The following message was delivered
on Sunday morning, April 2, 1995, at the Trinity Baptist Church
in Montville, New Jersey. With our attention focused primarily
on verse 19b and verse 20 of this chapter, the words which
read as follows, you are not your own, for you were bought
with a price glorify God therefore in your body, I want us to consider
what I am calling the radical implications of salvation by
the cross of Christ. Now no one familiar with the
contents of the New Testament would dispute the statement that
the death of Jesus Christ upon a Roman instrument of execution
called a cross is central to the religion of the Bible. The message which we are called
upon to proclaim is actually designated in 1 Corinthians 1
18 as the word or the message of the cross. so central is the
cross of Christ that it becomes synonymous with the very message
of the Christian faith. The apostolic preaching is described
in 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 2 as a preaching of Christ and
Him as crucified. Further on in this very epistle,
the apostle teaches us in chapter 15 that the fundamental building
block in the gospel of our salvation is the truth that Christ died
for our sins according to the scriptures. And that same apostle,
in an epistle in which he has defended the fact that what Christ
did upon the cross has fully turned away all of the wrath
that we deserve for our sins, that most prolific and energetic
of all of the apostles declared in Galatians 6.14, God forbid
that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, for this reason, the
centrality of the cross in the New Testament is everywhere patent
and in a very real sense it is the doctrine of Christ crucified
that is the great reference point by which to measure all doctrines
as well as the seedbed out of which grow all of the major motives
and perspectives on the Christian life. Now we see this very clearly
in the passage that will be the focus of our exposition this
morning, verse 19b and verse 20 of 1 Corinthians chapter 6. But before we examine the text
itself, I want you to note with me, by way of considering the
setting of these words, that here in this paragraph, Paul
is obviously treating the subject of fornication, that is, illicit
sexual activity, In this particular setting, sexual activity that
was rife in the city of Corinth, that was rife throughout the
Greco-Roman world, in which fornication was considered no more sinful
than the scratching of an itching ear, as we find much of the thinking
in our own day where popular so-called family entertainment
as well as other more concentrated forms of sinful behavior are
rife with this mentality that fornication is not a sin. In this very paragraph, he concentrates
in dealing with the subject on a biblical view primarily of
the body. Eight times the word body appears
in this paragraph. And it is clear when the apostle
takes pen in hand to deal with the subject of fornication as
it was still being manifested as a problem in the ongoing sanctification
of the believers there at Corinth, that he did not have a simple
one-strand antidote to the sin of fornication. Unlike many in
our day who would say if a man is a Christian and he is struggling
with the sin of illicit sexual activity, he has some demon of
lust. and that that demon of lust ought
to be identified, named, and cast out, and when it is, he
will be delivered from any real ongoing struggles with the sin
of fornication. Well, there is not the slightest
suggestion in Paul's treatment of this subject in a context
in which it was a chronic problem that there was demonic activity
involved. There is not the slightest suggestion. There are others who would say,
well, the problem is if Christians are struggling with sins of sexual
impurity, it's because they have not gone on to a higher level
of Christian experience. They need either to be cleansed
from inbred sin, in the terminology of old Wesleyan perfectionism,
or in the language of many in our day, they need a further
or more intense baptism in the Holy Spirit, they need an additional
experience yet unobtained if they are to find fundamental
deliverance from the sin of fornication. And again, One reads the apostolic
treatment of the subject in its most concentrated portion here
in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and perhaps the only other place
that even comes close to this in its concentrated treatment
of the subject is 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 and there's not the
slightest suggestion by the apostle that the reason they are having
struggles with this sin is because they lack some higher experience
in the Holy Spirit. Now those are facts, my brethren,
and unless we believe that the problem of fornication in our
day is so utterly unique that it needs an antidote that goes
beyond that which was given by an inspired apostle then we had
better come back to that which the Holy Ghost has given us in
the Word of God and not pretend to be wiser than God Himself. And the antidote which the Apostle
gives to the sin of fornication is not a simple, one-note answer. It is a complex, intricate chord
of Biblical truth. truths that must first of all
come to the enlightened understanding through the ministry of the Holy
Spirit, which must then be believingly embraced by the child of God,
and then practically implemented in terms of the demands which
those truths make upon the believer. Now that's not a simple answer. And this is why people flock
to those who say, are you weary of your struggles with sexual
impurity? Here is the answer. Let's name
the demons of lust and cast them out and you'll be forever delivered. or come and get this coat of
many colors experience and you will be delivered you see all
of us wants the easy way out but there is no simple easy way
out according to the scriptures And in this very paragraph, the
apostle brings before the Corinthian believers such truths as the
purpose for which the body was created. Verse 13. Meats for
the belly, the belly for meats, but God shall bring to naught
both it and them, but the body is not for fornication, but for
the Lord. He says the starting point In
dealing with illicit sexual activity is to answer the question, why
do I have a body in the first place? Why do I have a body in
the first place? A body with sexual drives and
sexual organs and the capacity for sexual activity. Paul says
you have a body that was given you for the service of the Lord
who gave it. You start by letting that truth
filter down in and take possession of the soul. Then he says you
consider the ultimate destiny of the body in resurrection glory. And he says the Lord is for the
body and God both raised the Lord and will raise us up through
his power. Why does he bring in the doctor
of the resurrection when dealing with the problem of fornication?
