One night, my friend Mario and I got into a discussion about tattoos. He showed me a half-finished tattoo that he had on his arm. When I asked why it didn’t get completed he told me this interesting story….
Many years ago, in his B.C. (Before Christ) years, Mario was serving time in prison. One of his fellow inmates was a tattoo artist. He started on Mario’s tattoo and got called away in the middle of working on it. He promised to come back and finish it later. But, while he was away, someone snitched on his “illegal” operation. He was put in solitary confinement for 30 days, and his tattoo paraphernalia was confiscated. When I asked why he was sent to solitary confinement Mario replied, “When you’re a prisoner you are property of the state, so putting a tattoo on a prisoner is considered to be defacing state property.” Talk about a moment of “revelation” for me! When he said those words I immediately thought of the verse in Corinthians that says, “Do you not know that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; You were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
Friend, if you are a Christian your body is not your own… you have been bought with a price. This is not about tattoos, necessarily, but it is about the way we live our lives and the things we do to our bodies, thinking that our bodies belong to us. Just three chapters before 1 Corinthians 6, mentioned above, it says, “If any man defile the temple of God [our body], him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are” (1 Corinthians 3:17). We talk about our bodies like they are ours and that’s just not true… they belong to God… He purchased us.
Of course all of what I just said only applies to a person who is a Christian… someone who claims that they BELONG to Christ. God has the final say about what I do “to” and “with” my body. It’s not my decision anymore. So many of our life’s problems could be remedied by just reminding ourselves of this truth. I am not my own, I have been bought with a price, therefore I must glorify God in my body and in my spirit, which belongs to God (1 Corinthians 6:20).
