Sermon Notes

6 12 “All things are permitted for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are permitted 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 meant not for sexual immorality but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. 14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.” 17 But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Shun sexual immorality! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against the body itself. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body. (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, NRSVue)

6 12 Just because something is technically legal doesn’t mean that it’s spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I’d be a slave to my whims. 13 You know the old saying, “First you eat to live, and then you live to eat”? Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing, but that’s no excuse for stuffing your body with food, or indulging it with sex. Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body! 14-15 God honored the Master’s body by raising it from the grave. He’ll treat yours with the same resurrection power. Until that time, remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master’s body. You wouldn’t take the Master’s body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not. 16-20 There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.” There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another. Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body. (The Message, MSG)

In last week’s lesson, Paul addressed the Corinthians’ spiritual immaturity which had caused harmful divisions in the church (ekklesia) and weakened their unity as the body of Christ. Because many Corinthian Christians were “babes,” they failed to grasp their true identity as the temple of God; a metaphor Paul employs to explain how the unified body of Christ collectively bore the Divine Spirit. As God’s temple, the unified Church become the sacred space where God’s spirit resides, liberates and empowers.
In this week’s lesson, Paul expands the ”temple” metaphor to explore how individual believers’ bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, literally encasing the Holy Spirit. Because of their spiritual immaturity, some Corinthians were failing to honor their bodies as Divine space wholly dedicated to God. They surrendered their bodies to personal selfish lusts and sexual practices that reflected a commitment to other religious traditions instead of a commitment to God through the gospel of Jesus Christ. According to the gospel, Jesus gave his life—literally his body (soma in Greek)—so humanity might receive salvation. Because the body is the site of God’s saving work, bodies are sacred to God and we should consider them to be sacred as well.

1 Corinthians 6 is not the first time within this letter to the Church at Corinth that Paul teaches on sexual issues. In 1 Corinthians 5 he asserts that the Corinthians overall spiritual immaturity has led some into porneia; a broad term that meant immorality in the Greco-Roman world but takes on the notion of sexual sin and idolatry within Paul’s letters and other Jewish/Christian writings of this time. Because idolatry was often characterized as sexual sin in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament prophets as they likened idolatrous nations as those who “whore” with foreign gods, Paul similarly likens people who don’t honor their bodies with “proper sexuality” as going to “whorehouse.”
Paul’s injunction against porneia is on full display in chapters 5 and 6, particularly in what scholars call the “vice lists” of 5:9-11 and 6:9-10. While the Corinthians have been “washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (6:11, NRSVue), they were also once the “pornoi” or fornicators and idolaters (6:9, NRSVue). Regrettably, some Corinthians are presently still acting like the “pornoi” as they abuse and misuse the gift of sexual expression and engage in idolatrous behavior. Most notably, Paul calls out a member of the Corinthian Church who has been sexually engaged with his father’s wife (5:1) and men who are having sex with prostitutes. Paul is convinced that sexual immorality is like a contagious disease.
According to one biblical scholar, sexual immorality, “has the capacity to pollute and destroy the body of Christ more readily than other sins. It is not simply that such behavior is inappropriate for those who collectively constitute that body. In Paul’s view, the mystical union of an individual… with Christ is very real, and that union does not dissolve when they have sexual intercourse.” In Paul’s thought processes, when Christians engage in sexual immorality, Christ is present for, and a witness to, any and all acts.
While these chapters within 1 Corinthians appear to be easily interpreted, contemporary 21st century Christians should approach these biblical texts with humility and caution. This letter was not written to us. Paul was writing to the Church in Corinth circa 54 CE—almost 2000 years ago. That 1st century church had a different language, different cultural norms, and different theological and sociological understandings/practices than the 21st century world and the 21st century Church. Therefore, we should not simply lift Paul’s words and place them into our own 21st century conversations about sexual ethics and sexual morality without fully contextualizing them in the 1st century CE. To do so runs the risk of perverting the biblical text, misinterpreting scripture, and misleading both spiritually immature and spiritually mature 21st century Christians alike.

