Sometimes I have phrases that I'm not sure whether they have come across from Northern Ireland, but one of the phrases, I don't know if you know it, you talk about teaching your granny how to suck eggs. Do you know that expression? Yes. Well, I'm kind of afraid that what I'm about to say might sound like me teaching my granny how to suck eggs, but Jesus' death is the focal point of the Bible. Maybe that's obvious to you, but sometimes I think if we stop saying what is obvious, we forget what is obvious. But throughout the Bible, Jesus' death is the focal point of the Bible. Everything in the Old Testament and the four Gospels is leading up to the cross, and then everything it acts in the New Testament letters stems from the cross. And the Bible's storyline and message, they just don't make sense apart from Jesus' death on the cross. And you're probably also aware that Jesus' death on the cross is presented to us in two different ways. First of all, Jesus' death on the cross is presented as God's only remedy to the problem of our sin. that there was no other way for us to have our sins forgiven. There was no other way for us to be set free from sins control. There was no other way to escape from God's just anger against our sin apart from Jesus' death. And any Any solution to the problem of our sin that bypasses the cross is actually no solution at all. In fact, it just makes matters worse. It makes a bad situation dreadful. And that's a way we're familiar with, that the cross is the only solution to the problem of our sin. But the Bible also presents Jesus' cross to us in this way. It's the supreme reason why we should live holy lives. What will motivate us to live a life that pleases God and honors God? Well, so often, We can be motivated to do things by guilt. You know, we feel guilty, but guilt is a poor motivator. It might get us to do something very short term, but it doesn't really give us momentum to obey God. And a sense of cold duty is a poor motivator. I'm not saying that Christians shouldn't do their duty, but cold duty. That only breeds resentment. We become resentful. If somebody tells us to do something, we do it out of duty. We become resentful of that person telling us to do that. What's gonna motivate us to obey God with joy and enthusiasm and in the long term? God's grace as it's seen in Jesus' death. It's the supreme reason why we should live holy lives. And I want us to think about Jesus' death in that second way tonight. And I want us to think about the implications of Jesus' death on the cross for us living holy lives. And in order to give our thinking some focus, I want us to I want us to look at some very familiar words that Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 6, verses 19 and 20. I'm sure you know these words. Where Paul writes, he says, You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body. You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body. Now, before we unpack that statement, we need to remind ourselves of the background against which Paul wrote. He was writing to the Christians in Corinth, and because of its location on the southern side of what's called the Isthmus of Corinth, all the north, south, and east, west trade routes came through Corinth. So that meant that Corinth was a very wealthy place. It was a wealthy trading port. The land route from northern Greece to southern Greece and the sea route from the western or eastern part of the Mediterranean, the western part of the Mediterranean came through Corinth. A lot of trade, a lot of money sloshing around in the city. And then from 29 BC, it was also the capital of the Roman province of Achaia, that's southern Greece. And the Roman pro-consul controlled the legal and political and administrative affairs of the southern sector of Greece from Corinth. So this heady combination of affluence and influence, money and prestige, gave Corinth a self-confidence and a sense of its own importance. And people from all over the Roman Empire and from beyond descended upon Corinth, attracted by the opportunity to make money, and they brought with them their own religious ideas as well. And this made Corinth a very cosmopolitan and multicultural and pluralistic place. And it had a notorious reputation for living life on the edge. It was a hedonistic haven devoted to entertainment, self-indulgence, and immorality. Like a stroppy teenager who's always trying to see how much he can get away with, Corinth was always pushing the boundaries of what was morally acceptable. It was a place where status and fame and money and success and pleasure mattered. It was a magnet for the I-want-to-get-rich-quick brigade and the let's-have-a-good-time crowd. And Corinthian culture exerted a huge pressure on the church. It lured Christians away from Jesus, back into their old patterns of behaviour. Corinth was not an easy place to be different. It was hard to live a life that pleased God and honoured God in a place like Corinth. So how did Paul motivate these Christians in Corinth to stand against the pressure of their culture and to live holy lives? Well, he used Jesus' death on the cross. He reminded them, you are not your own, for you were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body. And we live in a similar cultural atmosphere today, where fame and money and prestige and success are all that's mattered. How do we live lives that are holy in the culture in which we find ourselves? How do we stop ourselves from being seduced away from following Jesus by the hedonistic and immoral and amoral cosmopolitan and multicultural society we live in, even in places like Tarbert and Clacken and Loch Gilbert? How do we do that? Well, Jesus' death on the cross does, helps us to do that. And we need to listen carefully then to what