1 Corinthians 6:12-20
“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. “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. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. 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! 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.” But 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. 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.
Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week, I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The Epistle reading for Sunday, January 14 comes from First Corinthians chapter six, verses 12, through 20. 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. 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. And God raised the Lord, and will also raise us up by His power. 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? 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. But 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. 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. Here's the reading. This is a challenging passage, because it seems like St. Paul is reacting to some ideas that are coming out of Corinth. In the in the text, he repeats a couple of things that are in quotation marks. It begins with, quote, All things are lawful for me, and quote, but not all things are helpful. What St. Paul doing, it seems like is that he must have gotten some comments from Corinth. And he's using them to react to what what is going on. The idea that they would have said is that all things are lawful for me, I can do whatever I want in Christ, right? Because the law of God, the Old Testament law has now been fulfilled and no longer applies to the church. It applied to ancient Israel, but in Christ, the Gentiles and the Christian church, we do not have to follow it. So All things are lawful. But then he says, but not all things are helpful. Again, he goes, All things are lawful, but I will not be dominated by anything. And then here's another, quote, food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and quote, and he goes, and God will destroy both one and the other. What must be happening here is someone has taken the freedom that we have in Christ. And what they're doing is using it as an excuse for lawlessness for sin. Specifically, what we have going on is sexual immorality. Because that's what he says, the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord, for the body. This is a huge problem that people misunderstand about the gift of the gospel and the free gift of grace that we have in Jesus Christ. Because we hear Jesus forgives your sin. It is all by grace, there is nothing you can do. In fact, no act you can do can please God in any way. And we go, awesome. That's fantastic. I love that news. That means I can go do whatever I want. And all I have to do is come back on Sunday and say, Oh, forgive me for this thing I did. I love it. I'm going to do it again. Of course, that's not how it works. But that is a common misunderstanding about Christianity is that you just go out and sin and then you say you're sorry, and then you can do it again and just keep up keep at it. What Christian churches often do then is that we say, we, we think we have to threaten someone salvation, to be able to get them to obey. And so we say, Ah, if you're going to be a real Christian, you have to, but that's not how St. Paul goes about it. St. Paul does something different. He calls on the nature of God's salvation, to tell us how to behave. So he goes the body is not And for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body, and God raised the Lord, and will also raise us up by His power. So our body is not meant for this evil thing. It's meant for God. And so what it means is this, this is not a salvation thing. Paul is saying that we have been saved, we have this promise, we've been raised from the dead with Christ. And he claims us, which means that there's there are implications for our behavior. And then he goes into that, in this particular issue about prostitution. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make the members of a prostitute? Never? 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. So what he says is that we who are in Christ, we've been saved by Him, we are members of His Body. But when we commit sexual immorality, we join ourselves with the other person. Now, this is true in that day, when it would have been a prostitute someone you pay to have sex with, or maybe even someone like a temple prostitute might have been the situation there, where sex is a part of the ritual of worshipping a false god. And they're just like, I can do whatever I want. And he's saying, when when we join together in this act, to become one, and then you take that and you bring that into your communion with Christ. Now, most of us don't have this challenge of paying someone for this kind of thing. But the sexual immorality is just as a big bigger deal today, as it always has been, because we have urges, and we'd like to act them out. And the same thing applies for us in in our sexual life, is that when we have partners outside of marriage, we are joining ourselves into this into this act that we should not. And we're making Christ a part of that since we are members of His Body. That's why we we live in holiness. Say St. Paul continues, but 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. 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 have been bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. So here he's talking about how this particular kind of sin is, is, is not outside of us, but inside of us, and it affects our bodies that God has chosen for us. And he uses the language of a temple of the Holy Spirit. And the idea behind this is that our bodies are like temples set aside for God, and they should be holy and sanctified. Which means that joining into into these acts our bodies, actually is a way of de sanctifying the temple. And so what we want is our bodies to be holy and righteous before God. Now, the my body is a temple is often something that people will talk about when they're talking about fitness. Right? My body is a temple. So I only put in, in organic food and I, I run and I work out so that I can have six pack abs because my body is a temple. That is not at all what St. Paul is talking about. That is totally wrong. He's saying your body is holy, because the Holy Spirit dwells within, keep it holy. Now, of course, this this passage is is his law, right? He's saying, we are we are saved, we are made holy, we should act that way we should glorify God in our body, and not by joining in in these difficult and sinful acts. But we know that we're sinners too. And so as we we we rest in the promise, the Holy Spirit is in us that God has saved us even as we fight against these these urges that sometimes we lose too. But we have to remember that the battle is worth fighting. The job is worth it. Glorifying God in our bodies is worth fighting against these urges, because we have the salvation of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit in us. We need to keep at it, even if it's tough.
And that means we just don't Give up, not to people who've just given up on this and acted as if you just can't stop it. Or even worse, a human being just isn't living a fulfilled life unless they have lots of partners and they go out and they sow their wild oats before they get married, and settle down. Now, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Glorify God with your body. That's all I have for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai