You know that your bodies are parts of the body of Christ. Shall I take a part of Christ's body and make it part of the body of a prostitute? Impossible!

Or perhaps you don't know that the man who joins his body to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? The scripture says quite plainly, "The two will become one body."

Surely you know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you!

How can God's temple come to terms with pagan idols? For we are the temple of the living God! As God himself has said, "I will make my home with my people and live among them; I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

He is the one who holds the whole building together and makes it grow into a sacred temple dedicated to the Lord.

In union with him you too are being built together with all the others into a place where God lives through his Spirit.

Come as living stones, and let yourselves be used in building the spiritual temple, where you will serve as holy priests to offer spiritual and acceptable sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ.

"Tell my lord, King Benhadad, that I agree; he can have me and everything I own," Ahab answered.

"Yet my people and I cannot really give you anything, because everything is a gift from you, and we have only given back what is yours already.

"With our words we get what we want. We will say what we wish, and no one can stop us."

Acknowledge that the LORD is God. He made us, and we belong to him; we are his people, we are his flock.

We do not live for ourselves only, and we do not die for ourselves only.

For Christ died and rose to life in order to be the Lord of the living and of the dead.

He died for all, so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but only for him who died and was raised to life for their sake.

He gave himself for us, to rescue us from all wickedness and to make us a pure people who belong to him alone and are eager to do good.