Paul gives commands concerning holiness to the Corinthians and reminds them that they are not their own but belong to Jesus.
Paul gives commands concerning holiness to the Corinthians and reminds them that they are not their own but belong to Jesus.
– PODCAST TRANSCRIPT –
Wes
Welcome to the Two Journeys Bible Study podcast. This podcast is just one of the many resources available to you for free from Two Journeys Ministry. If you’re interested in learning more, just head over to TwoJourneys.org. Now, on to today’s episode.
This is part two of episode seven in our 1 Corinthians Bible Study podcast. This episode is entitled Lawsuits and Sexual Immorality among Believers, where we’ll continue our discussion of 1 Corinthians 6:1-20. I’m Wes Treadway, and I’m here with Pastor Andy Davis. Andy, what are we going to see in these verses that we’re looking at today?
Andy
The Apostle Paul, in this chapter, this vital chapter addresses the issue of our certainty of our personal state with Christ based on our own holiness. Paul says, “Do not be deceived.” If you’re living a certain kind of life, you’re not a child of God, and that’s especially important in the issue of sexual immorality. We live in a very sexually degenerate and permissive culture, especially since the sixties. And things are getting more and more that way. We also see in this chapter that Paul cares very much about the corporate witness of the Corinthian Church, as he did in the last chapter on church discipline. He wanted to make certain that the testimony of the church was not corrupted by not disciplining a sinful member.
Well, the same issue is here, again, with sexual purity, but also with lawsuits among believers. He said, how in the world can you be going in front of unbelievers to have disputes? Jesus said, “By this will all men know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” And here they are suing each other and Paul said, “Defrauding each other.” So, we’re going to talk about the issue of sexual purity, the issue of not being deceived about where you’re at spiritually, and then the issue also of corporate witness. And that’ll actually come first in the account.
Wes
Well, let me go ahead and read 1 Corinthians 6:1-20:
When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother and that before unbelievers. To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud- even your own brothers!
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such for some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
“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.
Andy, as we continue reflecting on what Paul wrote to this dysfunctional church at Corinth, what should we make of the statement, “all things are lawful for me,” in verse 12? And what’s the danger in being dominated by something as Paul makes this turn from the lawsuits among believers to this issue of sexual immorality?
Andy
Now, in my translation, I don’t know about yours, but it puts it in quotation marks.
Wes
That’s right.
Andy
I think the reason is that you get the sense in various key points in 1 Corinthians that Paul’s responding to a letter or a set of issues that they wrote him about. He’ll even say, “now about the things you wrote about it is good for a man not to touch a woman.” So that’s the very next chapter, chapter seven verse one. So, they clearly wrote him. And so, this seems to be a slogan or something that the people were saying. Well, you know, everything’s permissible for me. And so, he is like, really? So, he’s quoting it, and I think the reason they put it in quotations, it’s an interpretation to do so, but I think it’s right, is Paul immediately refutes it twice. Everything’s permissible for me. Oh, really? Well, let me say something back. Everything’s permissible for me. Oh, really? All things are lawful for me. Really? Well, let me say something more about that. So, I think he’s refuting it.
So, the idea here is yeah, we’re out from the law, we’re not going to be condemned, et cetera. But it isn’t true that everything really is lawful for you. I think it probably goes to the whole issue that we’re going to discuss for three chapters, meat sacrificed to idols. And so, we have some people that have kind of transcended all this. Now, we’ve gotten beyond it. I can do what I want. I can eat whatever food I want. I’m above all that. Everything’s permissible for me now, everything’s lawful. Really? So, he’s addressing that, and he goes right to the issue of food. So, I think that’s probably what’s in his mind, but he’s going to fully address it in chapters eight through 10.
But right now, he’s saying all things are lawful for me, so-called. Really, but not everything’s beneficial or helpful. All things are lawful for me. So, you say, all right, fine, but I’m not going to be mastered by anything. So, what does he mean by that? To be mastered by something, there is a category of blessings, we’ll call them blessings, in life that are good for us, but we need to be careful, to not become enslaved by them. They’re amoral pleasures. And I think it’s vital for us as Christians, especially as we’re maturing, to show self-control in the issue of amoral pleasures. Let’s go right to the matter of food. All right? Is it true that I can eat anything I want? Well, yes, spiritually, but physically, if I eat too much of certain types of foods, it’s going to have a detrimental effect on my body. I’m 60 now, and I’ve found that my metabolism isn’t what it was, and I need to be pretty careful what I eat and the amounts I eat. All right, so there’s that.
Aside from that, then let’s say electronic entertainment. I can watch any movie I want. Well, first of all, this is not necessarily true. There are some corrupting movies that ought not to be seen by Christians. And so, you say, look, David wrote in a psalm, I will not set any worthless thing before my eyes. So, there’s a lot of worthless things that we ought not to be setting before our eyes because it says whatever’s true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy, think about these things. So, if the movie’s dragging you down in the gutter, you can’t see it. But even if it were good, even if there was nothing wrong with it, it’s engaging and interesting and elevating and moral and well-written, should we binge on it? Oh whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It’s like 12 episodes. We’re going to watch one after the other. It’s like, oh my goodness. And we get addicted.
Or games, people do games and people who have hobbies, people do other things, and they don’t control themselves. So, this goes to the issue of the fruit of the Spirit is self-control. To be able to say, look, not everything I’m doing is helpful for me. I’m becoming addicted, and we do have addictive tendencies toward everything. So, let’s be careful, everything that we do is beneficial for us. And I’ll tell you this, if you’re not sure whether I’m being enslaved by something, then just give it up for a week. Just don’t do it. And if it’s incredibly hard to give it up even for a week, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. You know you’re already somewhat enslaved.
“If you’re not sure whether I’m being enslaved by something, then just give it up for a week. Just don’t do it. And if it’s incredibly hard to give it up even for a week, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. You know you’re already somewhat enslaved.”
Wes
Paul seems to go on to unpack this just a little bit at the beginning of verse 13, this category as you mentioned of amoral pleasures. What perspective does verse 13 give us on these pleasures? And what point is Paul trying to make when he says that the body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body?