Well, what he's saying is that body given for the service of
God is given to serve God not in this life only, but in the
ages to come, in resurrection glory and in resurrection power. It wasn't given to be a little
temporal playground to titillate your nerve endings according
to your own itches and urges. God has placed such a dignity
upon the body that he's going to raise it up at the last day.
As surely as he raised the Lord Jesus, that body with which you
are now tempted to fornicate is a body that bears the dignity
of one mark for resurrection glory. Don't demean its dignity
by indulging in fornication. He plants the doctrine of the
resurrection as part of the antidote to fornication. Then he goes
on to bring in the doctrine of union with Christ. Verse 15. Do you not know that your bodies
are members of Christ? In a way that I cannot understand,
not just my spirit. He states that later. He that
is joined to the Lord is one spirit. But he says your bodies
are members of Christ. in a way that I do not fully
understand, yet I believe because it is stated in the word of God.
I, in the totality and integrity of my redeemed humanity, am part
of the mystic body of Christ. I am united to Christ, the head,
and that includes my body. Shall I then, he says, take away
the members of Christ and join them to a harlot? What is the
antidote to sexual impurity? It is not a great spiritual experience
or casting out some demon of lust. It's absorbing these great
truths. Why did God give me a body? He gave me a body in which to
serve Him. This body will serve Him in resurrection
glory. This body is united to Jesus
Christ and He goes on then to deal with these other facets
of spiritual reality, the peculiar self-destructive nature of fornication,
the awesome fact of the inhabitation of the very Holy Spirit Himself
in our bodies. And you see, in each one of these
things, He is not telling the Corinthians, you need to get
something you don't have. He's saying, come to grips with
what already is. And there's all the difference
in the world between those two things. He's not saying seek
something you do not yet have. He says come to grips with the
realities that already are. But then as he deals with these
six or seven strands that constitute the biblical antidote to sexual
impurity or to fornication, notice that the climactic one draws
us right to the cross of Christ. fully aware that there's a debate
as to whether or not the question mark in verse 19 ought to be
found where it is in the old 1901 after the words which you
have from God or whether it ought to be found and ye are not your
own it really is irrelevant for the purposes of what I want to
underscore and so I will follow the translators of the 1901 where
the question mark is placed after the words which you have from
God, and then we have these words, You are not your own, for you
were bought with a price. Glorify God therefore in your
body. And in these words we have what
I'm calling the radical implications of salvation. by the cross of
Christ. And notice with me first of all,
as we consider these words, the serious, the searching affirmation
with which they begin. You are not your own. To every Corinthian believer,
The apostle makes this very solemn, searching affirmation, you are
not your own. Now in a day when men are constantly
being urged to do their own thing, to be their own person, where
self-realization and self-actualization and self-fulfillment and self-expression
are the gods of modern man to be told, you are not your own
is nothing short of radical. But that's exactly what the text
says. and that the apostle affirms
this in this setting with reference to the sin and problem of fornication
in particular that it is not limited to that problem is clear
because in the very next chapter dealing with a totally different
subject he says in verse 23 you were bought with a price do not
become the bond slaves of men He picks up the same strand of
thought and emphasizes it in a totally different setting and
for totally different reasons. But our text begins with this
solemn affirmation, you are not your own. Now what do they mean? Well they mean exactly what they
say. That the believer in Jesus Christ embrace the word of the cross,
the one who has seen himself condemned, guilty, standing under
the wrath and curse of God because of his sin? and has looked away
from himself to Jesus Christ as presented in the gospel, God's
divinely appointed sin-bearer, the one who, though he knew no
sin, was made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness
of God in him, everyone who has come to faith in that Savior,
the Lord Jesus, who has received forgiveness and pardon from the
virtue of His cross, who has been accepted before God on the
grounds of the doing and the dying of the Son of God, of every
such one, the Word of God says, you are not your own. You are not your own. Now he had earlier been treating,
and I've indicated, he emphasizes very clearly the doctrine of
the body, eight times the word body is found in the paragraph,
but here he does not say, and your bodies are not your own,
but he says you, in the totality and integrity of what makes you,
you. Body, soul and spirit, your body
with all of its faculties and appetites and capacities, your
mind with all of its faculties and capacities and energies,
