The Apostle Paul tells us,
“Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.” (1Corinthians 3:17)
The universal Christian church is the sacred temple of God. It is the dwelling place of God’s Holy Spirit. It is made up of individual Christian believers who have been justified (made innocent) by grace through faith in the blood and name of Jesus. Christian believers have also been called out and set apart (sanctified) by God to be living stones in this sacred building as we confess Christ before humankind, practice Christ’s teachings and keep His commandments, and witness to the world through a lifestyle of faith, hope, and love.
This is accomplished through seeking and receiving the baptism with the Holy Spirit, praying in the Spirit and with the understanding, as well as remaining filled with the Spirit through singing with our born again human spirits (in the languages of both men and of angels) and also with our understanding (in our native language). All of these disciplines, along with our knowledge of, and obedience to the Word of God will result in our living and walking in the Spirit. So, it can also be accurately stated that in the same way corporately, as the community of Christ, we are the temple of God; as individual Christian believers each one of us is also a temple of the Holy Spirit. This requires great obligation and responsibility on our parts as to how we treat our bodies and how we behave with our bodies. Why? Because they are temples of the Holy Spirit!
Paul exhorts us,
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
Now, “God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance,” but regrettably, “many are called but few are chosen.” This is because “Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction and many take that route, but small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life and only a few find it.” God’s will is that all Christian believers be “chosen vessels of honor, sanctified, set apart and prepared for the Master’s use. But in a great house there are many vessels, some for honor and some for dishonor.” Nevertheless, God’s will is that we all be sanctified, as well as consecrated vessels of honor.
We must understand that sanctification is God’s part, and consecration is our part. After we experience our justification by grace through faith in Christ’s accomplished atonement for our sins, both of these processes of sanctification and consecration in operation are the means by which we inherit God’s eternal kingdom and escape the eternal torments of the garbage dump that Jesus called Hell (Gehenna). In this terrible, dark, and odiously odiferous place “the fires are never quenched and the worm never dies.” It is the place where all unrepentant sinners and all unrepentant professing to be, but not practicing “Christians” will spend eternity! These are those individuals who are unrepentant non-believers, as well as “Christian” hypocrites, heretics, backsliders, reprobates, and apostates. Don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise or tell you differently regarding this matter. If anyone does, it is a lie from Satan that has been propagated through false teachers in the church!
Again, Christ is made unto us sanctification, and the God of all peace has promised to sanctify us wholly, spirit, soul, and body unto the coming of the Lord. “Faithful is He who calls you who will also do it.” But we must also choose to consecrate ourselves unto Him - spirit, soul, and body - by yielding to the promptings and leadings of the Holy Spirit and not to the dictates of the flesh (sin nature). This means that Jehovah God desired to sanctify us through His Son Jesus Christ, and that is what He did through the cross. He still desires to sanctify us through His truth (Word) and through the workings of His Holy Spirit who will lead us into all truth, and that is what He is doing. His will is to do this for our entire being - spirit, soul, and body - unto the second coming of Jesus Christ by setting us apart as pure, devoted, and dedicated vessels of honor for His plans, purposes, and pursuits.
As Christ has sanctified Himself that we might be sanctified, God has and will continue to sanctify us in Christ in order to demonstrate what is His good, and acceptable and perfect will in the earth. But we have a part to play in this process! Our chosen consecration unto Him means that we give ourselves - spirit, soul, and body – daily, in obedience to Christ’s commandments and to the Spirit’s directives and thereby live and manifest the gospel of the kingdom, not in word only, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and power!
I hope that we are beginning to understand the spiritual dynamic between what God is working in us, and what we are to be working out in Him!
The scriptures are clear,
“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12)
Jesus Christ testified that the fulfillment of the law is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” and to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus came to fulfill the law, and that is exactly what He did!
Paul also said, “the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit,” and he exhorts us,
“Brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” (Romans 8:12-14)
He goes on to write,
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” (Romans 12:1-2)
The Holy Spirit’s job is to “lead us into all truth,” and our job is to follow His lead! “He will not speak of His own, but will only speak what Jesus speaks.” Notice, if you will, that this is just like Jesus during His public ministry on the earth, He “did not speak of His own, but only spoke what He heard the Father speak.”
