PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
1 Corinthians 6:15, 17, 19–20
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! . . . But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. . . .
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
CONSIDER THIS
If you are like me, you may enjoy your independence. In charge of myself, I can do what I want, when I want. For those of us who live in the United States, that version of freedom is deeply ingrained within us as a culture.
When someone else is in charge of me, I bristle under their direction. I may even resist guidance and obedience. Even if love is behind that guidance, and following another’s direction might be for my best, I may still press to do things my own way.
In today’s passage, Paul is resolved, unflinching, in his address to a wayward group of Christians. He wants to communicate that each individual, and then all of them as a community, are in union with Jesus. To summarize Paul: “You belong to Christ, your spirit as well as your body. You are not your own.”
In other words, you belong to Jesus.
This is an idea that is deeply rooted in the ancient covenant relationship God has with his people. As we read today’s passages, one can hear the echoes of Isaiah’s words in Isaiah 43:1: “But now, this is what the Lord says—he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.’” We are a people who belong to God, a royal priesthood in covenant relationship with our Creator (1 Peter 2:9).
Paul is communicating that we must understand our bodies as being in union with Jesus, belonging to Christ. We are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19). He is teaching us that one step on the path to experiencing the “measure of all the fullness of God” and “to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:19) is to steward and protect how we use our bodies, our holy temples, along this narrow way.
In a day when independence from God is seen as true liberation, Paul is trying to say that our union with Christ—belonging in whole to our master and savior—is freedom in its purest form. Our bodies are so precious to God that what we do with them is uniting Jesus with that action. Honoring Jesus with our body is paramount for growing in union with Christ.
Paul’s vision of union with Jesus is powerful. He helps us understand why offering our bodies to God is so important to our discipleship (Rom. 12:1–2). Our bodies belong to Jesus—the one who most loves and cares for us.
THE PRAYER
Lord Jesus, I am in you and you are in me. I will honor you with my body, as I belong to you. I will use my body, the temple of your Holy Spirit, to honor you. I will give you glory through both my public and private actions, knowing you are always in me. In Christ Jesus, I pray, amen.
THE QUESTIONS
There is a strong identification of Jesus with both his church and with its individual members. Do you feel that union with Christ daily in both private and public? How do you use your body to glorify God?
For the Awakening,
Dan Wilt
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2 Responses
This morning’s Wake-up call makes mention of 1 Peter 2:9, where we are told that we are, “ a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” I see no separation of responsibility here in this passage between so-called “laity” and “clergy “, in other words, while our functions are different, our responsibility to demonstrate the indwelling of Christ through His Spirit is shared by all His chosen people, both individually and corporately. It is right here at this juncture, that I believe the majority of the modern manifestation’s of Christ’s Church have dropped the ball. It is high time to follow Paul’s words to the church in Ephesus, “And he himself gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, equipping the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, till we all reach the unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.” (Ephesians 4:11-13) This will require mentoring by mature leadership alongside the babes in Christ, much more than what a sermon and Bible study alone can accomplish. Think Wesleyan classes and bands.
If you are a Christian, you are a temple of the Holy Spirit and Jesus is knocking on your closed doors so that He can turn the tables inside of you and purify His temple from deep within. Will you open the closed doors in your heart and let Him in and take full control?
Who is that knocking on your closed doors? It’s the risen Jesus Christ. Jesus, the Door-Knocker, is your hope for healing, inner peace, recovery, and sanity. See Revelation 3:20. (You can keep some of the doors of your heart closed to the living Jesus, but you can’t make Him stop knocking.)
Jesus is knocking on your closed doors. Open up to Him and live your life with all your doors always open to the risen Jesus. It takes courage and faith to open wide your closed doors to the living Jesus. The people who dare to continually do so are filled with the wonderful fruit of His Spirit. See Galatians 5;22-23.
Even when people
Try to padlock
Their heart
And to block
The sound
Of Christ’s knock,
It echos deeply
Within them
Like the tick-tock
Of a loud clock.