your soul, your passion, your intellect, your will, your emotions,
all that makes you, you, you are not your own. No part of
you belongs to you. You are not your own. No faculty, no capacity, no ability,
no possession is your own independent of Jesus Christ. Now, that obviously
has tremendous implications in this context. It meant that the
Corinthians had to begin to think in terms of the fact that they
were not free to choose what to do with their bodies and their
bodily appetites and passions, that they were not free to choose
the ends for which they would live and the standards by which
they would regulate their lives. they were to face this simple,
solemn affirmation in the recognition in their heart of hearts that
they were in no sense to regard themselves as their own property. You are not your own. If you're a Christian, you are
not your own. But then he follows this affirmation
with what I'm calling a satisfying explanation. How is it that we
have come to the place as Christians where it can be said of us that
we are not our own? Well, the solemn affirmation
of that fact is followed by this satisfying explanation for you
were bought with a price. You are not your own for. You are not your own. Here's
the explanation. You were bought with a price. Notice he does not say you are
not your own for you were created by God. Now that would be true.
That's the emphasis of Psalm 100. We're to come into his presence
with thanksgiving and into his courts and gates with praise.
We're to know that the Lord is God. It is he who has made us
and not we ourselves. And we are, as the old writers
would say, we are God's possession by right of creation. He made
us. But you see, in this passage,
God's ownership is not referred to the fact of creation. but
is referred to the reality of redemption you are not your own
for you were bought with a price you were bought with a price
and while in this passage he does not say who bought us and
what is the price that was paid to buy us From the analogy of
scripture, we know that this is a reference to nothing less
than the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, which, as it is
set before us in many facets of biblical categories, as one
of those facets, it is viewed as a ransom paid. It is a price
paid by which to release us from bondage. And the scripture makes
it abundantly clear that we were held in bondage to our sin and
were in a state of slavery because of our sin. And in that condition,
we stood under the penalty of a broken law. And until that
law was satisfied, we could not be justly released from our bondage
to that law, and to its condemnation, and from its enslaving power. The same family of words is used
to describe the work of our Lord Jesus as the one who did the
purchasing. In Revelation chapter 5 and verse
9, words familiar to many of you, I know. John is given to
see realities in heaven, and one of them that he saw was described
in chapter 5 with the Lamb in the midst of the throne. Verse
9, and they sing a new song saying, worthy are you to take the book
and to open the seals thereof, for you were slain, and did purchase
unto God with your blood men of every tribe and tongue and
people and nation, and made them to be unto our God a kingdom
increased, and they reign upon the earth. you were slain and
did purchase unto God with your blood." So when the Apostle gives
us the satisfying explanation for this solemn affirmation that
we are not our own, that we have been bought with a price, he
is referring to nothing less than the work that Christ accomplished
when he spilled his blood in the agony and shame of the vicarious
curse bearing of Golgotha. The price was nothing less than
that which is described by Peter in 1 Peter 1 verses 18 through
20, on the heels of an exhortation as to how we are to walk in holiness
and in the fear of God with an eye to our future judgment. We
are to do so all the while knowing something, and what we are to
know is given to us in verse 18 and following knowing that
you were redeemed you were bought you were ransomed you were purchased
not with corruptible things with silver or gold from your vain
manner of life handed down from your fathers but with precious
blood as of a lamb without blemish and without spot even the blood
Christ. And so when the Apostle gives
as his satisfying explanation for this affirmation that we
are not our own, the explanation is we have been bought with a
price. We were purchased at the price
of the bloodletting of the Son of God himself. And surely This explanation satisfies
any rational creature who is thinking in any way after the
pattern of the Word of God. If one so worthy as the Lord
Jesus, God incarnate, the God-man, the one who described in Philippians
chapter 2 emptied himself taking the form of a servant, if he
should lay down his life to win us back to God, if he should
pay the price of his own life's blood, purchasing us at the price
of his own agony upon the cross, surely it is reasonable that
all those thus purchased should say, I give myself away is all that
I can do. Love so amazing, so divine, not
only demands but shall have my life, my all. Romans 14 tells us that this
was one of the very explicit purposes that our Lord had in Romans 14 verses 7 through 9, passage we considered in conjunction
with our dealing with the subject of Christian liberty, and you
