What do you have that you did not receive? (4:7)
I'm a firm believer that meditating on single verses of the Bible can transform you. I think this small part of a verse is a prime candidate for that sort of thing.
To be able to function in society, we need to take things for granted- so we do. What Paul does here, though, is just reminds us of a truth that if we just take a second on, will, frankly, overwhelm us with thankfulness.
"What do you have that you did not receive?" It's rhetorical but...the answer is nothing. It's nothing. This isn't just an answered prayer. This means that the breath in your lungs, your friends, the fact that you were born in America, the food you eat, the car you drive, the bible you own, your faith, any progress you've made in the faith, anything in your bank account. Your work ethic, your skills, your talents. It's all received. The good memories of your live and the bad ones. The hard situations and the great ones. The good and the bad. What is it but a gift of God?
When I think about life in this way, I'm filled with a sort of awe... This single verse reminds me of my smallness, my utter dependence and helplessness before an infinite God. It makes me worship.
I wonder how many of the Corinthians problems stemmed from not really grasping this?
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, ESV)
Remember when we when we did the arcing thing? If you weren't there, one thing we talked about was different logical relationships between one verse and another. My favorite was the "Grounding statement". What a grounding statement does is states a truth or reality that provides the basis for other things like other facts, exhortations, etc.
Paul's spent a long time reaming out the Corinthians about sexual immorality. "Don't do this", "do this", "this is terrible", etc.
At the end of it all, he tells us why all these things are terrible and tells us why all these exhortations make sense and it's a really revolutionary truth: the bodies that we've spent our entire lives with... are not ours.
And what backs up this audacious claim that the body we walk around in is not ours? It's because you and I were bought. When Jesus died he paid. He paid "it all" to wash us white as snow. One result of this transaction is that now... we are his!
Our lives are not are own, but when we give up our preferences, we give them up not to someone who will delight in bossing us around, but to someone who gave up everything to get us, who cares for us more than we care about ourselves.
What would it look like if we believed that even our own bodies belonged to someone who loved us? How different would our battle for obedience look?
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