Glorify God in Your Bodies and in Your Souls (1 Corinthians 6:20)

1 Cor. 6:20. Therefore glorify God in your bodies and in your souls, which are God’s.

This follows directly from the fact that you have been purchased and have become a temple of the Spirit. But in its essence it is the conclusion of all that has been said against the passionate and fleshly life. Do nothing that has been condemned in these points, but do the opposite, and you will glorify God both in spirit and in body. Whoever is temperate, chaste, abstemious, industrious, and ready for all manner of works performed by the body in fulfillment of the commandments, glorifies God in his body. Whoever always remembers God and glorifies His great beneficence shown to us in our redemption, whoever, having become a participant in the Spirit, lives a spiritual life in the fulfillment of God’s commandments and in all the struggles of pleasing God, glorifies God in his spirit. When we are such, then through us will be fulfilled what the Lord has commanded: “Let your light shine before men so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). “As the heavens glorify Him, not by emitting a sound but by their appearance arousing wonder and inclining men to glorify the Creator, so should we also glorify Him, indeed even more so. For not so much does heaven glorify God as does a holy soul. ‘Glorify therefore,’ he says, ‘God,’ that is, show forth God both in your body and in your spirit, ‘which are God’s.’ He called them God’s not only because God created them, but also because when they became estranged from Him, He again acquired them at the price of the blood of His Son” (Saint Chrysostom). “See how he refers everything to Christ, how he lifts us up to heaven. You, he says, are members of Christ, you are a temple of the Spirit; do not therefore become members of a harlot; you dishonor not your own body, for your body is not your own, but Christ’s. By these words he shows the love of Christ, who made our body His own, and at the same time restricts our vicious power over it. If your body is not yours, he says, then you do not have the right to dishonor it, since it belongs to another, especially since it belongs to the Lord, or to defile the temple of the Spirit. For if someone who enters a private house and commits disorder in it is subject to great punishment, then think what torment awaits him who makes the temple of the King a den of robbers. Considering all this, be ashamed of Him who dwells in you; this is the Comforter; fear Him who has united Himself with you and claimed you as His own; this is Christ. Have you not become a member of Christ’s body? Remember this and be chaste. Reflect on whose your members were and whose they have become. Once they were members of a harlot, but Christ made them members of His own body. Therefore you no longer have power over them, but must serve Him who freed them. If you, having a daughter, in madness sold her to a brothel-keeper for fornication, and a king’s son, happening upon this, freed her from such slavery and took her as his bride, then you would no longer have the power to give her to a dishonorable house after once selling her. The same is true for us. We sold our flesh to the devil, this evil tempter; but Christ, seeing this, snatched it away and freed it from his evil power; therefore it belongs now not to us but to Him who freed it. No one hinders you from using it, as the bride of a king; but if you use it for the former deeds, you will suffer what such offenders ought to suffer. So you must adorn it, not dishonor it. You do not have power over the flesh to satisfy vile desires, but only to fulfill God’s commandments. Reflect on what dishonor God has delivered it from” (Saint Chrysostom).