Andy
All right, so he does mention food for the stomach and stomach for food. So that, again, is in quotations in my Bible here. So, it seems to be, again, something they were saying to him. It’s like, all right, fine, but let me tell you something. God’s going to destroy them both. And what does that mean? I think at death. He’s saying, look, death is coming. We were not made to eat. We don’t live to eat. We eat to live. We could add other words in there that would be similar. We eat so that we may serve Christ better. We recreate so that we can be renewed to work for the kingdom. We don’t live for it. And so, Paul’s saying, look, lift your eyes above the physical pleasure of life, that the Corinthian lifestyle is looking for. Lift your eyes above that and look to the Lord, look to your own death. Look to the temporary nature of your time here on earth, and let’s seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and then let these other things be welcome additions.
So, he says that and then he makes a quick pivot to sexual immorality. So, we’re going back there again. And as I said at the beginning of the last podcast, this issue of sexual immorality in our culture is huge. And so pretty much the next whole section, really, the rest of the chapter is talking about the issue of sexual immorality. And Paul says also, let’s keep in mind why God even gave us a body. He gave us a body with a stomach. And yes, the stomach was made for food. That’s what it’s for. But both of them were made for the Lord. So also with your sexual drive, it was made for the Lord, and the Lord designed it for a purpose.
We were talking earlier, Wes, about the beauty of a Christian family and the delight of leading children, our own children to faith in Christ. One of the reasons God gave us marital relations, sex, is so that we can have godly children, holy children that will be for the Lord and raise them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. So, to look at every bodily drive, every bodily desire, every bodily function, every pleasure, every taste, everything that’s pleasing to the ear or to the eye or to the tongue or to our sex drive, everything is for the Lord. It should be sanctified; it should be brought back to Christ. I like to look at it this way. We should see or seek all of our pleasures in the hand of the Lord Jesus. Go to Jesus for the pleasure and eat them out of His hand and then you’ll not have too much or be illicit or immoral with them. So, the body is for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.
“We should see or seek all of our pleasures in the hand of the Lord Jesus. Go to Jesus for the pleasure and eat them out of His hand and then you’ll not have too much or be illicit or immoral with them.”
Wes
Why does Paul mention Christ’s resurrection and ours in verse 14? And what does this teach us about the importance to God of what we do with our bodies?
Andy
Right. Well, first of all, let me take that last part first. There could have been a Greek philosophy back then that said the spirit is what matters. What you do with your body doesn’t matter. It doesn’t, you can do what you want with your body. What really matters is what’s going on in your spirit. Paul says, that’s garbage, that’s rubbish. Your body matters a lot. And there’s lots of reasons we can know that. First of all, God made the body originally. Second of all, God himself, the second person in the Trinity, took on a body. The word became flesh. And so, bodies are important. Second, and third of all, God raised Jesus from the dead into a body, and He’s eternally in a body. And fourthly, Jesus’s resurrection body is a pattern of the body we’re going to have, which he will describe beautifully at the end of this book in 1 Corinthians 15, a whole chapter devoted to the bodily resurrection of Christians in the pattern of Jesus’s resurrection. So, God, by His power, God raised Jesus, the Lord, from the dead, and he’s going to raise us also. So, it does matter what we do with our bodies. It matters what we do with the members of our bodies. And that’s exactly where he is going next.
Wes
What do verses 15 and 17 teach us about the ramifications of our spiritual union with Christ?
Andy
Okay, and that’s Romans 6. When we become Christians, we are spiritually, mystically united with Jesus. We’re united with him and become one with him in spirit in his death and one with him in spirit in his resurrection. And so, there’s a negative aspect of sanctification where there are things we must not do, we die to sin. And there is a positive aspect of our union with Christ where we live for holiness and righteousness. And both of those are vital here. So fundamentally, we need to know that our bodies are members of the body of Christ. And so, we ourselves are part of Jesus’s mystical body, the church, so to speak. And so fundamentally then, the members of our body are also members of the body of Christ. My hands, my eyes, my mouth, my ears are all part of the body of Christ.
And so, Paul says very clearly in Romans 6, “we should present the members of our body not to sin as instruments of wickedness but to God as instruments or weapons of righteousness.” And so, he says the same thing again in verse 17. “He who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.” So, if we’re Christians, we are spiritually united with Jesus in his death to sin and his resurrection to righteousness.
Wes
How does Paul’s use of the words the “two will become one flesh” in verse 16, show the immense significance of sex.
Andy
Wow, it is incredibly important. That’s the marriage verse. That’s what I say when I marry a couple, the two will become one flesh. That’s what Jesus taught on the issue of divorce. How could they be divorced? The two become one, two become one flesh. And that’s from Genesis 2. God established the pattern. Jesus said in Matthew 19, “Do you not know that in the beginning, the Creator made them male and female?” So let no one tell you that Jesus isn’t aware of homosexuality or thinks everything’s fine. Not at all. He upholds the validity of gender, two genders. That’s disparagingly called binary these days, but binary, whatever you want to call it. Yes, we believe in two types, male, female, from the beginning, Genesis 1. The Creator made them male and female and said, “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.” And so that is the marriage verse, sex is the marriage act. That’s why I call it marital relations.
You’re like, well, you’re naive pastor. Not everybody that does that is married. It’s like, no, but they should be. And that’s God’s intention. So, there’s a profound mystery, Paul calls it, in sex, and it is a good thing. God made it beautiful and good. And there are specific clear functions. There’s a functionality, a biological functionality where it’s very clear how complementary male and female are, biologically, sexually and then in marriage. But here’s the thing, Paul’s not talking about marriage here. He’s talking about being with a prostitute. That man and that woman aren’t talking about marriage. That’s the whole point, is that they’re not married. Someone once said disparagingly, “You don’t pay a prostitute to have sex with her, you pay her to walk away after it’s over.” You don’t want to be married to her. And she knows that. So, she’ll take money and walk away. So, you’re no longer responsible for her heart, no longer responsible for her emotions. You’re not responsible for anything else, just paying for that one time together, and there’s a certain fee.
Conversely, she looks on you, that we’re told in Proverbs, like a loaf of bread. You’re nothing to her. She has no care about what it’s doing to your heart, to your soul, et cetera. And he’s saying, shall I take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never. May it never be. And so, he’s addressing a very clear problem in this Corinthian church. Talk about a dysfunctional church, they’re going to the temple, prostitutes, male and female. Homosexuality is going on. Illicit, like adultery is going on, all of this. But to go back to your question, when you slept with that woman, when you united, you effectively, to some degree, married her.
So, what do we do then for let’s say singles, even Christian singles sadly, who think they have sexual freedom, they can do what they want, and they deal dishonorably with each other because they really love each other. They’re moving toward marriage, et cetera. They’re fornicating, they’re having sex together. Well, the two become one flesh. How do you pull apart? Your hearts have become knit together. How do you pull apart? And then, when you hear the anguish in some of these contemporary songs, the anguish, there’s got to be a sexual component to that. They’ve become effectively glued together. So, I do some woodworking and you can imagine two pieces of hardwood, say some dark hardwood like maple or something like that. You take a nice wood glue, and you paint it on there, nice coating, and you take these two flat pieces of hardwood and put them together and put a clamp on them. And you come back two days later, take the clamp off. Now, get them apart, cleanly.
Well, that’s a picture of divorce right there. You can’t separate, the two have become one. But it’s also a picture of sexual promiscuity and the damage it does, you can’t pull them apart cleanly. There’s parts of each of the blocks stuck to the other. And imagine then, multiplying that hundreds of times, what some people call a body count. It’s very sad. And so people are doing this one after the other to the point what doesn’t mean anything anymore. They’ve lost themselves, they don’t know who they are anymore. It’s very damaging. That’s what came out of the sixties in the sexual freedom. And it was going on before the sixties, it’s here in the Bible. So, it was going on in first century Corinth.
So fundamentally, he says, “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said the two will become one flesh.” But you, if you’re a Christian, you united yourself like that in a deeper level with the Lord Jesus Christ. “Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?” It’s a jarring image, and it’s meant to be jarring. May it never be.
Wes
What command does Paul give then about sexual immorality in verse 18? And what motivation does Paul present for obedience to this command?
Andy
Flee. Run for your lives. I think about this in terms of the end time teaching I’m doing about the abomination of desolation and the man of sin and all that. When you see the abomination of desolation, when you see it, run for your lives. And I don’t know that you’ll make it. You don’t have time to go down from the roof of your house to take anything out of the house. And it’s going to be hard for pregnant women and nursing mothers. I don’t think they’re going to make it. They’re running for their lives. What does it mean for their lives? They’re going to die if they get caught. By who? By Antichrist force. Imagine the Gestapo. Imagine being a Jew in Warsaw during the Nazi era. It’s like you’re running for your lives, and you got to get out of there. You got to run for the hills, you got to go hide in the caves. That’s how bad it’s going to be.
Well, that’s end time teaching. This is the same word though. Flee. Run. Get out of there. So, the picture, of course, is Joseph. Potiphar’s wife, remember how she’s scheming and plotting, and she lays her eyes on Joseph, and there is female lust. There is such a thing as a yearning after that a woman has. We definitely know that there’s men that yearn after women like David with Bathsheba, looks at her and lusts after her. When he said, no, don’t even get in it. Lead us not into temptation. Flee sexual immorality. That’s the command. Flee, run. Don’t walk, run. And so, the idea is don’t get in tempting situations. And the Bible helps us with that. All right, you got David and Bathsheba. All right, there’s some question about whether Bathsheba should have been bathing in a way that she could have been seen. It doesn’t take a genius to look 360 degrees and say, is there a line of sight available here? I mean, pull the curtain. Don’t do that. So, I’m not ultimately blaming Bathsheba, but I have some questions about her.
“Flee sexual immorality. That’s the command. Flee, run. Don’t walk, run.”
Then you get Proverbs seven where the seductress, the illicit wife says, my husband’s away on a long journey. And there’s a young man that goes by and this observer, Solomon, I guess, sees this young man through the lattice in his window, and he looks down and he sees, and she goes out crafty and dressed with evil intent, and she’s got her hair all done, and she’s got everything. And she uses smooth honeyed words. And it says all at once, he goes in with her, little knowing it’ll cost him his life, like an arrow will pierce his liver. It’s terrifying. He’s going to die. And you’ll be shamed in the congregation. So, the idea here is flee, get away from it. Lead us not into temptation.
And so, the same would be of internet pornography, whatever it is that’s causing your mind to go in a certain direction. Jesus talked about what’s going on in your mind and your heart that you can commit adultery with a woman in your mind, in your heart. Don’t covet her. Don’t covet her beauty. And so, there’s danger all around. Flee it. And that’s the council given here, a command given: flee from sexual immorality.
Wes
How about the motivation? How does he round that out in verse 18 by explaining what exactly is going on here, perhaps repeating some of the same sentiment that he’s been elaborating thus far.
Andy
Yeah. Okay. So, you’re one flesh with her, you’re uniting with her. Well, she was one flesh with some other guy earlier. Not going to say when, but maybe even earlier that day or the day before. And there are issues of sexually transmitted diseases which are hinted at rather overtly in Romans 1. They received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. So, there are sexually transmitted disease among homosexual people and among heterosexual people. So sexually transmitted diseases are a very grave danger, and I think it’s in view here. All of the sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins, sexually sins against his own body. What could that be other than an STD? There’s some very, very bad physical effects of sexual immorality. Whereas if you take one man, one woman for life, and she’s your only sexual partner your entire life, and you are her only sexual partner her entire life, danger of STD, as far as I can tell, zero.
I guess there would be some other way that you could have it. I know Arthur Ashe died of AIDS from a blood transfusion, but that’s not an STD. That was from a blood transfusion. So, I’m just saying you’re safe. You’re safe. So be safe. Live a safe life, be pure. Protect yourself. So, for me, as a father of both sons and daughters, I talk to them a lot about purity. I talk about relationships, I talk about dating. I talk about not being tempted, not being alone together, having accountability. The courting or dating process, how are you going to manage that? What are you going to do? I mean, you obviously have a desire for each other, how are you going to be pure? So, it matters. I would say fundamentally this issue, All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he sins sexually sins against his own body.
Now this is kind of an overstatement, obviously overeating, you can give yourself heart disease, so that’s sinning against your own body, a lot of ways to sin against your body, but I think the point is this is uniquely attacking the body.
Wes
What does Paul say about the body of every Christian in verse 19? And what’s the significance of the assertion, you are not your own for you were bought at a price?
Andy
I think this is why we did two podcasts on this one 20-verse chapter. There’s a lot of explosive statements in this chapter. So, all right, let’s take the first one. “Our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in us, whom we have received from God.” So that’s that teaching of the indwelling Holy Spirit, which Jesus said in John 14 and 15. The Spirit, the Comforter comes, he will be with you and will be in you. He will dwell inside you. That’s awesome. The same Spirit of God who hovered over the waters, the time of creation in Genesis 1:2, will live inside you and effectively deliver Christ to you every moment.