see how interlaced is God's truth. None of us lives to himself,
verse 7. None dies to himself. No true
Christian lives to himself. Self is not the focal point of
his life. He does not die to himself, whether
we live, we live unto the Lord. Whether we die, we die unto the
Lord. Whether we live, therefore, or
die, we are the Lord's. We are not our own. We are the
Lord's. Why? For to this end Christ died
and lived that he might be Lord of both the dead and of the living. And so he sets before these Corinthians
this simple truth. Are you Corinthians united to
Christ by faith? Have you come in the felt awareness
of your sinfulness and hell-deservingness? And have you found peace of conscience,
pardon, forgiveness and acceptance through the blood of Christ?
Then recognize that in that transaction in which you received so much,
you gave up all claims to being your own. You are not your own,
for you were bought with a price. And the price was nothing less
than the blood of the incarnate God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. Then he follows that declaration,
you are not your own. The explanation, you were bought
with a price with this statement of their solemn obligation. The last part of the text What
does this then say to the Corinthians and what does it say to us? What
obligation does it lay upon us? Glorify God, therefore, in your
body. And the little particle translated,
therefore, is an unusual connective. It's not the ordinary connective.
And one careful student of the language in which Paul wrote
is suggested the translation should be to give the sense of
it, by all means then glorify God. I am not my own because
I've been bought with a price. It is clear then that sensual
gratification cannot be my golden life. It is clear then that I
am not at liberty to express my sexuality in terms of anything
that approaches the mentality of our day. It is my body to
do with as I please. The whole concept of sexual preference
assumes the notion of sexual autonomy. And I have a right
to determine what I shall do with my sexuality. No, the God
who made me a sexual being has defined the parameters in which
my sexuality is to be expressed to his glory. And though I was
the slave of sin, and as the slave of sin in the language
of Romans 6 presented my members instruments of unrighteousness
unto sin, if I am a Christian, I am no longer my own. I am no longer the slave of sin
and of the devil. I am the purchased property of
the Lord Jesus Christ. I am not my own. I've been bought
with a price. Therefore, I am under a blessed
but nonetheless solemn obligation to glorify God in my body. I know some of you have translations
that add, and in your spirit which are His, and though that
is a wonderful truth, we are to glorify God in our spirits
which along with our bodies belong to Him. There is strong indication
that when Paul penned this letter, he did not pen those words. that
they were not a part of the original letter that Paul sent to the
Corinthians. For the great issue with the
Corinthians was the issue of the sanctity of the body, and
what shall I do with my bodily appetites? And he concludes by
saying, you as Christians have a solemn obligation, and it is
this, to glorify God in your body. because it is purchased property,
because it has been purchased at the price of the bloodletting
of the Son of God, you are to glorify God in that body. And what glorifies God? Well, God is glorified in my
body. when the activities of my body
are determined by a right rule and are carried out by a right
motive to a right end. God is glorified in my body when
its activities are determined by a right rule and that rule
is the law and word of God. And that God has told me in his
word that fornication is sin, that adultery is sin, that God
has told me that gluttony is sin, that God has told me that
laziness is sin. that God has told me that a host
of bodily activities in which men indulge are violations of
his law. The body was never given for
those activities and they are present only because of the horrible
intrusion of sin into the human race. And in a day when pagan
philosophy on the one hand either said bodily actions or a matter
of indifference, all that matters is the state of the soul and
of the mind, and demigrated the sanctity and the place of the
body, or worshipped bodily appetites and passions, it was nothing
less than radical intrusion upon that whole mindset to say that
in the Christian faith there is a wholesome not preoccupation,
but a wholesome concentration on the body. For it's in our
bodily existence that we serve God now and shall serve him forever
in the age to come. And so it shouldn't surprise
us to find such statements as these. Turn over, please, to
Philippians and see the perspective of the apostle. He is in prison at Rome, and he's writing of the various activities
that he knows are going on outside the prison among certain gospel
preachers, and he's indicating his response to those realities. And in that setting he says,
verse 19, I know, Philippians 119, that this shall turn out
to my salvation. through your supplication and
the supply of the spirit of Jesus Christ according to my earnest
expectation and hope that in nothing shall I be put to shame
but that with all boldness as always so now also Christ shall
be magnified now look at the language in my body Christ shall be magnified in
