Have you ever bought something from a store, come all the way back home, and then immediately try to use that item? Take something like a television for example. If you bought a TV, a big, new TV for the living room, what is one of the things that you are going to want to do? Get that TV set up and turned on so that you can use it! But suppose that the brand new TV that you just bought didn’t work? What if after you were all done mounting the TV to your wall and you plugged it in but nothing happened; how would you feel? Kind of upset, wouldn’t you? Disappointed and angry, and you would almost surely go back to the place that you bought it from and demand one that worked.
When you buy something, you generally have some kind of purpose meant for it. If you buy a phone, you expect to be able to call others from it. When you buy a bike you have the expectation to be able to ride it. The things we buy have a purpose, and they need to fulfill that purpose. We bought them, and expect them to work according to our wishes.
And this is something that everyone who makes the decision to become a Christian needs to understand: our lives are not our own. Our time does not belong to us, to serve our sinful desires. Our time has been bought. Our lives have been purchased by Christ, through His blood and sacrifice on the cross. We are His.
1 Corinthians 6:20 “For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
When you stop to think about it, if you hired someone to come and cut your lawn, but when they showed up all they did was sit on a chair and look at their phone, wouldn’t you become upset? You hired them, you bought their time to paint, not to work on their phone.
When we become Christians, we have a job to do, and that job requires that we follow the instruction of Christ. Before we became Christians and allowed Him into our lives, we lived in sin, allowing it to have control or “reign” in our bodies as we obeyed it, but when we came to that special moment in our lives when we allowed Jesus into our hearts, we became His. We became His purchased possession, and we need to allow ourselves to be used as He desires. We are no longer servants of sin, but instead serve the righteousness of God.
Romans 6:6-13 “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
For he that is dead is freed from sin.
Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:
Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.
For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.
Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”
When someone is hired to go to work at a store, they have been bought, kind of. Their time is not their own, to do with as they please. They are there to work and serve their employer. They tell you, “You want to go and do other things, do them on your own time.” You are hired to do your job, not your own personal things.
We have been bought with the price of Christ’s blood, and we need to glorify God in the things that we do. To glorify means that you give glory or praise to someone or something. Well, we need to bring glory to God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. That is the purpose of a Christian. That is our goal and objective. That is our job.
We can glorify Jesus by being a living example to others of the way that Jesus lived, and taught us to live. We could go through all kinds of different virtues such as patience, peace, forgiveness etc, but all of them can be summed up and contained in one word: love. Love is patient, love is kind, love is forgiving, love is merciful. Love is what Jesus taught, and showed through His actions.
For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. We are not our own. We are His.
In Christ,
Andrew
Teufer Lake King James Bible Church 