In Part One, we said, “Our lives aren’t small, but we might be living small.” In other words, Christ isn’t small. On the contrary, He is magnificent! And surprisingly, He chose to make our hearts His home. So what does this say about us?
Concerning this very thing, Paul tried his best to shake the Corinthians into thinking and seeing differently. He reminded them, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever” (2 Corinthians 6:14-15).
In other words, the Body of Christ is Righteousness; the world is lawlessness. The Body of Christ is Light; the world is darkness. And consider this one: the Body of Christ IS Christ– the world is the opposite!
Bu that’s not all, let’s keep reading:
“And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people'” (2 Corinthians 6:16).
Because we are the temple of God, we need to understand, everything in the world is just an idol. There are many things in the world that will have our attention at times, but they should never have all of us.
Consider the definition of an idol. It is any thing or person regarded with blind admiration, adoration or devotion. There’s certainly no question if the world has some of that going on. But my favorite definition of idol is an image of any deity other than God. Paul asked, “What agreement has the temple of God with idols?” The reason the rest of the world can be described as an idol is because mankind was made in the image of God–not the world.
Therefore, until Christ comes to make His home in a believer, the image of man is an idol compared to the temple of God.
And this is why the Bible says your lives aren’t small, you might just be living them in a small way. “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you” (1 Corinthians 3:16)? God is not just sitting on a throne in Heaven looking down on the earth with a birds-eye view like we would as passengers on an airplane. No, God is walking on the earth through the steps of every born-again believer.
We could say, God frequents the mall and the grocery store. He drops kids off at school and goes to work in a multitude of occupations every day. (And I don’t even want to think about the other places unknowing Christians take God.) But the truth is, as a whole, we can be self-minded more than God-inside-minded, and therefore we often forget He is “Emmanuel, God with us.”
Next post, I’ll share one more exciting reminder with you.
