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| > Sermon Archive > Sermons by Author > Dr. Wes Bredenhof > It's good to belong to Jesus Christ | Previous Next Print |
| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Hymn 4 Psalm 121 Hymn 15 Hymn 1 Psalm 116:1-4 Scripture reading: 1 Corinthians 6 Catechism lesson and text: Lord's Day 1 and 1 Corinthians 6:19b-20 |
Beloved congregation of Christ,
Let me begin with a brief quote from a poem: “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” That’s from a poem entitled Invictus by Ernest Hensley, written in 1888. “I am the master of my fate” – I control what happens with my life. “I am the captain of my soul” – my soul belongs to me and I direct it. This is the spirit of our age. In our world today, what we call personal autonomy is the highest value. Autonomy means independence. No one owns me, no one is going to tell me what to do with my body, with my life. I call the shots for me.
With this way of thinking, the idea that someone else would own you or direct you, that idea is reprehensible. What could be worse than belonging to someone else? What could be worse than having someone else tell you what to do with your body, with your thinking, with your life?
Loved ones, we have to realize how counter-cultural the Bible is on this point. The Bible speaks in several places about us belonging to our Lord Jesus. One of those places is the passage we’re focussing on. And because it’s a biblical idea, we also find it in Lord’s Day 1 of our Catechism. The most important thing about Christian comfort in life and death, the thing that gets mentioned first, is belonging to Christ. Behind that is the assumption that it’s good to belong to him. That’s the theme of the sermon: It’s good to belong to Jesus Christ. We’ll see how it’s because belonging to him:
- Gives gospel comfort
- Drives a holy life
The context of our passage from 1 Corinthians 6 is addressing a specific issue in the church at Corinth. There were men in that church who said they were Christians. Yet they continued to visit prostitutes. They apparently justified it by saying that being a Christian only has relevance for your soul. What you do with your body, like visiting a prostitute, that’s up to you. So what was happening there was these men were compartmentalizing their lives. The compartment of the soul could belong to Christ, but the compartment of the body belonged to them.
To address that way of thinking, the apostle Paul gave four arguments in 1 Corinthians 6. I’m not going to go through each of those arguments. We only need to note that our text is giving the fourth and final argument. Let’s look at what it says.
“You are not your own…” If you are a Christian, you don’t belong to yourself. The idea of personal autonomy is bluntly upended here. Paul hits you right in the face with the truth that you belong to another.
That raises the question, of course: to whom do we belong? It’s only implied here in 1 Corinthians 6, but it’s an obvious implication. It’s stated explicitly in Romans 14:8, “So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” So instead of being your own, you belong to Jesus Christ.
But to what extent do we belong to him? Here it’s helpful to think in terms of Christ’s incarnation. When the Son of God took on human flesh, did he only partly become a human being? Did he only have a human soul? Or did he only have a human body? No, the Bible teaches that in his incarnation, the Son of God became fully human, with a human soul and a human body. Why? Because in order to save the whole fallen human being, the Son of God had to become a whole human being. He took on a complete human nature in order to save us completely. We are now his completely, both body and soul, both in life and in death.
How did it come to this? Verse 20 says, “…for you were bought with a price.” There’s a lot in that little statement and we need to unpack it. First, “you were bought.” The term that’s used in the Greek is a term that was used in the marketplace for the buying and selling of slaves. So being bought here refers to the fact that we are now servants or slaves of Christ. Paul sometimes describes himself as that too. For example in Romans 1:1, “Paul, a servant [or slave] of Christ Jesus…” Another way of expressing this is to say that, for the Christian, Jesus is Lord. The word ‘Lord’ means master or owner. Christ is the master, the owner of Christians. We belong to him because he bought us.
That brings us to unpack the second part of this bit in verse 20, “…for you were bought with a price.” Again, Paul leaves the price itself unsaid because he expects his readers can fill it in for themselves. Elsewhere Scripture tells us that the price was the precious blood of Christ. His blood was shed on the cross so we would belong to him as his people. And now we are his, fully and permanently.
This is good. This gives gospel comfort. It does that because of who he is and what he does.
The one to whom we belong is infinitely good. He’ll never do his servants harm. The one to whom we belong is infinitely loving. His affections for his servants never flag or fail. The one to whom we belong is infinitely powerful. No one can snatch us from his good and loving care. Moreover, he rules sovereignly over our lives, wisely managing everything for his loving and good purposes. The Lord to whom we belong is a compassionate High Priest. He has been in our shoes, tempted in every way like we are, yet without sin. He understands our human experience. Not only that, but he intercedes eagerly and effectively on our behalf in heaven. Finally, the one to whom we belong wants us to be with him. Some day he will bring us into his presence where we’ll have the most intimate communion with him.
