Holiness

Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are. … And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful. 1 Cor 3:16-17, 23-4:2

You can’t lose your life by giving it back to the Person who gave it to you in the first place.

As the holy Spirit lives in us, He continually makes us Holy just as the Holy of Holies was made holy by the presence of God. The builders of the tabernacle and the two temples had to construct the temple in a holy fashion with gold, and fine linens even though it was not their craftsmanship that ultimately made those buildings holy. Even though it is the presence of the Holy Spirit that makes us holy, we are still to live Holy lives. We are Christ’s temple here on earth as we bring the presence of God wherever we go just as Christ was God’s temple while he was on earth (John 1:14, John 14:10-11, Colosians 1:19, 2:9). God makes us holy by dwelling in us, and He wants us to be holy as well since we are His temple.

The blood of Jesus is the only soap that can clean the stain of your sin.

While we are not culpable for the state of the world we are born into, we are culpable for every time we act in a way that is not holy. To be holy means to be separate, set apart for God and dedicated, which means what is holy cannot cannot mix with unholy. Either something is set apart for God and dedicated or it isn’t. The only way to clean a temple that we have made unholy is to wash it in the blood of Jesus. And just as the blood of the lambs on the doorposts of the houses set apart the Israelite houses from the houses of the Egyptians, so the blood of Christ on our temple sets us aside from the rest of the world. 

Unless you get to a new place of freedom, you will want to return to your old place of bondage.

One of our must fundamental desires is to have someone to belong to (Adam and Eve belonged to each other, the children of Israel belonged to the household of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the Church belongs to Christ). Before we meet Jesus, we belong to ourselves and to sin. If we don’t fully join ourselves to Christ and His community, we will return to the community and fellowship with sin. As we are set apart by Jesus’ blood for God, we become stewards of the gospel. As stewards we will guard our temple as well as the other temples of God we are in fellowship with. Since we are God’s temple and are set apart by Him and for Him, we can have fellowship with Him once again as we were intended to in the Garden of Eden.