Glorify God in Your Body and in Your Spirit

GLORIFY GOD IN YOUR BODY AND IN YOUR SPIRIT (1Corinthians 6:20)

John Chapter 13 speaks of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet at the Last supper, and through to John Chapter 17 Jesus speaks his final words to his disciples before he and his disciples go out from the Passover Feast into the garden where he is betrayed by Judas and arrested. Between Chapters 13 and 17 Jesus prepares his disciples for the new life of the Kingdom within them that will come after his resurrection. He shares with them of the coming of the Holy Spirit that will abide with them and transform them and lead them into all truth concerning the words he has spoken to them. 
In Chapter 17 he finishes with his astounding prayer to his Father concerning the glory of God that will be seen through them and through all those that come after them that truly believe in his indwelling presence. 

John 17:22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

This remarkable Scripture tells us that we have been given a share of the glory of God that was given to Jesus. This glory of God is exhibited by our oneness with God and our unity with one another so that the world will know that Jesus was sent into the world by the Father. 
The glory of God is the outward expression of the awe and wonder of an unseen God who dwells within us as we consciously dwell within him. In this Scripture Jesus is praying that we will see that glory of God at work in our lives. We will see ourselves being present with him where he is in his resurrected human form, and at the same time he is where we are in our day to day circumstances no matter what they are. When we take hold of that fact by our faith, we can go though any trial or tribulation because he is with us in it, comforting, encouraging, strengthening and empowering us.

Paul tells us that our spirit carries the inner glory of God as we acknowledge that we are joined in one spirit to his spirit, and that our bodies are the outward expression of that inner glory. 
1 Corinthians 6:20 For you were bought at a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. 
God does the supernatural work of bringing his will to pass in our inner lives and we make ourselves available for him to express himself in our outer bodily lives in a simple and often very ordinary and unspectacular manner. He does not give us his glory for us to take any outer glory for ourselves, but he can be glorified through us. It is not a matter of our physical appearance or performance. We may be young and energetic or elderly and frail, educated or uneducated, glamourous or plain, rich or poor, it doesn’t matter. All he needs in us is a yielded heart to express the power of the love and wisdom that he wishes to bring about in our world.

The Bible tells us that Jesus did not have a spectacular physical appearance that drew people to him as some kind of celebrity. He was a plain and ordinary looking person.
Isaiah 53:2 For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no stateliness about him and he was not suave or handsome that we should want to stare at him, and he had no appeal that we should be attracted to him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces. He was shunned, and we did not highly regard him. 

Jesus came to embody the nature of the Godhead and to glorify God in his body and not impress the world with any success or celebrity status. 
John 17:4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. 
Jesus saw the eternal glory that awaited him and he knew that whatever his body looked like or how well it could physically perform it was sufficient to fulfil the will of his Father and glorify him on this earth. Jesus said A body have you prepared for me; ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God. (Hebrews 10:5)
Jesus knew that his body was there to embody God’s purpose, and that gave everything that happened in his body its true meaning.

Paul understood this reality concerning his own body and that all that mattered to him was who he was in Christ. He knew his body was simply a vessel to express the inner glory of God through him and he held his body together as best he could just for that.
1Corinthians 9:27 But I discipline my body and bring it under control, just in case that after preaching to others, I should end up letting God down.
He was very aware of his physical infirmities and ailments and knew he had no glamour to impress the crowd. 
2Corinthians 10:10 “For his letters,” they say, “are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.
Paul knew that no matter what his physical limitations were that he just had to be there doing his best and letting God do the rest. 
He also knew that the church people sometimes derisively compared him to other self-appointed apostles and thought of him as a bit of a loser, but he told them he wasn’t going to compete or compare himself with them. His last word on the matter was ‘he who glories, let him glory in the Lord’ For not he who commends himself is approved, but he whom the Lord commends (vs.18). 
Paul knew that outward appearances could be deceptive. What looks strong on the outside may be pathetic on the inside and what looks feeble on the outside may be strong and durable on the inside. Living creatures of many species do their best to glamorize the outside in order to look attractive or even tough – puffer fish and peacocks 

It was around three hundred years after Paul’s ministry that the Church began to glorify the outward appearance of things in just about every aspect of Christian practice. The early Church prior to that time was not interested in worldly power or influence. There were no genuine apostles or prophets that held celebrity status or lavishly enriched themselves as ministers of the Gospel. 
But then the Emperor Constantine declared himself as being a Christian and made Christianity the main religion of Rome, and he created Constantinople, which became the most powerful city in the world, and from that point on over the next few centuries Christianity began to take on the status of ‘Christendom’ and in many ways it resembled a worldly Christian kingdom (and still does) and outward power replace inner strength. However, the heart of Christianity has remained alive and well and devoted men and women up to this day give themselves, spirit soul and body, to live their lives to glorify God through Jesus Christ and to bless millions and millions of people. 

We may be living in the times when the Holy Spirit is calling people back into the kind of inner focus upon the glory of God that can dwell within us and be expressed through us no matter how impressive or unimpressive weak we may appear on the outside. 
We may be living in the times when Jesus as head over the Church is calling forth his Bride Company to be ready for him with hearts that respond to his love and wish to spend more time in his presence.
We may be living in the times once again when the Father is speaking to us as beloved brothers and sisters of his Son Jesus to express his glory through his Body the Church, the Body of Christ. 

Does the Church as the Body of Christ glorify God and reflect the nature of God in love and unity? (John 13:35), and is the Church salt and light in the world (Matthew 5:13)?
The Church once was all of those things and it can become all of those things once again.
The logical way for the corporate expression of God’s glory through his Body in the earth is for those individuals who call themselves Church to personally live in a new way of life in Christ that offers hope for people to live a new kind of human life that is not prey to the vengeful and unforgiving patterns of this world that destroy the human soul.

When Paul wrote to the churches that made up ‘the Church’ he taught them pastorally as individuals with a personal responsibility to reflect the glory of God in their own bodies and that that would translate into a corporate expression of the glory of God in the Body of Christ. In his apostolic capacity he also addressed the Church corporately, not with the business of having political influence but with the same spiritual issues of love and forgiveness and unity. His words to the church in Rome stated this 

Romans 12:1 present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (logicos latreia – logical service – the logical way to serve God!), and be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…

He taught them of the inner spiritual pathway of spending valuable time with God and in his Word that leads to the finding of the true eternal self. As that true identity of being one in spirit with the Lord begins to take shape in a person’s life they begin to grow in faith in the mercy and grace of God that is freely available to them. Sometimes you see God shining through as they grow in confidence of who they really are in God, and what they really believe concerning his power to reorder and transform a person’s soul. Their bodies have been presented to God as holy and acceptable to him and have become more available to influence and overcome the artificial imaginations and ideologies and hollow power structures that abound in the world immediately around them. That is the only logical way for the corporate expression of the Body of Christ to emerge out of a multitude of singular gleams of light that glorify God in the earth.