Holiness and the Body.
'The temple of God is _holy_, which temple ye are. _The body_ is for the Lord, and the Lord for _the body_. Know ye not that your _body_ is the temple of _the Holy Ghost_ which is in you; therefore glorify God in your _body_.'--1 Cor. iii. 16, vi. 13, 19.
'She that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, that she may be _holy_ both _in body_ and spirit.'--1 Cor. vii. 34.
'Present your _bodies_ a living sacrifice, _holy_, acceptable to God.'--Rom. xii. 1.
Coming into the world, our Blessed Lord spake: '_A body_ didst Thou prepare for me; lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.' Leaving this world again, it was in His own _body_ that He bore our sins upon the tree. So it was in the body, no less than in soul and spirit, that He did the will of God. And therefore it is said, 'By which will we have been sanctified through the offering _of the body_ of Jesus Christ once for all.'
When praying for the Thessalonians and their sanctification, Paul says, 'And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Of himself he had spoken as 'always bearing about _in the body_ the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested _in our body_. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested _in our mortal flesh_.' His earnest expectation and hope was, 'that Christ be magnified _in my body_, whether by life or by death.' The relation between body and spirit is so intimate, the power of sin in the spirit comes so much through the body, the body is so distinctly the object both of Christ's redemption and the Holy Spirit's renewal, that our study of holiness will be seriously defective if we do not take in the teaching of Scripture on holiness in the body.
It has been well said that the body is, to the soul and spirit dwelling and acting within it, like the walls of the city. Through them the enemy enters in. In time of war, everything yields to the defence of the walls. It is often because the believer does not know the importance of keeping the walls defended, keeping the body sanctified, that he fails in having the soul and spirit preserved blameless. Or it is because he does not understand that the guarding and sanctifying of the body in all its parts must be as distinctly a work of faith, and as directly through the mighty power of Jesus and the indwelling of the Spirit, as the renewing of the inner life, that progress in holiness is so feeble. The rule of the city we entrust to Jesus: but the defence of the walls we keep in our own hands; the King does not keep us as we expected, and we cannot discover the secret of failure. It is the God of peace _Himself_, who sanctifies wholly, who must preserve spirit and soul _and body_ entire and without blame. The tabernacle with its wood, the temple with its stone, were as holy as all included within their walls: God's holy ones need the body to be holy.
To realize the full meaning of this, let us remember how it was through the body sin entered. 'The woman saw that the tree was good for food,' this was the temptation in the flesh; through this the soul was reached, 'it was a delight to the eyes;' through the soul it then passed into the spirit, 'and to be desired to make one wise.' In John's description of what is in the world (1 John ii. 15), we find the same threefold division, 'the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.' And the three temptations of Jesus by Satan correspond exactly: he first sought to reach Him through the body, in the suggestion to satisfy His hunger by making bread; the second (see Luke iv.) appealed to the soul, in the vision of the kingdoms of this world and their glory; the third to the spirit, in the call to assert and prove His Divine Sonship by casting Himself down. Even to the Son of God the first temptation came, as to Adam and all in the world, as lust of the flesh, the desire to gratify the natural and lawful appetite of hunger. We cannot note too carefully that it was on a question of eating what appeared good for food that man's first sin was committed, and that that same question of eating to satisfy hunger was the battleground on which the Redeemer's first encounter with Satan took place. It is on the question of eating and drinking what is good and lawful that more Christians than are aware of it are foiled by Satan. To have every appetite of the body under the rule and regulation of the Holy Spirit appears to some needless, to others too difficult. And yet it must be, if the body is to be holy, as God's temple, and we are to glorify Him in our body and our spirit. The first approaches of sin are made through the body: in the body the complete victory will be gained.