“The same Spirit of God who hovered over the waters, the time of creation in Genesis 1:2, will live inside you and effectively deliver Christ to you every moment.”
Wes, you and I are Christians. We would not be Christians; we would not think about Jesus or love Him if it weren’t for the Holy Spirit of God. It’s the spirit that takes, Jesus said. He will take from what is mine and make it known to you. So, he’ll take my blood and present it to you, paint it on you, spiritually. He’ll take my words and make them burn inside you. He will do this work. The Holy Spirit is inside. So, you, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, and you have received Him from God. He never leaves you. So how can you go to a temple prostitute? He’s with you. I am with you when you do that, don’t do it. So that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Now, people have extended that to I think some reasonable applications. So be in good shape, take care of your body, be physically fit, be careful what you eat. Be careful about your patterns. Get a good night’s sleep. Just take care of yourself. Take care of your body. Don’t run your body down. But also, I think it’s a picture of the significance of the body at resurrection. So, the body that is raised, it is sown, it says, it is sown a perishable body. It’s raised imperishable. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown a natural body. What is it raised? A spiritual body. That’s the perfection of the Holy Spirit being in your body, and your body being perfectly spiritual. In the meantime, you’ve got this mortal body, this dying body, this body of sin, this body of death. But he’s in us. And so, be very careful what you do with your body, that’s what I get from the body is the temple.
Now the other question you asked is, “you are not your own, you’re bought at a price.” That is slave language, no doubt. And Paul called himself often in his epistles, a bond slave of Jesus Christ. He says, I’m not my own. I was bought at a price. And what was the price? The blood of Jesus. I mean, that’s infinitely greater than any pile of silver coins or gold coins paid at a slave auction or a slave market. Now, obviously, for ourselves, we ask reasonable questions sometimes about the issue of chattel slavery, about Christians that owned slaves, 19th century in American south and other places, and reasonably so. And there’s an awful lot of sin that went on. But the question that’s asked that begins to impugn the Bible itself, ask questions about the Bible itself. People who know for certain that slavery is evil and wrong but don’t know for certain that the Bible is the word of God. How can it be? How could you have that level of certainty that slavery is wrong and that level of uncertainty that the perfect Bible, the word of God is a flawed human document, but that’s what they see it.
And they look at the slave issue as proof that the Bible is an outmoded archaic document from a patriarchal era in which slavery is clearly expected. Bible believers then say, well, there is a problem. Why is the Bible not clearly emancipatory? Why doesn’t Paul command masters to emancipate their slaves, set them free? He hints at it in Philemon, do me a favor and set this Onesimus free. He wants him to do it, but it doesn’t overtly say, set all your slaves free, and let’s end slavery for good. Why? Because it is a part of the communication that God gives of our relationship with Him. We are His slaves. He owns us. And why? Because He made us, number one, and because He bought us with the blood of His son, number two, and therefore we’re not our own. So, we are slaves, and we will be so forever because it says in Revelation 22, “His servants will serve Him.” Well, that’s the tame version. His slaves will slave for Him.
Well, we’re also sons, and we’re also kings and queens and all that. So, there’s lots of … And we’re bride, so there’s a lot of images here. So, I would say fundamentally this is vital because every day I wake up thinking I am my own. I can do what I want today. I can do what I want with my time. I can do what I want with my money. It’s all mine to do with as I see fit. This verse says, no, it’s not. You’re not your own. You’re bought at a price. So why don’t you ask Jesus what you should do with your life? Now, let me tell you something very important in my life. I may have quoted this at an earlier podcast, but I’ll say it again.
This verse was in the mind of a young woman who changed my life. I don’t even know that she knew this verse was in her mind. She wasn’t a super Bible scholar. She was a Christian. Maybe it was, I don’t know. But she asked me if I was planning on going on a mission trip to Kenya for 10 weeks. I was working as an engineer, and her name was Kim. And I said, “No, Kim.” She said, “We’re going on a mission trip to Kenya this summer.” I said, “I know. I’ll be praying for you.” Low commitment. I’ll pray for you. She said, “Have you thought about going?” I said, “No.” She said, “Why not?” I said, “Well, Kim, it’s for 10 weeks. I’d have to quit my job. They won’t let me go.” She said, “Have you prayed about it?” I said, “No.” And then she said these words. She said, “You shouldn’t act like you know. It’s not your life, you know.”
What does she mean? You’re not your own. You’re bought at a price. You should ask your master whether you should go on a mission trip or not. So, I was like, all right, whatever. So yes, all right, I’ll pray. And I forgot about it till the next week. And then I prayed, and the Lord said, “Yes, I want you to go on that mission trip.” And I said, “Okay, what do you want me to do when I get back?” He said, “Go to seminary full time.” And it led me to this present role that I have here. All because of this one concept, you’re not your own. You better ask your master what I should do. So, I would suggest you do that every day in a quiet time. Wake up in the morning, present your body as a living sacrifice. Present your members, and that’s slave language. What do you want me to do, and then do it.
Wes
What final command does Paul give in this chapter and what final thoughts do you have for us today?
Andy
The final command he gives here, because we’re not our own, we’ve been bought at a price, the price of the blood of Jesus, therefore, we should glorify God with our bodies. And that’s what I would say here. Whatever I can do with the members of my body, I should glorify Him. Let’s go back to the whole content of this chapter. Let’s not defraud each other for money, that wouldn’t glorify God with our body. Let’s not be thieves. Let’s not be swindlers. Let’s not be idolaters. That doesn’t glorify God with our bodies. Let’s be sexually pure. If we’re single, let’s be sexually pure and not fornicate. Let’s not visit temple prostitutes. If we’re married, let’s keep ourselves only for the one we swore to keep ourselves only for, and let’s uphold those marital vows.
Let’s be pure and holy. Let’s be sanctified. Let’s live lives that are washed, sanctified, justified, et cetera. Let’s glorify God with our bodies. Our time here on earth is brief. And Paul already said, God will destroy them both. God’s going to destroy my stomach, Paul says, at death. So, in the short time that I have left, I want to glorify God with this mortal body. That’s the final command He gives.
Wes
Well, this has been part two of episode seven in our 1 Corinthians Bible Study podcast. I want to invite you to join us next time for episode eight, entitled Instructions for Godly Marriages, where we’ll discuss 1 Corinthians 7:1-16. Thank you for listening to the Two Journeys podcast. And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
Paul gives commands concerning holiness to the Corinthians and reminds them that they are not their own but belong to Jesus.
