Off-centre sparklet 5) You are not your own ( 1 Cor. 6:19)

This is the last I am taking from John Hutton's book.  He recognizes these words 'You are not your own' belong in a passage about sexual immorality but he sees it as a big principle on which to stand.  That we can never act as though we are independent of one another and certainly of Jesus Christ.

He concludes by including the next words in 1 Cor. 6:20. We are not our own, for we are bought with a price even the passion and sacrifice of our Holy Redeemer...It is not a matter to argue about.  If you do not feel that so it is then in the meantime nothing more is to be said. I am quite sure that if any of us knew all the love, all the care, that a loving mother had felt for us, all the pain she bore for us first and last, we should feel it as our deepest act of honour to spare that mother the grief of a broken heart.

What St. Paul meant to say, I take it, was in effect just this: if people had only the imagination, the seriousness, the detachment from their own hot interests to see the Son of God, bending in Gethsemane, and bleeding on Calvary in order to bring God into our lives, they would understand the shamefulness of all careless and useless and sinful living; they would see that is was like striking Him on the cheek, crucifying afresh the Lord of life and putting Him to an open shame.