Flee from Sexual Immorality (1 Corinthians 6:18–20)

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
– 1 Corinthians 6:18–20

There’s so much here in these three verses. So much glorious truth that your body, as a follower of Jesus, is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Just that imagery, that language. Think about the glory of God revealed in the temple, in the Old Testament, this ornate, beautiful structure intended to be a display of God’s glory among all the nations. And God is saying, “That is your body.”

1 Corinthians 6:18–20 is a clear command to flee sexual immorality.

Your body is precious to God, it’s valuable to God, and it’s a display of His glory among the nations. What a picture! Your body, a temple, the dwelling place for God’s Holy Spirit! And so the specific application here in verse 18 is to flee from sexual immorality. There’s so much we could talk about here. But it basically refers to any sexual thinking, desiring, or acting out outside of marriage between a husband and a wife, which is God’s good design for the expression of sexual activity, sexual thinking, desiring acting.

And so one, I just want to encourage you today to remember how God views your body to see yourself as God sees you, as the temple of the Holy Spirit. You want to see the glory of God. Yes. Look at the Grand Canyon. Yes, look at the sun rising or setting over the horizon. Yes, look at the glory of God in stellar galaxies.

But you really want to see the glory of God? Look in the mirror at your body and believe what God says about your body. It’s a temple of the Holy Spirit. See yourself not the way the world sees you, or what even you might be prone to see yourself as. This goes back to 1 Corinthians 4. See yourself as God sees you, as the temple of His Holy Spirit. Therefore, glorify God with your body and specifically flee from, don’t flirt with, don’t play around with, and don’t treat lightly any sexual thinking, desiring, or acting outside of marriage between a husband and a wife.

Flee from sexual immorality. And this goes totally against everything this world is shouting at you, and even the flesh in you is desiring. God is saying, “Flee from it by the power of the Holy Spirit in you.” Flee from it, then glorify God with your body.

1 Corinthians 6:18–20 teaches us to honor our bodies as temples of the Spirit.

So God, we pray 1 Corinthians 6:18–20, over our lives. We praise You for making our bodies temples of Your Holy Spirit. God, help us to live in light of this reality today. Help us to see ourselves, to look in the mirror and see what You see. And God, we pray that You help us to glorify You with our bodies in every way. Just as we read in 1 Corinthians 10, whether you eat or drink, do it all to the glory of God.

Help us to do everything we do today, every thought, every desire, every action, to bring glory to You by the power of Your Holy Spirit in us. I pray that specifically over our sexuality. God, please help us to glorify You with our thoughts, our desires, and our actions. Help us to flee every hint of sexual immorality, to run from it, and to experience Your good design for our bodies and to be in healthy relationships with others where we can be honest about any struggles in these areas.

God, I pray for anyone and everyone who struggles in specific ways in these areas. That we would all have people in our lives who know our struggles and who are helping us be the temples of the Holy Spirit You’ve created and designed us to be. Please help us to take any action that’s needed when it comes to confession or repentance, along these lines, based on Your Word to us. Help us not to just move on from Your Word with the rest of our day if there’s a need for confession or repentance of sexual immorality in our lives.

Prayer for the Bantu Somali People

God, we want to be the temples of the Holy Spirit that You’ve designed us to be for Your glory among the nations, for Your glory among people like the Bantu Somali. We pray for a million people in the Bantu Somali of Somalia who have little to no knowledge of the gospel. Most of whom have never heard the good news about Jesus. God, help us to be holy for their sake. Help us to be holy, to be the temples You’ve designed us to be so that the nations might see Your glory through our lives. We pray all this according to Your Word in 1 Corinthians 6. In Jesus’ Name, amen.