my body, whether by life or by death, for to me to live is Christ. Christ is the focal point of
my life. How do I live out my life but
in a bodily existence? Therefore, if my passion to please
and honor and glorify Christ is something more than a passing
devotional notion, Christ must be magnified in my body. If my body must be confined within
a house arrest circumstance, In that setting, I want Christ
magnified in my body. In my reaction to my captors,
I want to magnify Christ in my body. When that very body was
placed in stocks and its back was lacerated there at Philippi,
he had the same passion that Christ be magnified in that body. And though the hands and feet
were restrained, the heart and the tongue were not restrained. And so he and his companions
sang praises to God at midnight. Later on in this very epistle,
when he thinks of the return of the Lord Jesus, notice what
he longs for according to verse 20 of chapter 3 of Philippians. For our citizenship or commonwealth
is in heaven whence we wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now notice what he says. God
who shall perfect our spirits from all the remnants of sin,
so that we may be able to serve him with sinless mind and affection."
Now he looked forward to that. That's why to depart and to be
with Christ was far better, even though the intermediate state
is abnormal when soul and body are temporarily separated. But
Paul's great earnest longing was not primarily for the intermediate
state, but it was the return of Christ and the consummation
of redemption, at which time he said he shall fashion anew
the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body
of his glory. You see, the apostle had a wholesome
biblical perspective on the place of the body, and it's in this
body and in this body alone that we serve God for whatever allotment
of time is marked out for us. and therefore a solemn obligation
is upon you and upon me who claim to be the purchased property
of Jesus Christ to glorify God in our bodies. Now I ask you by way of application,
dear child of God, have you come to grips with the simple realities
of 1 Corinthians 6, 19b and verse 20, that as a Christian You are
in no sense your own property. You are not your own. You are not your own. That means
that all of your bodily appetites, all of your bodily passions,
all of your faculties and all of your energies, they are in
no sense yours. To be self-determining in their
activities, to be self-determining in the standards by which you
will regulate those activities. You are not your own. And why are you not your own?
You were bought for the price. Well, God willing, we're going
to come to the Lord's table tonight. And there on the table will be
sitting the loaf and the fruit of the vine. Now when you take
that loaf and take the cup, can you do so intelligently and joyfully
with this realization by claiming a faith interest in the body
of Christ given up in death for me? in the blood of Christ shed
for me can you intelligently and joyfully from the heart say
that means I am not my own and I'm glad I am not I'm glad I've
been bought by another I am glad I don't belong to myself you
see If you partake of the bread and of the cup, and you have
any irritation and reservation with this solemn affirmation,
you're not your own. To some degree, you're involved in an acted-out lie. To take of that bread and to
take of that cup is to say that I have not only come to in the
provisions for sinners secured by the body and blood of Christ. You're not only saying that I
live by the virtue of Christ crucified, I feed by faith upon
the Lord Jesus. He is my life. I live by faith
in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That
I'm saying in a fresh affirmation of joy. I'm not my own. I've been born with a price. And the price was nothing less
than the horrible, shameful, agonizing death of the Lord Jesus. Can you say as you come to the
table, That being true, that I am not my own, I am committed
to glorify the God of redeeming mercy and grace in this body. That is, that people seeing me
will know something of why God made man in his own image. that
I may, by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the enablement
of divine grace, live for the very purpose for which I was
made, namely, to glorify God, whether I eat or drink or whatsoever
I do, I am to do all to the glory of God. Therefore, you see, I
cannot detach what I'm declaring at the table from what I do at
my own dining room table day by day? Do I imbibe the kinds
of foods ordained by God for adequate, balanced nourishment
in such amounts as are necessary to give me the energy to carry
out my God-given tasks to the praise of God? Or does my table
become, in a sense, an idol's temple at which I vow to worship
the God of my belly, and to take in food simply because I like
it, and in such amounts as I want to take, not such amounts as
I need. You see, to glorify God in your
body means That at your table, your dealings with food are cross-centered,
are Christ-centered, have reference to the glory of God. What I eat,
what I drink, carry it into every relationship. These Corinthians
were to carry it in its context into the whole matter of their
sexual urges and capacities and powers and even the past practices
all had to be evaluated by this new reality. You're not sure. You've been bought with a price.
