Bodies and Souls
I Corinthians 6:14–20
“By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. 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! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 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.”
We are mind and body unions in ourselves and neither are we just our material bodies and immaterial souls but both interacting at th me same time. God calls us to worship Him completely and live in holiness (I Pet 1:16), denying illicit carnal desires but enjoying legitimate ones with our bodies within His boundaries for our own good. We offer our beings and that includes our bodies, as living sacrifices to God (Rom 12:1). So I do not necessarily agree when CS Lewis said we do not have souls, we are souls and we have bodies, the distinction is slightly more nuanced: Dr Angus Menuge of Concordia University in Wisconsin in 2011 says that "if we want to account for consciousness, mental causation and reasoning, we need some entity over and above the body. This entity must be simple, have thoughts as inseparable parts, persist as a unity over time, and have active power. That sounds like a soul." Indeed, as Job maintains, "the breath of the Almighty gives me life" (Job 33:4). There is a liberty in which Christ has made us free, and in which we must stand fast. But certainly we should never carry this liberty so far as to put ourselves back into the power of any desire or appetite that used to enslave us (I Cor 6:11). Let us always remember as gratitude to God in Christ, the Apostle Paul tells us elsewhere to offer “thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness… Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever- increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.”
“By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. 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! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 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.”
We are mind and body unions in ourselves and neither are we just our material bodies and immaterial souls but both interacting at th me same time. God calls us to worship Him completely and live in holiness (I Pet 1:16), denying illicit carnal desires but enjoying legitimate ones with our bodies within His boundaries for our own good. We offer our beings and that includes our bodies, as living sacrifices to God (Rom 12:1). So I do not necessarily agree when CS Lewis said we do not have souls, we are souls and we have bodies, the distinction is slightly more nuanced: Dr Angus Menuge of Concordia University in Wisconsin in 2011 says that "if we want to account for consciousness, mental causation and reasoning, we need some entity over and above the body. This entity must be simple, have thoughts as inseparable parts, persist as a unity over time, and have active power. That sounds like a soul." Indeed, as Job maintains, "the breath of the Almighty gives me life" (Job 33:4). There is a liberty in which Christ has made us free, and in which we must stand fast. But certainly we should never carry this liberty so far as to put ourselves back into the power of any desire or appetite that used to enslave us (I Cor 6:11). Let us always remember as gratitude to God in Christ, the Apostle Paul tells us elsewhere to offer “thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness… Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever- increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.”
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