1 CORINTHIANS 3
16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20 and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” 21 So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
– 1 Corinthians 3:16-23
1 CORINTHIANS 3 SUBMIT YOUR BODIES TO THE LORD
A poem by ILMA inspired by these verses
When you were chosen by God to be part of his people
He gave you the Holy Spirit to dwell in you and become his temple
You are not your own because you belong to the Lord
Submit your bodies to him because you don’t belong to this world
God is holy and he requires his people to also be holy
Do not defile your bodies with the world’s system
Keep your entire being pure and unstained
Never allow human wisdom to corrupt you.
As humans, we tend to think that we own our bodies and that we can do whatever we want with it, but that is not what Paul was teaching the Corinthian church here. He tells them that God’s Spirit lives in every believer’s body and that we ought to keep it holy because we serve a holy God. It is so humbling that God chose to live in our sinful bodies. Without the Lord Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, we won’t have the privilege of being God’s temple. But how do we treat the temple of God? How do we make sure that we don’t desecrate or defile our own bodies? In 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 Paul tells the believers how to keep their temple pure. He said “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 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. So, glorify God in your body.”
What else do we do that defiles the body? We can abuse different kinds of substances that are not good for our health and lead us to do things that will open doors for more sins. Any kind of addiction such as smoking, drinking alcohol, food, work or bad habits of not eating healthy food but binging on things that are going to be harmful for us are ways of corrupting our own bodies. If we deprive ourselves of sleep and rest, we will eventually suffer from many other mental, emotional or physical illnesses.
REFLECTION
- Give examples of how we should keep our bodies as sacred temples of God.








