Word for the day by Christian Education Forum

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True Piety 

Dr. Julie Vinod

Salem MTC, New York

16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?” (1 Corinthians 3:16)

The passage from 1 Corinthians 3:10-19, is about Paul’s conversation with the Church of Corinth. In Verse 16, where Paul refers to the body as a temple, he was referring to the Corinthian Church as a whole, and as the temple of God, the Holy Spirit rested on every one of us. Paul makes a strong appeal to these worldly believers to remember the serious truth, “you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you”. We are God’s temples where God wants us to be His agents of change. In order to fulfill God’s will, we need to have the power of Holy Spirit.

God is our refuge and strength and we need a firm foundation to build that temple in our lives, and this is possible only through Jesus Christ. Our foundation must be solid and strong in faith and God’s Word. This leads to discipleship as God lives in us. Building God’s temple is an ongoing process that must be nourished with prayer and God’s Word.  We sometimes don’t realize the peril until the damage has been done. Hasty devotions make weak faith, feeble convictions and questionable piety. The foundation of the temple is to be united through prayer with Jesus as the Cornerstone. There will be no boundaries to when God’s temple is built within us. We are to work together and preach the Gospel not only through our words but also with our deeds. We are called to imitate God’s love by surrendering ourselves into His hands. Paul tells the Corinthians in the end, “you are of Christ and Christ is of God”

The key to God’s temple is our faith. It keeps us close to God because the Holy Spirit lives in us and assures us that in our relationship with Jesus we can do many things to glorify God. We are to be generous to the needy, pray for those who persecute us, and forgive our enemies. The only way we can do this is by making sure that God’s temple within us is filled with love, especially the love Christ.

PRAYER


Dear God, we pray that we may live worthy of the calling to which You have called us. May  Your Word  take root in our bodies and produce true piety. In Jesus precious name, Amen.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

“Blessed is he who believes in the unseen and maintains his body as God’s temple where the spirit dwells”

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