cross is everything. I want to be very careful I'm not saying license. I'm not saying something dangerous here with this.

But the grace is poured out all the time. When I'm abiding, when I'm just studying God's Word and I'm focused on Him and I'm abiding, or when I'm talking with my daughters and my family after a day of work and I'm abiding, it brings glory to God. Or when I'm reading a piece of science fiction and I'm not abiding and I'm at dinner and I've had a crummy day at work and I've got a stinky attitude and I'm not abiding, my sin is not bringing glory to God. But God's grace is bringing glory to God. So instead now, what can we focus on? If we're not focusing on what brings glory to God, what are we focusing on? His Son. We can focus on Christ. We can stop focusing on the externals and the junk. We can focus on Christ as a consequence of these things.

Because our body is a temple for the Holy Spirit. We were bought with a price. And we are God's. So Paul takes this issue of sexual immorality, he takes this issue of hedonism, and he brings it up and he says, that's not where we belong in our activities. Because we're gods. And we should be bringing glory to God. But we as believers, what do we have to rest in? Grace. The fully satisfying work of Christ on the cross. Alright, that's the end of the verses here. Are there other thoughts, questions, things you wish I hadn't said? Things you wish I had said? We're just winding down. We have three minutes left. Also, there in verse 20 it says that I glorify but God in your body and in your spirit which are God's says yes, he is one responsible for your spiritual growth. Yep, the Lord is definitely responsible for our spiritual growth. That's the Romans 8, 28 through 30 passage there.

I also was wondering, the very last phrase in the 20b part there, it says You know, we're glorifying God in your body. He just talked about, he spent a long time talking about how you would not glorify God in your body. So at the very end, the culmination of that is that your focus is to be glorified. Your body can glorify God. He shows how it cannot glorify God by being obsessed with various things, but your body can glorify God.

You could think of the example of a Christian marriage. Your body is being used in a Christian marriage and you're blessed with children, so your body can be used to glorify God. passages to go to to look at what is what is the abiding believer who's manifesting the fruit of the Spirit look like is Romans chapter 12 starting in verse 3 although 12 1 and 2 basically say that our body and our mind and our spirit are His.

He says, for I say through the grace given to you to me to everyone who is among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. For we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function. And being many are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another, having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us.

In verse 8, he who exhorts in exhortation He who gives with liberality. He who leads with diligence. He who shows mercy with cheerfulness. Let love be without a hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love. In honor giving preference to one another. Not lagging in diligence. Fervent in spirit. And he keeps going.

That's the second verse. I probably should wind down. But what does this look like? What does this bringing glory to God with your body look like? Well, frankly, it looks a lot like the spiritual gifts. It looks a lot like the body coming together and operating in koinonia, in togetherness. And so, yeah, that's a good question. Thank you, Roger, for asking me to put tennis shoes on that.

1 Corinthians chapter 6, Paul hammered again on division. We started in chapter 1 in 1 Corinthians with division. In chapter 6 we've got division with legalism and then division in hedonism. But what is his answer for this division every time? Let's tie this all back around. What's the answer? Christ, that our life is in Christ, that we walk in Christ. So, when I look back on the perversion that was part of my life, I'm not proud of it. But it is something that is redeemed. It is something that is paid for. It is something that is covered. And so now, I'm charged right here, just like all of us, that we use our body for the Lord's glory.

And our spirit will be directed by His Spirit in bringing glory to the Lord. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would continue to reinforce these biblical truths in our lives this week and frankly until you come. Just pray for the spirit to direct our steps and the thoughts of our minds and that our hearts would be on you and not on the distractions that constantly call for our attention. We thank you and we praise you for your provision in all of this so that the righteousness of God is declared and the grace of God is poured out and you are glorified no matter what. We thank you and we praise you in Jesus name. Amen.