Soul Proprietor.

In this past Sunday’s sermon, Pastor Cole spoke on the importance of core character. He shared a quote he’d heard some time ago: “All shine on the outside, and all sham on the inside.”

Scripture informs us that Jesus had a controversy with the religious leaders of ancient Israel: there was plenty of form and ritual, and all the “right things” were being done in terms of worship protocol, but the lives of the leaders were out of sync with the heart of God. But the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Didn’t the one who made the outside make the inside as well?” (Luke 11:39-40) The crisis of the modern Nazarene church is that, in many instances, we have neglected to emphasize the importance of holiness doctrine in conjunction with holy living.

The apostle Paul picks up the theme, warning his fellow Christians in Corinth. Some scholars believe that the Corinthian culture was so influential that Christians had adopted Corinthian sayings that ran counter to the truth of God’s word. In First Corinthians 6, we see Paul responding to the error inherent in the cultural sayings of that time (such as “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food”, “All things are lawful to me”), error which was evident in the behavior of the Corinthian church.

In addressing the Corinthians’ belief that sexual indiscretion was not a sin because they felt there was no moral relevance to how they used their physical bodies, Paul said: Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin a person commits is outside of the body” – but the immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? (First Corinthians 6:18-19)

We do not belong to ourselves. Pastor Cole used the analogy of landlord and tenant: the tenant is permitted to manage a particular property, but the landlord is by definition the property owner. You and I are tenants, charged with managing our bodies, and God is the owner of our bodies. We are His property. As holiness people, we must provide the Holy Spirit with a body in which He is pleased to live. He is concerned about the core of our character, because we represent the character of Christ to the world. We should be concerned also.

Tenant, don’t get evicted. Manage your Landlord’s property well.