Christian Crier
Here are seven Bible verses about cutting one’s self or harming one’s self.
First Corinthians 6:19-20 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
Paul was not happy with the sexual immorality of the church at Corinth because all unrepentant sexually immoral people will have a fate indescribably horrible (Rev 21:8) so he reminds them, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never” (1st Cor 6:15).
Psalm 139:14 “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”
There is no human that I know of or have ever heard of that is perfect, but they are in God’s eyes, they are made exactly as He pleased. Each human being is created in the image of God (Gen 1:27) and as such, everyone should be treated with dignity and respect. The fact that God sees us as having the righteousness of Christ (2nd Cor 5:21) upon repentance and faith, shows that God loved us enough to die for us (John 3:16) and saved us, despite our ungodliness (Rom 5:6). Since He died for us while still His enemy (Rom 5:10), we should never think of harming ourselves in any way because it’s not good to mar the image of God in us.
First Corinthians 3:16 “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”
There is no more need for a temple because the Spirit of God now dwells within us, as the Apostle John writes, “for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1st John 4:4b). The temple is holy in the sense that there is the very presence of God and that temple, our body, should not be abused to the extent we binge on things; even worse, on alcohol, drugs, or any type of illegal substance. We risk grieving the Holy Spirit if we persist on polluting the temple of the living God or do things contrary to the will of God (Eph 4:30).
Leviticus 19:28 “You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves: I am the Lord.”
Do we desire to be so much like the word that we become part of the world? So much so that we’re willing to look just like the world? James, the half-brother of Jesus, tells us, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4) and the Apostle John adds, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1st John 2:15).
Colossians 3:17 “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
It takes discipline to do good for Jesus Christ in word and deed and so the Apostle Paul writes, “I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1st Cor 9:27). He knew that he was laboring for an audience of One and so he had to commit his will to God’s and what did that look like in His life? It meant that everything he said and everything he did, would be “in the name of the Lord Jesus” so that His name would be glorified, not Paul.
Mark 12:31 “The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
OF course the first command is to love the Lord our God first and foremost (Mark 12:30) but the Apostle Paul wrote the two greatest commandments didn’t end there, as he wrote, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom 13:10) and this means we should care for ourselves too. It’s hard to love your neighbor if you hate yourself. Paul continues by writing that “the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal 5:14) and Jesus adds, “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 22:40).
First Corinthians 6:13 “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.”
Later, the Apostle Paul adds some very important points for the believers who are living in sexual immorality by asking them a rhetorical question; “Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh” (1st Cor 6:16). How can he say this? Paul goes back to the first couple; Adam and Eve as becoming one flesh and so he writes that “he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1st Cor 6:17-18).
Conclusion
Paul wanted us to submit our lives to the Lord and make our lives as a sweet, savory offering up to God, so in writing to the church at Rome (and to us too!), Paul writes, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1). This living sacrifice is a life of service to others and is an outward manifestation of the Holy Spirit and the works done for Christ’s glory, God will lay before us (Eph 2:10) so that Jesus Christ’s name can be glorified. If you are harming yourself or cutting yourself, please, please seek help immediately. There may be something that your doctor can do. Don’t keep silent about this. Reach out, seek help, and I pray you find good counseling and medical attention so that you live your life in a way that pleases God but also pleases yourself. Harming yourself, if you’re a Christian, is like harming one of God’s very own children.
Article by Jack Wellman
Jack Wellman is Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren Church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google Plus or check out his book Teaching Children the Gospel available on Amazon.
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