Paul says here. You are not your own, for you were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body. So let's unpack Paul's statement here. And the first thing I want you to notice is the affirmation he makes. We are not our own. We are not our own. Joan and I grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. And one of the features of life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles was what was called no-go areas. That in certain parts of Belfast and parts of the rural environment, paramilitaries had taken over the area and they didn't want the police and the army and the security forces to be in those areas. They were no-go areas, stay out, and if they came in, there was often violence with that. And we have no-go areas in our lives. We're like the house that we stayed in in November time when we were on holidays. It was a three-bedroom house, but we were only allowed into two of the bedrooms. One of them was locked, it was private. Guests were not allowed in there. A no-go area. And we have no-go areas in our lives where we say, Jesus, this is off limits for you. We don't mind this, we don't mind, that we don't mind you trying to control these bits, but let's just stay out of these bits of our lives. There are areas of our lives that we think, yes, they belong to Jesus, but there are other areas of our lives where they are our exclusive domain. And the very words that Paul uses knocks that whole idea firmly on the head. this idea of being able to carve up our lives in areas that belong to Jesus and bits that belong to us. Paul writes, no, you are not your own. He's writing generally, he's writing globally, he's saying that our entire beings do not belong to us. but they belong wholly to Jesus. There are to be no no-go areas, no private areas, no off-limits areas for Jesus. Not a single moment are we to imagine that any part of our personality or any ability that we have or anything we possess belongs to us exclusively. Everything we are and everything that we have belongs to Jesus because we are not our own. Now, in practical terms, it means things like we're not free to choose our ambition for our lives. You know, you're saying, well, Roger, I'm past the age where I'm choosing ambitions for lives, but when you retire, You have to make a choice. What am I gonna do with my retirement? What's my ambition for my retirement? Our ambitions are to be determined by Jesus' word, the Bible. Our ambition is to glorify him and enjoy him and to use what we have for his glory. And when we ask why this should be so, why can't I just indulge myself after all I've earned it? Jesus says, no, you're not your own. You're not your own. It means that we're not free to choose the standards that we live by. And if we ask why should this be so, Jesus says, you're not your own. We're not free to choose how we will use our abilities and money and time. Jesus, to whom we belong, has stated that we are to use all that he has given us, because we don't have anything unless God has given it to us, but we're to use all that he's given us for his glory and in a way that's controlled by the Bible's teaching. And if we say, well, why should this be so? His reply is quite simple. You're not your own. Now, this is just completely, I was going to say the opposite of our culture, but it's actually, this stuff is hated by our culture. You know, everybody says, my life's my life. My body's my body. My money's my money. My time's my time. I do what I want, and nobody's going to tell me what to do with it. It's so easy for us to be pressurized, even as Christians, into that way of thinking. And when we find ourselves moving in that direction, we have to say to ourselves, we're not our own. We're not our own. We belong to Jesus. And that will cause us to be able to stand against the pressure of our culture. But why are we not our own? That's the affirmation Paul makes, we are not our own. But why are we not our own? Well, if we unpack Paul's statement, the second thing I want you to notice is the explanation he gives. We were bought with a price. You are not your own, why? For you were bought with a price. Paul bases his explanation as to why we are not our own but totally belong to Jesus exclusively upon the cross. Now, it's true that Paul doesn't specifically mention Jesus' death here, but the Greek verb he uses, that's the n-i-v, translates to be bought with a price. It's one of the verbs the New Testament regularly uses to describe Jesus' death. It's the verb to redeem, And to redeem is, it's a commercial word. It's to do with goods being bought and sold and exchanged. You know, that if I go into one of the cafes in Tarbert and buy a coffee, and give them money for it, you can't come in and say, oh, thank you very much, and take my coffee. I say, no, no, hold on a minute, it's mine, I bought it, it belongs to me. If I want to share it with you, that's fine, but you can't take it, you've no rights over it. And this is the verb that Paul uses to redeem, it's a commercial word, that by his death, Jesus has bought us, we belong to him, He's paid the price. Once we were under the control of sin, we were subject to its tyranny and oppression, but Jesus has set us free from its enslaving power by paying the price for our freedom, by paying the price of his death. And because we are bought with the price of Jesus' blood, we are not our own. Instead, we belong to Jesus. He writes over our lives as king. He gave his life as a ransom for us. And if Jesus laid down his life and death so that we might be free from sins, condemning control and enslaving power, such undeserved love not only demands but should have our lives and our all. It's utterly absurd and illogical for us as Christians, never mind the height of base and gratitude, for