Not Our Own

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s (I Corinthians 6:19-20).

The first motives which influence us in Christian experience are usually self-regarding; and it is not only natural, but right, that they should be so. God has implanted within us an instinct of self-preservation, which is perhaps the most powerful of all our instincts; and as this affects us in our natural life and experience, so either this or a moral and intellectual sensibility closely akin to this must necessarily influence our religious conduct.

He who has made us what we are recognizes the presence within us of this disposition to regard our own interests and further our well-being, as part of the nature that He has created within us, and to this He makes His primary appeal, calling upon us to be wise, and to consider our ways, and make sure of our present and our eternal well-being. It is because He recognizes this characteristic instinct, or disposition of our nature, that He begins His dealings with us by making us the offer of salvation. Salvation stands at the beginning, not at the end, of the Christian course, in order that our self-regarding interests may be satisfied and set at rest, and that we may thus be left free to pursue an end that lies outside the range of merely self-regarding motives, and yet is in perfect harmony with them.

And this one consideration is a sufficient answer to those who object to the doctrine of present and instant salvation. If the ends aimed at in Christian life were merely self-regarding it would be in harmony with this, that the salvation of the soul should be deferred to the latest moment of Christian experience. No wonder that salvation should be reserved to the close of our career, if salvation is the great object that we are to live for.