“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, for you were bought with a price” (I Corinthians 6:19-20).
How often, fellow Christian, do you ponder the truth of the verses above, and thus recognize, deep in your own heart, that you truly are not your own, you belong to another? That other One to whom you belong paid the ultimate price for you and for your rescue from the kingdom of darkness, He bought you with His life’s blood. And now, if you have embraced Him as Savior and call Him Lord, He seeks to be the true Sovereign over every arena of your life.
In The Theologians Craft, Gordon Conwell Theology Professor, David F. Wells wrote, “Our understanding of God, of ourselves, of the world, comes so slowly, so painfully slowly, that (life’s) summer passes and the winter arrives long before this fruit is ripe to be picked. Or so it seems. God, however, is not a quantity to be mastered, even though He can be known; and has revealed Himself with clarity. Our understanding of Him is measured, not by the speed our theological knowledge is processed, but by the quality of our determination to own His ownership of us through Christ in thought, word, and deed.”
That short paragraph is worth reading 3-5 times, or more, to allow its truth to soak into our soul.
We live in a day and age that celebrates self, you are the one who matters, no one can tell you what to do. It is a rugged individualism that cuts against the grain of, “…you are not your own…you were bought with a price.” What David Wells has asked us to consider is that our understanding of God is enhanced or diminished by the quality of our determination to own God’s ownership of us through Christ, an ownership that is to be revealed in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds.
Dare I suggest that we all, at one time or another, hinder our own spiritual growth because we want or feel the need to be in control, to call the shots in our lives.
Considering the Lordship of Christ over one’s life, Oswald Chambers wrote, “If we have received the Spirit of God, He will squeeze right through our lives, as if to ask, ‘Now where do I come into this relationship, where do I come into this vacation you have planned, or these new books you want to read?’ And He always presses the point until we learn to make Him our first consideration.”
How easy it is to carve out various niches in our lives, the niches into which Jesus fits nicely and the niches that belong to us. My friends, if you are His child through the miracle of the “new birth” it all belongs to Him, all of your time, all of your talents, all of your resources, all of your possessions. And since it is all His, our greatest fulfillment, in the various arenas of our lives will be when His Lordship is continually acknowledged over it all, because we have been bought with a price.
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