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New International Version (NIV) |
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12 Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean that it's spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I'd be a slave to my whims.
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12 "Everything is permissible for me"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"--but I will not be mastered by anything.
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13 You know the old saying, "First you eat to live, and then you live to eat"? Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing, but that's no excuse for stuffing your body with food, or indulging it with sex. Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body!
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13 "Food for the stomach and the stomach for food"--but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
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14 God honored the Master's body by raising it from the grave. He'll treat yours with the same resurrection power.
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14 By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.
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15 Until that time, remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master's body. You wouldn't take the Master's body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not.
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15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!
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16 There's more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, "The two become one."
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16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, "The two will become one flesh."
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17 Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever - the kind of sex that can never "become one."
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17 But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
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18 There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for "becoming one" with another.
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18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.
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19 Or didn't you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don't you see that you can't live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you.
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19 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;
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20 God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.
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20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
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| Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved. (The Message Bible Online) |
Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NIV) are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica. All rights reserved worldwide. (New International Version Bible Online) |