12 Just because something is technically legal doesn’t mean that it’s spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I’d be a slave to my whims. 13 You know the old saying, “First you eat to live, and then you live to eat”? Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing, but that’s no excuse for stuffing your body with food or indulging it with sex. Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body!
In the opening verses lesson text, Paul addresses Greco-Roman maxims (gnōmai in Greek, sententia in Latin) that are used in the Corinthian congregation. These slogans come from contemporary culture, are taken as truths, and were used in education. In 6:12, we find “all things are permitted to me,” met by Paul’s commentary “but not all things are beneficial”; in 6:13, we find “food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” met by Paul’s commentary “God will destroy both.” With both verses, Paul seems to be combating ideas the Corinthians might have had concerning the body because they were expecting the parousia (or Jesus’ return.) Paul responds to those slogans by saying even though the body may be a temporary thing, we should still honor it as a gift from God. In verse 13, Paul argues, “The body (soma in Greek)) is meant not for sexual immorality (porneia) but for the Lord and the Lord for the body (NRSVue).
Please note, Paul is not saying that the Corinthians should not engage in sexual activity. He is saying they should engage in the gift of sexual activity in ways that honor God. Sex should not be coerced or forced, nor taken lightly because it occurs within a sacred body that has been gifted to us by the Divine.
14-15 God honored the Master’s body by raising it from the grave. He’ll treat yours with the same resurrection power. Until that time, remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master’s body. You wouldn’t take the Master’s body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not.
In verses 14 and 15, Paul’s shares his views on how the Corinthians’ bodies are collectively the body of Christ which God raised from the grave. Therefore, they must maintain the purity of their individual bodies and the collective body. Because the Corinthians constitute the reconstituted body (soma) of Christ, they must honor that body (the Church) and model the behavior that glorifies God. They should remember to dignify their bodies the same way God dignified the body of Jesus.
To fully understand how Paul is characterizing the body, we must talk about the difference between two Greek words for body, soma and sarx. The Greek word sarx is usually rendered as flesh, or mortal flesh, to symbolize it as the body that is in a fallen state. The sarx is controlled by physical needs and desires that can lead to selfish acts and selfish motives if left unchecked. However, soma can be defined as a physical body, a corporate body (or sometimes an enslaved person) that is more than simply flesh (sarx). Soma is the body that humans had before the fall. The soma is the body that humans will have after Jesus returns. Soma also is the term used to describe Jesus’ body after God raised him from the dead. Thus, the term soma symbolizes our resurrected bodies that have been sanctified by God. For Paul, we should not talk about our bodies as if we have a body. According to Paul’s understanding of the difference between sarx and soma, we do not have a body, we are a body—a fully whole and complete that is not bifurcated in sacred and profane, spirit or body. We are one whole body.
With that understanding of Paul’s notion of the body (soma) as complete, whole, and lacking nothing outside of God, then we must consider the importance of treating ourselves the way God treats us. We should take care of our bodies—not indulging in destructive behaviors—because we gras the significance of how important our bodies are to God. Because our bodies matter to God, we must treat our bodies with love, care, and respect. Paul daringly writes, “would you join the Master’s body to a whore? I should hope not!” Why? Because we understand that our bodies (soma) should be cherished.
16-20 There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.” There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another. Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.
In the final verses of the lesson text, Paul asks the Corinthian community to theologically delve deeper into the notion of how profound sexual intimacy really is. Paul says sexual intimacy is a spiritual endeavor and not simply a physical affair. Invoking Genesis 2, Paul likens sexual intimacy to the sexual intimacy in the Garden of Eden—before the fall, when the man and his wife were “naked and not ashamed.” This means they were able to express themselves fully sexually because they were in a whole, loving, nurturing relationship.
In verses 19 and 20, Paul asks the Corinthian Church to think of itself as collectively “on the market,” as an enslaved person who has been acquired by God. As citizens of Corinth—a city where slavery was once widespread, but was founded anew by formerly enslaved persons—the Corinthian Church would have immediately recognized how Paul invokes the auction block as a metaphor to explain their relationship to God. Because God has purchased the Corinthians with the sacrificed body and blood of Jesus, the Corinthians must honor God with everything they do; literally with their bodies.
Paul’s use of a slavery metaphor may be difficult to accept with the contemporary legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and current prevalence of human trafficking. However, if we can properly contextualize his comments within its 1st century milieu, it is certain that Paul makes a bold theological statement concerning the delusions of human individualism regardless of time period. In our society and culture, which privileges a “me, myself and “I” mentality, Paul’s assertion that “you are not your own” is inexplicable. What do you mean, “I’m not in control of my own life.” Yet, Paul highlights the truth of a life in Christ. Christians are not in control of our own lives once we affirm Jesus as Savior and Lord. For Paul, the Corinthians had one master in Jesus Christ, a lord to whom they were responsible. Therefore, everything in their lives was subsumed under the Lordship of God. The same is true for 21st century believers. Once we confess Jesus as Savior and Lord, we belong to God. Because we affirm that Jesus died for our sins, we proclaim, as the gospel song says, “from the top of our heads to the soles of our feet, I belong to God!”

i. Jouette M. Bassler, “I Corinthians,” in Carol Newsom, Sharon Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley’s, Women's Bible Commentary, Third Edition: Revised and Updated (Kindle Edition), p. 558.
ii, Laura S. Nasrallah, “I Corinthians,” in Gale A. Yee’s Fortress Commentary on the Bible: Two Volume Set (Kindle Edition), p. 2962-2963.