– PODCAST TRANSCRIPT –
Wes
Welcome to the Two Journeys Bible Study podcast. This podcast is just one of the many resources available to you for free from Two Journeys Ministry. If you’re interested in learning more, just head over to TwoJourneys.org. Now, on to today’s episode.
This is part two of episode seven in our 1 Corinthians Bible Study podcast. This episode is entitled Lawsuits and Sexual Immorality among Believers, where we’ll continue our discussion of 1 Corinthians 6:1-20. I’m Wes Treadway, and I’m here with Pastor Andy Davis. Andy, what are we going to see in these verses that we’re looking at today?
Andy
The Apostle Paul, in this chapter, this vital chapter addresses the issue of our certainty of our personal state with Christ based on our own holiness. Paul says, “Do not be deceived.” If you’re living a certain kind of life, you’re not a child of God, and that’s especially important in the issue of sexual immorality. We live in a very sexually degenerate and permissive culture, especially since the sixties. And things are getting more and more that way. We also see in this chapter that Paul cares very much about the corporate witness of the Corinthian Church, as he did in the last chapter on church discipline. He wanted to make certain that the testimony of the church was not corrupted by not disciplining a sinful member.
Well, the same issue is here, again, with sexual purity, but also with lawsuits among believers. He said, how in the world can you be going in front of unbelievers to have disputes? Jesus said, “By this will all men know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” And here they are suing each other and Paul said, “Defrauding each other.” So, we’re going to talk about the issue of sexual purity, the issue of not being deceived about where you’re at spiritually, and then the issue also of corporate witness. And that’ll actually come first in the account.
Wes
Well, let me go ahead and read 1 Corinthians 6:1-20:
When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother and that before unbelievers. To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud- even your own brothers!
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such for some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
“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.
Andy, as we continue reflecting on what Paul wrote to this dysfunctional church at Corinth, what should we make of the statement, “all things are lawful for me,” in verse 12? And what’s the danger in being dominated by something as Paul makes this turn from the lawsuits among believers to this issue of sexual immorality?
Andy
Now, in my translation, I don’t know about yours, but it puts it in quotation marks.
Wes
That’s right.
Andy
I think the reason is that you get the sense in various key points in 1 Corinthians that Paul’s responding to a letter or a set of issues that they wrote him about. He’ll even say, “now about the things you wrote about it is good for a man not to touch a woman.” So that’s the very next chapter, chapter seven verse one. So, they clearly wrote him. And so, this seems to be a slogan or something that the people were saying. Well, you know, everything’s permissible for me. And so, he is like, really? So, he’s quoting it, and I think the reason they put it in quotations, it’s an interpretation to do so, but I think it’s right, is Paul immediately refutes it twice. Everything’s permissible for me. Oh, really? Well, let me say something back. Everything’s permissible for me. Oh, really? All things are lawful for me. Really? Well, let me say something more about that. So, I think he’s refuting it.
So, the idea here is yeah, we’re out from the law, we’re not going to be condemned, et cetera. But it isn’t true that everything really is lawful for you. I think it probably goes to the whole issue that we’re going to discuss for three chapters, meat sacrificed to idols. And so, we have some people that have kind of transcended all this. Now, we’ve gotten beyond it. I can do what I want. I can eat whatever food I want. I’m above all that. Everything’s permissible for me now, everything’s lawful. Really? So, he’s addressing that, and he goes right to the issue of food. So, I think that’s probably what’s in his mind, but he’s going to fully address it in chapters eight through 10.
But right now, he’s saying all things are lawful for me, so-called. Really, but not everything’s beneficial or helpful. All things are lawful for me. So, you say, all right, fine, but I’m not going to be mastered by anything. So, what does he mean by that? To be mastered by something, there is a category of blessings, we’ll call them blessings, in life that are good for us, but we need to be careful, to not become enslaved by them. They’re amoral pleasures. And I think it’s vital for us as Christians, especially as we’re maturing, to show self-control in the issue of amoral pleasures. Let’s go right to the matter of food. All right? Is it true that I can eat anything I want? Well, yes, spiritually, but physically, if I eat too much of certain types of foods, it’s going to have a detrimental effect on my body. I’m 60 now, and I’ve found that my metabolism isn’t what it was, and I need to be pretty careful what I eat and the amounts I eat. All right, so there’s that.
Aside from that, then let’s say electronic entertainment. I can watch any movie I want. Well, first of all, this is not necessarily true. There are some corrupting movies that ought not to be seen by Christians. And so, you say, look, David wrote in a psalm, I will not set any worthless thing before my eyes. So, there’s a lot of worthless things that we ought not to be setting before our eyes because it says whatever’s true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy, think about these things. So, if the movie’s dragging you down in the gutter, you can’t see it. But even if it were good, even if there was nothing wrong with it, it’s engaging and interesting and elevating and moral and well-written, should we binge on it? Oh whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It’s like 12 episodes. We’re going to watch one after the other. It’s like, oh my goodness. And we get addicted.
Or games, people do games and people who have hobbies, people do other things, and they don’t control themselves. So, this goes to the issue of the fruit of the Spirit is self-control. To be able to say, look, not everything I’m doing is helpful for me. I’m becoming addicted, and we do have addictive tendencies toward everything. So, let’s be careful, everything that we do is beneficial for us. And I’ll tell you this, if you’re not sure whether I’m being enslaved by something, then just give it up for a week. Just don’t do it. And if it’s incredibly hard to give it up even for a week, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. You know you’re already somewhat enslaved.
“If you’re not sure whether I’m being enslaved by something, then just give it up for a week. Just don’t do it. And if it’s incredibly hard to give it up even for a week, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. You know you’re already somewhat enslaved.”
Wes
Paul seems to go on to unpack this just a little bit at the beginning of verse 13, this category as you mentioned of amoral pleasures. What perspective does verse 13 give us on these pleasures? And what point is Paul trying to make when he says that the body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body?
Andy
All right, so he does mention food for the stomach and stomach for food. So that, again, is in quotations in my Bible here. So, it seems to be, again, something they were saying to him. It’s like, all right, fine, but let me tell you something. God’s going to destroy them both. And what does that mean? I think at death. He’s saying, look, death is coming. We were not made to eat. We don’t live to eat. We eat to live. We could add other words in there that would be similar. We eat so that we may serve Christ better. We recreate so that we can be renewed to work for the kingdom. We don’t live for it. And so, Paul’s saying, look, lift your eyes above the physical pleasure of life, that the Corinthian lifestyle is looking for. Lift your eyes above that and look to the Lord, look to your own death. Look to the temporary nature of your time here on earth, and let’s seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and then let these other things be welcome additions.
So, he says that and then he makes a quick pivot to sexual immorality. So, we’re going back there again. And as I said at the beginning of the last podcast, this issue of sexual immorality in our culture is huge. And so pretty much the next whole section, really, the rest of the chapter is talking about the issue of sexual immorality. And Paul says also, let’s keep in mind why God even gave us a body. He gave us a body with a stomach. And yes, the stomach was made for food. That’s what it’s for. But both of them were made for the Lord. So also with your sexual drive, it was made for the Lord, and the Lord designed it for a purpose.
We were talking earlier, Wes, about the beauty of a Christian family and the delight of leading children, our own children to faith in Christ. One of the reasons God gave us marital relations, sex, is so that we can have godly children, holy children that will be for the Lord and raise them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. So, to look at every bodily drive, every bodily desire, every bodily function, every pleasure, every taste, everything that’s pleasing to the ear or to the eye or to the tongue or to our sex drive, everything is for the Lord. It should be sanctified; it should be brought back to Christ. I like to look at it this way. We should see or seek all of our pleasures in the hand of the Lord Jesus. Go to Jesus for the pleasure and eat them out of His hand and then you’ll not have too much or be illicit or immoral with them. So, the body is for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.
“We should see or seek all of our pleasures in the hand of the Lord Jesus. Go to Jesus for the pleasure and eat them out of His hand and then you’ll not have too much or be illicit or immoral with them.”
Wes
Why does Paul mention Christ’s resurrection and ours in verse 14? And what does this teach us about the importance to God of what we do with our bodies?
Andy
Right. Well, first of all, let me take that last part first. There could have been a Greek philosophy back then that said the spirit is what matters. What you do with your body doesn’t matter. It doesn’t, you can do what you want with your body. What really matters is what’s going on in your spirit. Paul says, that’s garbage, that’s rubbish. Your body matters a lot. And there’s lots of reasons we can know that. First of all, God made the body originally. Second of all, God himself, the second person in the Trinity, took on a body. The word became flesh. And so, bodies are important. Second, and third of all, God raised Jesus from the dead into a body, and He’s eternally in a body. And fourthly, Jesus’s resurrection body is a pattern of the body we’re going to have, which he will describe beautifully at the end of this book in 1 Corinthians 15, a whole chapter devoted to the bodily resurrection of Christians in the pattern of Jesus’s resurrection. So, God, by His power, God raised Jesus, the Lord, from the dead, and he’s going to raise us also. So, it does matter what we do with our bodies. It matters what we do with the members of our bodies. And that’s exactly where he is going next.
Wes
What do verses 15 and 17 teach us about the ramifications of our spiritual union with Christ?
Andy
Okay, and that’s Romans 6. When we become Christians, we are spiritually, mystically united with Jesus. We’re united with him and become one with him in spirit in his death and one with him in spirit in his resurrection. And so, there’s a negative aspect of sanctification where there are things we must not do, we die to sin. And there is a positive aspect of our union with Christ where we live for holiness and righteousness. And both of those are vital here. So fundamentally, we need to know that our bodies are members of the body of Christ. And so, we ourselves are part of Jesus’s mystical body, the church, so to speak. And so fundamentally then, the members of our body are also members of the body of Christ. My hands, my eyes, my mouth, my ears are all part of the body of Christ.
And so, Paul says very clearly in Romans 6, “we should present the members of our body not to sin as instruments of wickedness but to God as instruments or weapons of righteousness.” And so, he says the same thing again in verse 17. “He who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.” So, if we’re Christians, we are spiritually united with Jesus in his death to sin and his resurrection to righteousness.
Wes
How does Paul’s use of the words the “two will become one flesh” in verse 16, show the immense significance of sex.
Andy
Wow, it is incredibly important. That’s the marriage verse. That’s what I say when I marry a couple, the two will become one flesh. That’s what Jesus taught on the issue of divorce. How could they be divorced? The two become one, two become one flesh. And that’s from Genesis 2. God established the pattern. Jesus said in Matthew 19, “Do you not know that in the beginning, the Creator made them male and female?” So let no one tell you that Jesus isn’t aware of homosexuality or thinks everything’s fine. Not at all. He upholds the validity of gender, two genders. That’s disparagingly called binary these days, but binary, whatever you want to call it. Yes, we believe in two types, male, female, from the beginning, Genesis 1. The Creator made them male and female and said, “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.” And so that is the marriage verse, sex is the marriage act. That’s why I call it marital relations.
You’re like, well, you’re naive pastor. Not everybody that does that is married. It’s like, no, but they should be. And that’s God’s intention. So, there’s a profound mystery, Paul calls it, in sex, and it is a good thing. God made it beautiful and good. And there are specific clear functions. There’s a functionality, a biological functionality where it’s very clear how complementary male and female are, biologically, sexually and then in marriage. But here’s the thing, Paul’s not talking about marriage here. He’s talking about being with a prostitute. That man and that woman aren’t talking about marriage. That’s the whole point, is that they’re not married. Someone once said disparagingly, “You don’t pay a prostitute to have sex with her, you pay her to walk away after it’s over.” You don’t want to be married to her. And she knows that. So, she’ll take money and walk away. So, you’re no longer responsible for her heart, no longer responsible for her emotions. You’re not responsible for anything else, just paying for that one time together, and there’s a certain fee.
Conversely, she looks on you, that we’re told in Proverbs, like a loaf of bread. You’re nothing to her. She has no care about what it’s doing to your heart, to your soul, et cetera. And he’s saying, shall I take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never. May it never be. And so, he’s addressing a very clear problem in this Corinthian church. Talk about a dysfunctional church, they’re going to the temple, prostitutes, male and female. Homosexuality is going on. Illicit, like adultery is going on, all of this. But to go back to your question, when you slept with that woman, when you united, you effectively, to some degree, married her.
So, what do we do then for let’s say singles, even Christian singles sadly, who think they have sexual freedom, they can do what they want, and they deal dishonorably with each other because they really love each other. They’re moving toward marriage, et cetera. They’re fornicating, they’re having sex together. Well, the two become one flesh. How do you pull apart? Your hearts have become knit together. How do you pull apart? And then, when you hear the anguish in some of these contemporary songs, the anguish, there’s got to be a sexual component to that. They’ve become effectively glued together. So, I do some woodworking and you can imagine two pieces of hardwood, say some dark hardwood like maple or something like that. You take a nice wood glue, and you paint it on there, nice coating, and you take these two flat pieces of hardwood and put them together and put a clamp on them. And you come back two days later, take the clamp off. Now, get them apart, cleanly.
Well, that’s a picture of divorce right there. You can’t separate, the two have become one. But it’s also a picture of sexual promiscuity and the damage it does, you can’t pull them apart cleanly. There’s parts of each of the blocks stuck to the other. And imagine then, multiplying that hundreds of times, what some people call a body count. It’s very sad. And so people are doing this one after the other to the point what doesn’t mean anything anymore. They’ve lost themselves, they don’t know who they are anymore. It’s very damaging. That’s what came out of the sixties in the sexual freedom. And it was going on before the sixties, it’s here in the Bible. So, it was going on in first century Corinth.
So fundamentally, he says, “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said the two will become one flesh.” But you, if you’re a Christian, you united yourself like that in a deeper level with the Lord Jesus Christ. “Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?” It’s a jarring image, and it’s meant to be jarring. May it never be.
Wes
What command does Paul give then about sexual immorality in verse 18? And what motivation does Paul present for obedience to this command?
Andy
Flee. Run for your lives. I think about this in terms of the end time teaching I’m doing about the abomination of desolation and the man of sin and all that. When you see the abomination of desolation, when you see it, run for your lives. And I don’t know that you’ll make it. You don’t have time to go down from the roof of your house to take anything out of the house. And it’s going to be hard for pregnant women and nursing mothers. I don’t think they’re going to make it. They’re running for their lives. What does it mean for their lives? They’re going to die if they get caught. By who? By Antichrist force. Imagine the Gestapo. Imagine being a Jew in Warsaw during the Nazi era. It’s like you’re running for your lives, and you got to get out of there. You got to run for the hills, you got to go hide in the caves. That’s how bad it’s going to be.
Well, that’s end time teaching. This is the same word though. Flee. Run. Get out of there. So, the picture, of course, is Joseph. Potiphar’s wife, remember how she’s scheming and plotting, and she lays her eyes on Joseph, and there is female lust. There is such a thing as a yearning after that a woman has. We definitely know that there’s men that yearn after women like David with Bathsheba, looks at her and lusts after her. When he said, no, don’t even get in it. Lead us not into temptation. Flee sexual immorality. That’s the command. Flee, run. Don’t walk, run. And so, the idea is don’t get in tempting situations. And the Bible helps us with that. All right, you got David and Bathsheba. All right, there’s some question about whether Bathsheba should have been bathing in a way that she could have been seen. It doesn’t take a genius to look 360 degrees and say, is there a line of sight available here? I mean, pull the curtain. Don’t do that. So, I’m not ultimately blaming Bathsheba, but I have some questions about her.
“Flee sexual immorality. That’s the command. Flee, run. Don’t walk, run.”
Then you get Proverbs seven where the seductress, the illicit wife says, my husband’s away on a long journey. And there’s a young man that goes by and this observer, Solomon, I guess, sees this young man through the lattice in his window, and he looks down and he sees, and she goes out crafty and dressed with evil intent, and she’s got her hair all done, and she’s got everything. And she uses smooth honeyed words. And it says all at once, he goes in with her, little knowing it’ll cost him his life, like an arrow will pierce his liver. It’s terrifying. He’s going to die. And you’ll be shamed in the congregation. So, the idea here is flee, get away from it. Lead us not into temptation.
And so, the same would be of internet pornography, whatever it is that’s causing your mind to go in a certain direction. Jesus talked about what’s going on in your mind and your heart that you can commit adultery with a woman in your mind, in your heart. Don’t covet her. Don’t covet her beauty. And so, there’s danger all around. Flee it. And that’s the council given here, a command given: flee from sexual immorality.
Wes
How about the motivation? How does he round that out in verse 18 by explaining what exactly is going on here, perhaps repeating some of the same sentiment that he’s been elaborating thus far.
Andy
Yeah. Okay. So, you’re one flesh with her, you’re uniting with her. Well, she was one flesh with some other guy earlier. Not going to say when, but maybe even earlier that day or the day before. And there are issues of sexually transmitted diseases which are hinted at rather overtly in Romans 1. They received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. So, there are sexually transmitted disease among homosexual people and among heterosexual people. So sexually transmitted diseases are a very grave danger, and I think it’s in view here. All of the sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins, sexually sins against his own body. What could that be other than an STD? There’s some very, very bad physical effects of sexual immorality. Whereas if you take one man, one woman for life, and she’s your only sexual partner your entire life, and you are her only sexual partner her entire life, danger of STD, as far as I can tell, zero.
I guess there would be some other way that you could have it. I know Arthur Ashe died of AIDS from a blood transfusion, but that’s not an STD. That was from a blood transfusion. So, I’m just saying you’re safe. You’re safe. So be safe. Live a safe life, be pure. Protect yourself. So, for me, as a father of both sons and daughters, I talk to them a lot about purity. I talk about relationships, I talk about dating. I talk about not being tempted, not being alone together, having accountability. The courting or dating process, how are you going to manage that? What are you going to do? I mean, you obviously have a desire for each other, how are you going to be pure? So, it matters. I would say fundamentally this issue, All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he sins sexually sins against his own body.
Now this is kind of an overstatement, obviously overeating, you can give yourself heart disease, so that’s sinning against your own body, a lot of ways to sin against your body, but I think the point is this is uniquely attacking the body.
Wes
What does Paul say about the body of every Christian in verse 19? And what’s the significance of the assertion, you are not your own for you were bought at a price?
Andy
I think this is why we did two podcasts on this one 20-verse chapter. There’s a lot of explosive statements in this chapter. So, all right, let’s take the first one. “Our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in us, whom we have received from God.” So that’s that teaching of the indwelling Holy Spirit, which Jesus said in John 14 and 15. The Spirit, the Comforter comes, he will be with you and will be in you. He will dwell inside you. That’s awesome. The same Spirit of God who hovered over the waters, the time of creation in Genesis 1:2, will live inside you and effectively deliver Christ to you every moment.
