1 Corinthians 6:12-20--Honor God WIth Your Bodies

1 Corinthians 6:12-20
English Standard Version

​Flee Sexual Immorality
12 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. 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. 14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. 15 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! 16 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.” 17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 19 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, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

---

You'll notice the "all things are lawful for me" is in quotes, so this is a saying among the Corinthian church to justify themselves in their bad behavior that we just talked about earlier in the chapter (yesterday's article) and may even be referring to the letter to the Galatian churches, because that epistle was one of the earliest to be written (after the letters to the Thessalonians that we have yet to study).  

While I'm not sure of the exact order, I generally believe the order of the table below (data from https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56ecb1ddd210b872df9b4070/t/5d685e018ac652000114853e/1567120897564/Pauline+Epistles.pdf) is roughly correct except that I think the letter to Philemon accompanied the book of Colossians and was not written a year or so later since the book of Colossians says that he was sending Onesimus back along with the other delegates carrying the book of Colossians and it wouldn't make sense to send Onesimus without the book of Philemon asking for Onesimus to be accepted back.  Overall though the book of Galatians was one of the earliest eipistles along with those to the Corinthians, and probably Romans, then we have a large group around 62 AD that were written when Paul was in prison, and we finish with a few of what we call the "Pastoral Epistles" written to encourage Timothy and Titus towards the end of Paul's life.  I decided to cover most of the prison epistles first and then circle back around to the earlier epistles and we'll probably be finishing our study of Paul's epistles by looking at the Pastoral Epistles to Timothy and Titus.

Epistle	Year
1 Thessalonians	52 A.D
2 Thessalonians	​53 A.D
Galatians	​54 A.D
​1 Corinthians	​57 A.D
​2 Corinthians	​57 A.D
​Romans	57 A.D
Colossians	62 A.D
Ephesians	​62 A.D
Philippians	62 A.D
Philemon	63 A.D
1 Timothy	​64 A.D
Titus	64 A.D
​2 Timothy	67 A.D.

In this passage to the church in Corinth, Paul is addressing the issue of sexual immorality and that it is not a lust to be fed, but a strong enemy from which we should flee--in fact it is the only temptation that we as Christians are told to flee from instead of standing strong and resisting.

Remember the image that we've already talked about with the Church being members of the Body of Christ?  That's a big theme in this letter and something we're coming back to again.  How can the members of the Body of Christ prostitute themselves out to "strange flesh" of the women (or men) of the world?  That's not supposed to be what happens in marriage where the two become one flesh and they make vows to be faithful and true to one other--Faithful and True is one of the names of Christ that we will see in the book of Revelation when we get there, but that unity is expressed through sexual intimacy in this life (there will be a spiritual intimacy that will be even more intimate in heaven that will be asexual as the Father, Son and Spirit are Three-in-One, so we will one with Christ though we as members of the Church are many and in so being one with Christ).  However we should not be seeking to become one with the world and "know" the world (one of the biblical words for sexual intercourse), but we should desire to "know" (a deep, intimate knowledge) nothing and no one other than Christ.  We should not be like Gomer to Hosea, but should be faithful and true to Christ as we are made in His image and that is part of His nature that we should exemplify as we become like Him.

Paul says to flee sexual immorality for a few reasons.  The first we talked about already as we should not be united with "strange flesh" when we are supposed to be one in spirit with God through Christ.  The next is that it is a sin that we commit against our own bodies--most other kinds of sins are sins we commit against God and other people--someone other than ourselves, but when we commit sexual sin we are sinning against ourselves and the physical punishments that come from such actions are something we ourselves must face within our own bodies--STIs/STDs, pregnancy, and a myriad of other issues that come from being sexually active and promiscuous--especially the emotional issues that are affected by uniting ourselves with those who are intimate with and how it cheapens our ability to trust others.  We'll pick up on this idea of men and woman engaged in sexual sin getting experiencing some kind of immediate judgment from God for their sin and that those natural consequences may not go away, even if the person repents.

Paul then makes his final argument here--our bodies as Christians belong to the Lord and are temples of the Holy Spirit that are not to be defiles by such sin.  This may have sounded strange to the Corinthians because they were used to temples being places where these things happened all the time as part of pagan worship, but Paul corrects them and says that the Temple of the Holy Spirit is a people and not a place, and it's to be different than any of the pagan temples--God tells us how He is to be worshiped and He is to be worshiped as we live in a way that is glorifying to God, not to our flesh.  We are not our own and have been bought with a price, therefore we are to honor God with our bodies--not simply with our words and songs.