The Rented Violin

In 2019, a young cellist named Sheku Kanneh-Mason was loaned a 1700 Matteo Goffriller cello worth over two million dollars. The instrument wasn't his. It belonged to a private collector who entrusted it to Sheku because of how he played — not recklessly, but with reverence, discipline, and breathtaking beauty. Sheku didn't toss it in the back seat of his car or leave it propped against a pub wall. He handled it with the kind of care you give something precious that belongs to someone else.

Paul tells the Corinthians something similar, though the stakes are infinitely higher. "You are not your own," he writes. "You were bought at a price." The Corinthians lived in a city drowning in the motto "everything is permissible." They carried that logic straight into the church — what I do with my body is my business. Paul pushes back hard. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. The Almighty doesn't just save your soul and leave your flesh behind. He moves in.

That changes everything. The question is no longer "What can I get away with?" but "Does this honor the One who lives here?"

Sheku could have done anything with that cello. Instead, he played it the way it deserved to be played — because it was entrusted to him for something greater than himself. How much more should we honor these bodies, bought not with money, but with the blood of Christ?