“The same Spirit of God who hovered over the waters, the time of creation in Genesis 1:2, will live inside you and effectively deliver Christ to you every moment.”
Wes, you and I are Christians. We would not be Christians; we would not think about Jesus or love Him if it weren’t for the Holy Spirit of God. It’s the spirit that takes, Jesus said. He will take from what is mine and make it known to you. So, he’ll take my blood and present it to you, paint it on you, spiritually. He’ll take my words and make them burn inside you. He will do this work. The Holy Spirit is inside. So, you, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, and you have received Him from God. He never leaves you. So how can you go to a temple prostitute? He’s with you. I am with you when you do that, don’t do it. So that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Now, people have extended that to I think some reasonable applications. So be in good shape, take care of your body, be physically fit, be careful what you eat. Be careful about your patterns. Get a good night’s sleep. Just take care of yourself. Take care of your body. Don’t run your body down. But also, I think it’s a picture of the significance of the body at resurrection. So, the body that is raised, it is sown, it says, it is sown a perishable body. It’s raised imperishable. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown a natural body. What is it raised? A spiritual body. That’s the perfection of the Holy Spirit being in your body, and your body being perfectly spiritual. In the meantime, you’ve got this mortal body, this dying body, this body of sin, this body of death. But he’s in us. And so, be very careful what you do with your body, that’s what I get from the body is the temple.
Now the other question you asked is, “you are not your own, you’re bought at a price.” That is slave language, no doubt. And Paul called himself often in his epistles, a bond slave of Jesus Christ. He says, I’m not my own. I was bought at a price. And what was the price? The blood of Jesus. I mean, that’s infinitely greater than any pile of silver coins or gold coins paid at a slave auction or a slave market. Now, obviously, for ourselves, we ask reasonable questions sometimes about the issue of chattel slavery, about Christians that owned slaves, 19th century in American south and other places, and reasonably so. And there’s an awful lot of sin that went on. But the question that’s asked that begins to impugn the Bible itself, ask questions about the Bible itself. People who know for certain that slavery is evil and wrong but don’t know for certain that the Bible is the word of God. How can it be? How could you have that level of certainty that slavery is wrong and that level of uncertainty that the perfect Bible, the word of God is a flawed human document, but that’s what they see it.
And they look at the slave issue as proof that the Bible is an outmoded archaic document from a patriarchal era in which slavery is clearly expected. Bible believers then say, well, there is a problem. Why is the Bible not clearly emancipatory? Why doesn’t Paul command masters to emancipate their slaves, set them free? He hints at it in Philemon, do me a favor and set this Onesimus free. He wants him to do it, but it doesn’t overtly say, set all your slaves free, and let’s end slavery for good. Why? Because it is a part of the communication that God gives of our relationship with Him. We are His slaves. He owns us. And why? Because He made us, number one, and because He bought us with the blood of His son, number two, and therefore we’re not our own. So, we are slaves, and we will be so forever because it says in Revelation 22, “His servants will serve Him.” Well, that’s the tame version. His slaves will slave for Him.
Well, we’re also sons, and we’re also kings and queens and all that. So, there’s lots of … And we’re bride, so there’s a lot of images here. So, I would say fundamentally this is vital because every day I wake up thinking I am my own. I can do what I want today. I can do what I want with my time. I can do what I want with my money. It’s all mine to do with as I see fit. This verse says, no, it’s not. You’re not your own. You’re bought at a price. So why don’t you ask Jesus what you should do with your life? Now, let me tell you something very important in my life. I may have quoted this at an earlier podcast, but I’ll say it again.
This verse was in the mind of a young woman who changed my life. I don’t even know that she knew this verse was in her mind. She wasn’t a super Bible scholar. She was a Christian. Maybe it was, I don’t know. But she asked me if I was planning on going on a mission trip to Kenya for 10 weeks. I was working as an engineer, and her name was Kim. And I said, “No, Kim.” She said, “We’re going on a mission trip to Kenya this summer.” I said, “I know. I’ll be praying for you.” Low commitment. I’ll pray for you. She said, “Have you thought about going?” I said, “No.” She said, “Why not?” I said, “Well, Kim, it’s for 10 weeks. I’d have to quit my job. They won’t let me go.” She said, “Have you prayed about it?” I said, “No.” And then she said these words. She said, “You shouldn’t act like you know. It’s not your life, you know.”
What does she mean? You’re not your own. You’re bought at a price. You should ask your master whether you should go on a mission trip or not. So, I was like, all right, whatever. So yes, all right, I’ll pray. And I forgot about it till the next week. And then I prayed, and the Lord said, “Yes, I want you to go on that mission trip.” And I said, “Okay, what do you want me to do when I get back?” He said, “Go to seminary full time.” And it led me to this present role that I have here. All because of this one concept, you’re not your own. You better ask your master what I should do. So, I would suggest you do that every day in a quiet time. Wake up in the morning, present your body as a living sacrifice. Present your members, and that’s slave language. What do you want me to do, and then do it.
Wes
What final command does Paul give in this chapter and what final thoughts do you have for us today?
Andy
The final command he gives here, because we’re not our own, we’ve been bought at a price, the price of the blood of Jesus, therefore, we should glorify God with our bodies. And that’s what I would say here. Whatever I can do with the members of my body, I should glorify Him. Let’s go back to the whole content of this chapter. Let’s not defraud each other for money, that wouldn’t glorify God with our body. Let’s not be thieves. Let’s not be swindlers. Let’s not be idolaters. That doesn’t glorify God with our bodies. Let’s be sexually pure. If we’re single, let’s be sexually pure and not fornicate. Let’s not visit temple prostitutes. If we’re married, let’s keep ourselves only for the one we swore to keep ourselves only for, and let’s uphold those marital vows.
Let’s be pure and holy. Let’s be sanctified. Let’s live lives that are washed, sanctified, justified, et cetera. Let’s glorify God with our bodies. Our time here on earth is brief. And Paul already said, God will destroy them both. God’s going to destroy my stomach, Paul says, at death. So, in the short time that I have left, I want to glorify God with this mortal body. That’s the final command He gives.
Wes
Well, this has been part two of episode seven in our 1 Corinthians Bible Study podcast. I want to invite you to join us next time for episode eight, entitled Instructions for Godly Marriages, where we’ll discuss 1 Corinthians 7:1-16. Thank you for listening to the Two Journeys podcast. And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