You see, you might hear that idea of Christ being Lord and us being his bought slaves and look at that as an awful thing that no one would want. But that’s just because we associate the idea of slavery with abuse. Rightly so. But when it comes to Christ, we have to realize we’re not talking about a sinful human being who owns us. We’re talking about the perfectly good and holy Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. We’re talking about God himself. Belonging to God isn’t a bad thing at all. Belonging to him means he takes care of you. Now the Bible uses other images to describe this reality. If you’re getting hung up on the idea of slavery and can’t see how that could be good, then try some of these other images. For example, Christ is the Good Shepherd. We’re sheep who belong in his fold. He feeds us and leads us to green pastures. Same idea as 1 Corinthians 6, just expressed with a different image. Or you could take the idea of God as our Father. We’re his adopted children, we’re part of his family. As his children, he loves us and nourishes us. Our Father protects us and aims for our flourishing. Whatever biblical picture we use, the reality is that it’s truly good to belong to Jesus Christ. There’s no one better we could belong to.
Belonging to Christ is meant to lead us to live in a way that reflects this truth. Our Catechism speaks about all these good gospel things related to belonging to Christ. But then at the end of QA 1, we also confess that with his Holy Spirit dwelling in us, we not only have assurance of eternal life, but we’re also committed to living a Christian life right now.
This is really where Paul was going with his thoughts in our passage from 1 Corinthians 6. Remember he’s making an argument against sexual immorality in the church. There’s a theological truth that’s based on the gospel: you belong to Christ because he bought you with a price. Then there’s an ethical implication drawn from that theological truth: So glorify God in your body. Let’s now look exactly at what that means.
So what does it mean to “glorify God”? It means to make much of him. To help others be impressed with him and to have a good opinion of him. When we glorify God, we’re helping people see him for who he truly is. I was recently at a museum where they had a temporary display called Micro and Macro. It included models of all kinds of things. Some of the models were meant to help you grasp what’s going on with the smallest things. Those are the micro models. So you get models of cells and molecules. But other models were made to help you grasp what’s going on with the largest things. Those are the macro models. So there was a model of the solar system. Seeing that model of the solar system, you get an idea of how huge it is, how impressive. When we glorify God, it’s like we’re presenting a macro model, helping people to grasp the reality of how awesome and impressive God is.
Our passage says that Christians are to do this with their bodies. Now in this context, that’s a clear reference to the problem in Corinth with Christians and prostitution. If your body belongs to the Lord, you can’t just do with it whatever you like. If your body belongs to the Lord, you have to glorify the Lord with it. The way you do that is by following his will as expressed in his law, in the Ten Commandments. When you follow his will for your life, you show to those around you that God is your ultimate authority. He is so awesome and impressive that you want to listen to him no matter what. So for a Corinthian Christian man that meant saying “no” to prostitutes. He had to live the kind of holy life that befits one who belongs to Jesus Christ. So he had to keep the seventh commandment and save sex for marriage.
Now if we’re going to apply this to ourselves, the original message to the Corinthians still holds. You can’t be a Christian and visit prostitutes, or engage in any kind of sexual immorality for that matter. Earlier in the chapter, the Holy Spirit says that those who are sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God. So there’s that. You might say it’s obvious, but you’d be surprised at the rationalizations people claiming to be Christians will come up with when it comes to sexual immorality. There’s no justification for it at all.
But the implications of our text don’t end at the seventh commandment. What’s said here applies to any area of life where we might be tempted to compartmentalize our body from our soul. As if what we do with our bodies has nothing to do with being a Christian. No, what we do with our bodies and how we treat our bodies matters. Our bodies are holy. That means they’re set apart for service to the Lord because they’ve bought by him.
If I were having this sermon 25 years ago, I might have said a few words at this point about smoking. Today thankfully it’s pretty obvious that smoking abuses your body and leads to all kinds of harm. But there are other common ways where we might still be turning a blind eye to the ways our holy bodies are being abused.
