Label # 7: Desecrated

Label # 7: Desecrated.

What would you do if you were to walk into the sanctuary at your church and someone had spray painted vulgar words on the pulpit?  Ripped pages out of the hymnals?  Thrown excrement on the altar?  You would be shocked.  Upset.  Angry.  I believe that a righteous indignation would form inside of you as you tried to find the perpetrator of such a heinous act of vandalism.  How dare someone come inside the Lord’s House and desecrate it! Who in the world could muster up the gall to destroy the house of the Lord? 

“Don’t you realize,” Paul asks, “that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?  You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price.  So you must honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20 NLT.)  You know where I am going with this illustration, don’t you?  How often have you viewed an ungodly movie in the temple of your body?  How many sexual partners have you invited into your body, which is His temple?  How much alcohol have you gulped down into this temple?  How much unhealthy food have you fed His body? How many curse words and inappropriate jokes have you blared from the speaker of His temple?  Don’t feel like I am pointing fingers at anyone.  I hang my head after each of those prior questions because I do not want to even think of the answer.  How many years have I desecrated this temple, treating my body as though it was my own? 

“But God, I didn’t mean it!  I did not want to desecrate Your temple!  I love You! I honor You!  I want You in my life!”  We all beg for His mercy and forgiveness while we hate ourselves for being so ungodly.  Does this sound like you:  “I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right , but I don’t do it.  Instead, I do what I hate.  But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good.  So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.  And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.  I want to do what is right, but I can’t.  I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.”  Those words were penned by Paul in Romans 7:15-18 NLT.  He goes on to lament “Oh, what a miserable person I am!   Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death” (Romans 7:24 NLT!) 

Great.  The man who wrote over half of the New Testament is miserable.  The guy who started tons of churches in the early history of the church kept messing up.  If the apostle Paul is unable to get it right, then why should we even try? He was only a decade or so removed from Jesus living on earth, right where he lived, and he could not overcome the power of sin.  How in the world can I, two thousand years past Jesus’ earthly visit, defeat the Enemy?   “Thank God,” Paul replies, “The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 7:25a NLT.) 

The word “desecrated” is a combination of the prefix “de,-“ which means “away from” and the word “consecrated,” which means “dedicated to a divine purpose.”  You see, God has a divine purpose for your life.  And the devil will stop at nothing to pull you away from God’s plan.   Another definition of “desecrated” is “to divert from a sacred to a profane use or purpose.”  When you desecrate your body—God’s temple—you take a detour off of the path which God placed your feet upon. 

Paul admonishes the Christians in Corinth “[b]ecause we have these promises, dear friends, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that can defile our body or spirit.  And let us work toward complete holiness because we fear God” (2 Corinthians 7:1 NLT.)  Obviously, extramarital sex, drinking alcohol, gluttony, and drug use defiles our bodies.  STDs, liver disease, heart disease, and overdoses are physical results of such desecrations.  But Paul warns us to keep ourselves from anything that can defile our spirits.  Viewing pornography might not physically affect anyone, but it is spray painting nasty graffiti all over your spirit.  (Consequently, prolonged viewing of pornography does increase risks of erectile dysfunction, and also hinders the sexual activities of the marriage bed.)  Listening to only secular music might not hurt anybody, but it is feeding your brain with the cultural vomit of the world rather than life-giving nourishment found in Christian music, hymns, and praise songs.  Being a negative coworker might now physically harm your coworkers, but it will eat a way into your spirit and you will not be able to find happiness in anything. 

You are in good company.  There is not a single Christian alive today, or ever before, who deserved their salvation.  As ungodly as our culture is today, the culture in Paul’s day was evil as well.  The Christians at Corinth were babies in the faith.  They had come from backgrounds which would make a deacon board blush!  “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived.  Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.  And such were some of you.  But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11 NKJV.)  We all have pasts.  Some of us are more damaged than others.  But it is time to rip off the label that makes us feel like we are just “desecrated.”  That’s a lie from the Devil!  “You can be sure of this:” David affirms, “The LORD set apart the godly for himself.  The LORD will answer when I call to him” (Psalm 4:3 NLT.)  You are set apart, friend!  You aren’t defined by your past.

So you have defiled God’s temple, your body.  You ripped pages out of God’s plan for your life.  You took it to places it should not have been, and showed it images that it was not meant to see.  And perhaps your body bears scars from those sins.  I am sad to report that the majority of the trash in my sanctuary occurred in my adult years, after I had asked Christ into my heart at the age of nine.  I can choose to believe Satan’s lie that I am hopeless and worthless, or I can believe the truth that God loves me and has sanctified me.

“But—When God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.  He washed away our sins,  giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.  He generously poured out the Spirit upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior.  Because of his grace he made us right in his sight and gave us confidence that we will inherit eternal life” (Titus 3:4-7 NLT.)  God’s forgiveness is not based on any act that you can do.  He will not withhold His mercy based on any act that you have done, are doing, or will do.  Your salvation is a product of God’s mercy and not anything you have done or not done.  If you start basing your salvation on your own merit then you do not understand what salvation is. 

You may view yourself as desecrated, but God has actually sanctified you.  Taken from the Latin word for “holy,” “sanctus-,” the word sanctified means to cause something to be morally right or acceptable.  When the Father sanctifies you, He sets you apart as holy.  Jesus prayed for us.  Did you realize that?  In the book of John you can read an entire prayer that Jesus prayed on our behalf!  “I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one.  They do not belong to this world any more than I do.  Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth.  Just as you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world.  And I gave myself as a holy sacrifice for them so they can be made holy by your truth” (John 17:15-19 NLT.)   Jesus did not ask for God to remove us from the world.  However, He asked God to keep us safe from Satan.  Do not forget that your salvation, although free to you, had quite the price tag.  Jesus gave himself as a sacrifice so that you can be made holy. 

This is not meant to be a guilt trip.  Don’t base your commitment to Christ on obligation or duty; He gave His life for you regardless.  At the same time, do not treat salvation with such little regard that you continue to defile the temple of the Holy Spirit.  As you grow in grace, removing the filth from the floor your temple, you strip away the label of “desecrated” and in it’s place you find a new label:  “sanctified.”