You're to glorify God in your body. because of the presence of children,
young people, and I would not be the occasion of sin. Do you
married couples see what this means? The whole notion that
what any married couple does behind closed doors is their
business? I reject that! It is God's business! Because He's behind the bedroom
door. He is marked out in his holy word, if not a detailed
manual of sexual practices that please him, he has given broad
strokes of guidelines by which to educate the conscience. And
the scripture speaks of that which is against nature. And
the scripture speaks of let all untunedness not be named amongst
you as become sick. And some of you who've imbibed
the world's notions that a marriage ring and a marriage certificate
are a license to any practice of sexual intimacy, we choose,
no, you're not your own. You've been bought with a price.
Glorify God. You go to your Bible with the
prayer, Lord, help me to discover from your word the principles
that ought to regulate our intimate life so that we are conscious
that we glorify you in our hearts. You take that into every single
area of bodily function, bodily appetite, bodily capacities. And as we come to the Lord's
table tonight, make God grant that for us as the Lord's people,
there will be a fresh and a joyful reality, we are not alone. We've been bought with a price,
and that our deepest passion and longing is that the God who
bought us would be glorified in these bodies while we get
serving in this life in our bodily existence, and then to know that
in the resurrection we shall be given a body in which we will
serve him without weariness without sickness and disease and pain
and without even the need for sleep. For there shall be no
night there and the scripture says they shall serve him day
and night and follow the Lamb with serenity. way, doing your
own thing, and once in a while, if your conscience troubles you,
think about Jesus and what he did on the cross, and God's unconditional
love, and it'll all be fixed up. My friends, that's bogus,
damning, substitute Christian faith. True Biblical Christianity
says salvation is all all provided by Him, when He cried out, It
is finished! There is nothing we can add to
that which He did. But when the Spirit of God opens
the eyes of a guilt-stricken sinner to the wonder of Christ's
accomplished work upon the cross, That sinner who's prepared to
abandon all confidence in himself, in his works, in his performance,
past, present, or anticipated in the future, the same Holy
Spirit who brings the sinner to abandon all hope of trusting
in himself, and brings that sinner to rely wholly and solely upon
Christ and His sacrifice on behalf of sinners always reveals such
a loveliness in Christ that that sinner who rests wholly upon
Him gives himself completely to Him and says, Here, Lord,
I give myself away. This is all that I can do. I'm glad to be purchased out
of the slave market to sin, out from under the bondage and condemnation
of my sin, I'm delighted, Lord, to be purchased to be your bond
slave. For to this end you died in robes
that you might be Lord, both of the dead and of the living. So I leave you with that simple
fundamental, very elementary meditation this morning. You
are not your own. What's the explanation for that?
You were bought with a price. What is the implication? Glorify
God, therefore, in your body. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank you for
your holy word. We thank you that it is a lamp
unto our feet and a light to our pathway. We pray that you
would take this portion of your word and so write it upon our
hearts that with renewed joy we may own the reality of what
you have made us by your grace, your purchased no longer our
own. And we're ashamed that so often
we take what is yours and use it in ways that dishonor you. Lord, have mercy upon us. And
as we anticipate coming to the table tonight, the privilege
that will be ours to take of the emblems of the broken body
and the poured out blood of the Son of God, may we not by our
partaking, declare a lie. But oh, that our partaking may
be an affirmation from the heart of our joyful acknowledgment
that we are not our own, we have been bought with a price, and
we are committed in the strength and grace of your Spirit to glorify
you in our bodies. Seal then your word to our hearts,
we pray. And may your blessing rest upon
us as we leave this place, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.