1 Corinthians 6:19 - Exposition

That your body is the temple (or rather, a sanctuary ) of the Holy Ghost. He has already said that the Church is a shrine or sanctuary of the Holy Ghost ( 1 Corinthians 3:16 ); but here for the first time expression is given to one of the deepest and newest truths of Christianity. Three great epochs are marked by the use of the word temple. In the Old Testament it means the material temple, the sign of a localized worship and a separated people; in the Gospels our Lord uses it of his own mortal body; in the Epistles it is used (as here) of the body of every baptized Christian, sanctified by the indwelling Spirit of God. Ye are not your own. We cannot, therefore, use our bodies as though they were absolutely under our own control. They belong to God, and, "whether we live or die, we are the Lord's" ( Romans 14:8 ).