For example, drinking. The Bible is clear that drinking alcohol in moderation is permissible. What is not permissible is excessive drinking and drunkenness. While allowing for a moderate use, the Bible also warns repeatedly about the dangers of drink. If we go back to earlier in 1 Corinthians 6, among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God are drunkards. Again, we can easily rationalize such an issue away. According to the American Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, heavy drinking is defined as men having four or more drinks per day and women having three or more drinks per day. To put this in perspective, a bottle of Shiraz contains 8 standard drinks. If you’re drinking a whole bottle of wine in an evening by yourself, that’s a big problem. There’s also a self-assessment you can do to see if your drinking has become an issue:
- Have you ever felt you should cut down on your drinking?
- Have people annoyed you by criticizing your drinking?
- Have you ever felt bad or guilty about your drinking?
- Have you ever had a drink first thing in the morning to steady your nerves or get rid of a hangover?
If you’ve answered ‘yes,’ to two or more of those questions, that’s a problem and you need help. You aren’t glorifying God in your body. You aren’t acting as someone who has been bought with the price of the precious blood of Christ. Now there’s forgiveness in that blood, if we place our trust in Christ. You can be forgiven, but you can’t abuse God’s forgiveness by looking at it as a free pass to live however you want, to keep on drinking excessively. Forgiven Christians want to be different – the gospel of belonging to Christ drives that.
We could also apply the teaching of 1 Corinthians 6 to our eating. This is different from drinking alcohol because we have to eat. But it still applies to the choices we make in our eating. There are good choices, and many, many bad choices. Glorifying God in our bodies means being careful with the types of food we eat and the quantities of food we eat. If you’re like me and enjoy food, this can really be a challenge. But here too, we have to be mindful that we can’t compartmentalize and think that what we put in our bodies has nothing to do with our relationship to Christ. As it says in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
Here too, in glorifying God with our bodies, we have to see that it’s good to belong to Jesus Christ. It’s good for us -- it’s intended for our blessing and our flourishing. When we commit to living for him, living for his glory, also with our bodies, we’re living the way God created us to.
When we acknowledge that we belong to him body and soul and live accordingly, that’s good for our sexuality. Marriages will be stronger for it. But even apart from marriage, if you live a holy and chaste life, you’re going to be healthier in your body. You’re not going to have to worry about diseases or getting someone pregnant or getting pregnant yourself. It’s good to belong to Christ and live accordingly.
It’s good for our physical health. If you don’t smoke, the likelihood you’ll get lung cancer is greatly reduced, as well as heart disease, diabetes and other conditions. If you don’t drink excessively, you’ll have a healthier liver and your life expectancy goes up. If you’re careful with your eating, your health will be generally better. And so on. You see, in all these different ways, if we aim to glorify God with our bodies, there’s a spillover effect of blessing and flourishing for us. It’s not inevitable, but as a general rule things go much better in life when we listen to God’s Word.
Loved ones, it’s when we think we know better than God that things go off the rails for us. It’s when we just ignore God and don’t even think about him at all that things go badly. But when we live with the self-conscious recognition that Christ is Lord and we are not our own, then we’re steering away from foolishness and towards wisdom and blessing. As the Holy Spirit says in Proverbs 3:5,6, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
Cornelius Van Til was a Dutch-American theologian from the last century. He would sometimes tell the story of how he was on a train and he sat across from a man with his daughter on his lap. As she sat there, she was playfully slapping her father in the face. If the father hadn’t had her on his lap, she wouldn’t have been able to slap him. That little girl represents the world of people who can only slap God in the face with their unbelief because he is giving them life and breath and everything. That little girl represents the spirit of Ernest Henley, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” It’s the spirit of people who falsely believe themselves to be independent of God. But the reality is quite different. In the end, just as creatures, we all belong to someone and we all owe our life and breath and everything to Someone. A Christian has been bought with the precious blood of Christ so that he or she will acknowledge the truth with word and deed. We belong to the Lord. This is good because it glorifies God and serves for our benefit. AMEN.
PRAYER
Our Lord Jesus Christ,
How good it is for us to belong to you! How good it is that you have bought us with your precious blood. We praise your name for what you did on the cross to make us your servants. Lord, you bless us with your love, your goodness, your power, your wisdom. You’ve blessed us with life and for this we’ll forever be grateful. We love you, Lord, and we want to live a holy life in response. So please, through your Holy Spirit who lives in us, please make us heartily willing and ready from now on to live for you. We ask for your grace so we wouldn’t compartmentalize our lives. With our bodies and our souls, please help all of us to be completely committed to you. We think of those among us who may be struggling with smoking, alcohol, or food, or perhaps some other besetting sin. Would you please give them your strength so they can fight against these temptations and find victory over them. Lord, thank you for who are, for what you’ve done, and what you continue to do in our lives.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Dr. Wes Bredenhof, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
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