1 Corinthians 6:19b-20 “You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”

We live in a so-called “free” country. There are many things that our government gives people the freedom to do, whether or not God approves of such behavior. Even Christians can begin to think that if the USA gives me the freedom, then I have the right to live my life and behave myself any way that I want.

It is true that God doesn’t force everyone to do his will at all times with an act of his raw power. Thus it seems that people get away with many sins and there is no divine intervention. They can even develop a prideful sense of self-importance, defying God and everyone like the author of the poem Invictus, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

Really? God does not give us an absolute right to do whatever we want. Thinking that way is still rebellion against him. We don’t belong to ourselves. We belong to him. We didn’t make ourselves. He made us. Even after we rebelled and ran away from our creator to join the enemy side, he didn’t leave us there. He bought us back. He executed his own Son to lay his claim on us again, and to set us free.

“You are not your own. You were bought at a price.” This is a warning for us. It’s a warning not to challenge God’s right to determine how we live our lives, nor to despise the price he paid to make us his own again.

But these are especially words of promise and comfort. You were bought at a price. Paul makes this claim of God’s ownership in the context of a warning about sexual sins. As we consider Paul’s words, and we examine our own lives, we may feel worthless, undesirable. Spiritually and morally speaking, because of our sinful natures, that is what we are.

But by his grace our God has given us another value. The price he places on us is the life of his own Son Jesus Christ. God the Father decided that you are worth as much as Jesus to him. That value defies any comparison or illustration. It means there is nothing dearer to the Lord in all this world than just you yourself. You became infinitely valuable, infinitely desirable, when Jesus gave his life to make you holy and forgive your sins.

Therefore, live that way–like the priceless, holy child that God now says you are.