With this in mind consider these words of Jesus Christ,
“Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?’” (Mark 8:34-37)
And again, the words of Jesus Christ,
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21)
If we don’t want to lose our souls and our lives, we will have to get real good at following the leading of the Holy Spirit! We will not be able to die for Christ unless we are willing to live for Him. Living for Christ means denying one’s own will and doing God’s will instead. Again, the will of God concerning the Christian believer is our sanctification, and only those who do the will of God by consecrating themselves unto Him in denying themselves and taking up their own cross daily and following Him will inherit the kingdom of Heaven. Selah (Think long and hard about this!)
The writer of Hebrews exhorts us,
“Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.” (Hebrews 12:14)
And consider this exhortation from Paul,
"I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness." (Romans 6:19)
And,
“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.” (1Corinthians 6:12)
Another word for holiness is godliness, and Christ Jesus is the perfect expression or manifestation of God in human form. If you will, the Lord Jesus Christ’s character is the perfect human expression of God’s character. The way God thinks and behaves is revealed in the way Christ thought and behaved while on the earth, and the way Christian believers are supposed to think and behave is the way that Christ thought and behaved! Again, this is accomplished through yielding to the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit and conforming ourselves in obedience to the word of God. We are to strive to live our lives as Christ lived His life, free from sin, and not live our lives apart from His example or influence.
Jesus taught His disciples,
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)
Another definition for the word perfect, as used in the scriptures, is the word mature, and Paul tells us that Christian maturity is defined as our not having arrived at the goal, but by being in the practice of “pressing for the goal of the heavenward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
No one but Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, has ever achieved the goal of sinless perfection this side of glory, but as His followers, we are all called to “grow in God’s grace,” to “pursue peace with all men and holiness,” and to “press towards the goal of the heavenward call of God in Christ Jesus.” In other words, we are to be in the business of “perfecting holiness in reverence of God!” Anything short of this practice means that we have “received the grace of God in vain.”
Jesus said, “To this present hour, the kingdom of Heaven allows pressure, and those who press into it take it by force.” If we are not in the diligent business of pressing into the kingdom of God and taking it by force, we are in the business of backsliding. In the words of Bob Dylan, “You’ve either got faith or you’ve got unbelief, and there ain’t no neutral ground.”
This is why Paul instructs,
“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you--unless, of course, you fail the test?” (2 Corinthians 13:5)
If we are not presently “in the faith” through daily living and walking in obedience to the Holy Spirit’s leading and the Word of God, then according to the scripture just quoted Christ is not in us! So we see that it is entirely possible to fail the test if we are not in hot pursuit of Christ and His kingdom that resides within us as born-again believers. This pursuit will result in the transformation of our characters and the transfiguration of our beings into a state of true holiness and godliness.
Now, if any of us, dear readers, after careful examination of ourselves, find that we are “failing the test,” it is still possible because of God’s mercies to repent and become faithful to God’s calling by appropriating the sanctification that has already been provided for us by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Again this is realized by our choosing to live a consecrated life unto God by confessing and forsaking our sins. If we will do this, we will truly be the elect, the chosen of God, and not just the called of God. We will be in the company of the few who find the road to life instead of in the company of the many who choose the road to Hell! Consecration is what God requires of us if we are to inherit the eternal kingdom of Heaven and escape the eternal torments of the Lake of Fire. Repentance from our sins and a consecrated life unto God is still possible for all of us who still have breath in our lungs and have not denied Christ before men because, “God is love,” “His mercy endures forever,” “His mercies are new every morning,” and “mercy rejoices against judgment.” So concerning our consecration unto God, I beg you, in the words of the Nike commercial, “Just do it,” and please pray that I will also!
In this exhortation I have spoken much about giving ourselves to God, spirit, soul, and body so that His will be done in earth as it is in Heaven. I will leave you with a few final scriptures to contemplate from the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
“Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him 'unclean.’” (Matthew 15:17-20)
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other.” (John 15:1-17)