us to realize that Jesus has redeemed us and then not to give ourselves wholly and completely to him. So we're not our own. We belong to Jesus. But Paul then explains the implication for that, because in the third place, you'll notice not only the affirmation that we're not our own, the explanation, we're bought with a price, but the responsibility that places upon us. We are to glorify God in our bodies. For you are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body. Paul's logic is straightforward and it's uncomplicated. It's not hard. to work out what he's saying. If we belong to Jesus because he shed his blood for us, then the aim of our lives should be to bring glory to the Savior who has died for us. That's our responsibility in the light of the cross. Now, I want you to draw your attention to the fact that the arena in which we are to glorify God is our body. People today divide personality, if you like, between our body and the spiritual side, between the spiritual and the physical. But the Bible doesn't make any distinction between that. The Bible says we're not either spiritual or physical, we're both, we're to glorify God in our body. Now, why does he use, why does he add the phrase our body? You know, we're good Presbyterians. We all know that shorter catechism in the first question were to glorify God, but Paul says glorify God in our body. Why does he add body? Well, here's a couple of reasons why he adds that qualifying phrase. First of all, because our bodies were the vehicles through which we expressed our rebellion against God. before we were Christians. How did we know that we had sinful hearts that were in rebellion against God? We knew it because our ears listened to lies and to gossip. We knew we were in rebellion against God because our tongues criticized and bad-mouthed other people. We knew we were in rebellion against God because our hands did what was wrong. And we knew we were in rebellion against God because our feet traveled along the path of selfishness. Do you see, our bodies were the vehicle, the route through which we expressed our rebellion against God before we were Christians. But now we've been saved. God wants the same body to be the vehicle through which we express our new life in Jesus. Those same ears and tongue and hands and feet, which were once vehicles of our rebellion against God, are now to be the vehicles of our love for God. Do you see why we need to emphasise our body? And another reason why Paul adds the qualifying phrase, our body, is because God wants our consecration to him to be concrete. Now, when we think of consecration to God, very often people only think about it as being sort of merely intellectual or even emotional, something that takes place in our hearts and minds. But glorifying God is not just a few pious words and pious thoughts about God. Glorifying God is not just something that moves us emotionally. Glorifying God is not something that we do when we pray and then leave it locked up in that place where we pray until we come back to it the next day to pray a little bit more. Glorifying God is not something we do on a Sunday morning and then just leave it here for the rest of the week. We glorify God in a way that should be seen, in a way that's concrete, in the nuts and bolts of everyday life. We glorify God when we use our ears to listen to those things that are true and pure and praiseworthy. We glorify God when we use our tongues only to speak kind and helpful words that encourage and benefit others. We glorify God when we use our hands to do those things that please God and bring honour to Him. We glorify God when we use our feet to move swiftly, along the path of righteousness, right living. The responsibility that Paul places on us is that with every part of our bodies and in every area of our lives, we are to seek to bring glory to Jesus who has redeemed us and thus made us his own. And again, that's something that our culture finds extremely abhorrent. As I said to you before, people today, you hear them all the time, it's my right to do with my body what I want to do. But the Bible says to us as Christians, on the basis of Jesus' death, no, it isn't, because you're not your own. You were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body. And so today, as we remember that Jesus has given his life as a ransom sacrifice for us, let that be the motivation. His death on the cross. Let that be the motivation which causes us to commit ourselves to afresh to Him, to live holy lives in the midst of a culture which is trying to pull us away from Him. That's the only way. Guilt will not do it. A cold sense of duty won't do it. but Jesus' death on the cross will do it. And when we're tempted to pull away from Jesus and say, Jesus, no, you can't, I won't do that, I can't let you control that life, we need to remember his death, that we're not alone, that we're bought with a price, and it's our responsibility and his power to glorify him in our body. Let's pray for a moment. Our Father, we thank you for the initiative you, the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit took before time began to redeem us from sin's control through the death of your Son on the cross. We bless you that you loved us so much that you were willing to pay such a great price that we might be yours. And we affirm once more that we are not our own, but that we belong totally and exclusively to you. Through the activity of your Holy Spirit, help us to glorify you in our bodies and in every area of our lives. In the light of what you've done for us, we commit all that we are and everything that we have afresh to you, Lord Jesus. We give you our hearts, we give you our lives, we give you our bodies promptly and sincerely. For your name's sake we pray, amen.