Garbage In, Garbage Out

By: Pastor Raymond Desadier

1 CORINTHIANS 6:15-20 “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. 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 had a finance professor who used to always tell us about “GIGO”, an acronym which stood for Garbage In, Garbage Out. He was referring to how using bad data in computations would produce bad conclusions. The same can be used to describe what we feed our mind and the resulting thoughts created.

In this passage of Scripture, Paul likens spiritual betrayal to fornication to paint a vivid picture of how our sin affects us both physically and spiritually. In the broad sense, fornication is being impure. Our bodies are to be reserved for our spouse. This does not mean we cannot spend time with other people, we just should not have physical intimacy with anyone else. When we use our bodies for intimacy with someone other than our spouse we commit fornication.

In truth, fornication is not much different than idolatry. As Christians, our bodies have been purchased by God with the blood of Jesus and are meant to glorify Him. This does not mean we are restricted from doing things for ourselves or doing things with other people, but when it comes to spiritual intimacy, when our mind becomes centered on things ungodly we commit idolatry – we cheat on God.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:28 that looking upon a woman with lust is fornication – just the thought is sin. Our thoughts can be sin and when our thoughts are dominated by everything in the world other than God, we are committing idolatry – spiritual fornication.

Verse 19 compares our body to God’s temple and the Old Testament offers strict rules for what can and cannot enter the temple. Many use this verse to condemn things like cigarettes or drugs but that does not even scratch the surface. Everything we see, smell, taste, and hear go right into our temple where the Holy Spirit of God resides.

Do the things you look at glorify God? Do the things you hear glorify God? Everything we allow to enter our body through our eyes, ears, nose, and mouth affect our thoughts and if you have impure thoughts, impure actions will follow – garbage in, garbage out. If you notice garbage in your mind and in your actions, then it is time to take out the trash!