“For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.” (1 Corinthians 6:20 NIV)
From this passage in first Corinthians, and as we will discover in Ephesians, we learn that we not only belong to God, but that God has plans to put us to some specific use. In Eph. 1:4 Paul tells us that we are to be “holy”. That means that we are “set apart for some particular use”. Do you notice that Paul in 1 Corinthians 6 does not ask us politely, he TELLS us to glorify God in our bodies and spirit. This is the natural progression for something that is bought—it is immediately put to use. That HD TV … after you buy it you expect it to work. When you buy a car you expect it to take you places. When you come into this room and sit in that chair, you expect it to hold you up. It can kinda piss you off when you buy something and it doesn’t work.
Ephesians 2:8-10 “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." (NIV)
Ephesians 2:8-9 (as a bit of a preview) tells us that we did not work for God’s gift . Instead he works (literally, the idea is that he is writing us like a poem) in us to produce good works. Just like a poem expresses the character and personality of the author, so God is doing in us. That is why He didn’t just take us to heaven after we accepted Christ. He has work for us to do!
Pray: “Dear Heavenly Father, move us to understand who we are and what you have called us to do.”