1 Corinthians 6:18-20

Who Am I?

A Question of Identity

In 2011, LeeAnn and I had the opportunity to take a week of vacation to Washington D.C. It felt like every single place we visited over that week was a place to be respected and held in reverence. We toured the White House, Capitol building, and Supreme Court. We went to the Vietnam Memorial, World War II Memorial, and the Holocaust Museum. Each place we went was a place of honor, so a certain amount of decorum was expected. Each building, monument, and museum was to be honored because of either the work that was done there or the era of history that the place represented and honored. Those places were identified as honored grounds and deserved respect. 

In this teaching concerning sexual immorality, Paul describes our bodies as the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Your identity can be defined as the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Your body is a place where God resides. The Temple was a place of honor and reverence. The Temple was identified as a place that deserved respect. If you recall, there were strict rules concerning who could enter which part of the Temple in the Old Testament and in the Gospels. The most restricted place was the Holy of Holies; the High Priest could only enter once a year. This, of course, was the place where the curtain was torn in two as Jesus died on the cross, showing that God was available to all. God’s seat on earth was no longer in the Holy of Holies. It is in your and my heart. Paul’s message to the Corinthians and to us is to treat your bodies as holy because the Holy Spirit resides in you. Your identity is found in being the temple of the Holy Spirit.