The Gospel and The Body

All things are lawful for me. But all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up 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 harlot? Certainly not. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her. For the two, He says, "shall become one flesh." But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. – I Corinthians 6:12 - 20, NKJV

Sexual immorality has always been a challenge to the church of Christ. We see it in I Corinthians, chapter 6. It is a huge problem today for our nation and our nation’s churches.

Listen! Whenever there's a natural disaster or a national tragedy, a very predictable thing happens on the news: the death toll is tracked. Whether it's an earthquake, or a hurricane, or a pandemic, or a bombing, or a shooting, one thing you can guarantee: the news outlets will track the death toll. What about the plague of sexual immorality in our land? What is its death toll? It's not tracked on the nightly news, not at all. But it is a real death toll. How many souls are lost, as people indulge in sexual immorality?

Brothers and sisters, time fails to talk about what has happened in my forty years. Some of you have more decades than I to see and to observe the hellish downward spiral in our own society when it comes to sexual immorality. Pornography, fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and more, grow. As the decades progress, our society increasingly embraces each one of these expressions of sexual immorality. Each step leads to further degrees of depravity.

It wasn't long ago that homosexuality seemed to be a very new thing that the church had to think about and confront in American society. Now it is celebrated and embraced, while the country spirals down into transgenderism and the sexualization of children. Brothers and sisters, without the grace of God, this hellish downward spiral knows no end except utter destruction.

Would that none of these things had any influence on the church. But we see the presence of the varieties of sexual immorality around us in the church also. If we are honest, we feel it ourselves in our own hearts. We need the apostolic counsel that Paul brings to the church in Corinth!

What was happening in the church in Corinth that necessitated what Paul wrote in I Corinthians 6 that we just read? Apparently there were men in the church at Corinth who believed they could visit prostitutes. Such indulgence, they imagined, was within their rights as Christian believers.

Paul responds to their evil directly, but in words that are one of the most powerful places in the whole New Testament that teach about the body. What are our bodies for? What do they mean in the Christian life? What significance do they have? In his whole letter so far, Paul has been building up to this issue of sexual immorality involving our bodies. “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you (I Corinthians 3:16)?” “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump (5:6)?” “Do you not know that the saints will judge the world (6:2)?” “Do you not know that we shall judge angels (6:3)?” “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God (6:9)?” “Do you not know?” is Paul’s refrain to remind them – and us – of basic, fundamental things about the Gospel. In today’s passage in I Corinthians 6, Paul asks the question three times in verses 15, 16, and 19.

We will talk about each of these three “Do you not knows?”. Paul puts his finger on something that can happen in the church, a temporary insanity or temporary amnesia, where the desire for sin blinds us to something fundamentally true about Who We Are in Jesus Christ. Do you not know who you are? Do you not know what Christ has made you to be by his blood and his righteousness, by his Spirit, by the gospel? Gospel truths aren't just for our meditation. They are to go down into the deepest parts of our hearts and then show themselves forth in all we do and think.

We come to our first point, the gospel and freedom. The men going to prostitutes had a slogan they used: “All things are lawful for me (12).” After all, they could say, “Doesn’t the Gospel tell us that Christ sets us free?” Paul himself preached quite vehemently that Christ has freed us from certain aspects of the Law of Moses. These Corinthian sinners took that aspect of Gospel teaching and wrongly applied what was true of the temporary Ceremonial Law to the eternal Moral Law. And in doing that they actually lost their Christian freedom! Is our freedom a freedom to do whatever we want? May it never be! The freedom we have through the gospel is a freedom to obey. Christ does not free us in order to leave us in the filth of our former passions. Christ sets us free to take us away from them. So how does Paul respond to the slogan, “All things are lawful for me?” He replies, “but not all things are helpful.” How does that answer their slogan?

The goal of all Christian behavior is love, love of God and love of neighbor. The Holy Spirit works in us to remake us in the image of Christ. So for any specific thought or action, we can ask, “Does it help me love God and neighbor?” “Does it make me more like Christ?” If the answer for doing something, like going to prostitutes, is “No,” then it is not helpful and we should not do it. Can anyone argue that resorting to a prostitute helps him love God better? Or love friends in the church better? Of course not! Will spending time on this pornographic website help me love God or friend better? Of course not! Will a man pretending that he is a woman make him more like Christ? What blasphemous nonsense.

So here is the Bible’s first answer to “All things are lawful (so I can visit prostitutes if I want to).” The answer? “Is it helpful?” Is it helpful to transform my mind to make me more like Christ who saved me? Does it help me love God or neighbor better?

Second point: “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any (second part of verse 12).” What does the world say about its sexual morality? We're being free. Our bodies are ours and we can do whatever we like with them. But that is wrong. Our bodies are not our own, they are Christ’s. If we make them slaves to passion, to dark and hellish appetites, we do the devil’s work of destroying God’s image in us. Listen to II Peter 2:19. Speaking of false teachers, Peter writes, “While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.”

Yes, we are free in Christ. Praise God. We are free from the power of sin. We are free from hell and from the terror of death. But we are to use that freedom to glorify God and to obey his commandments, not to give place to the former passions of the flesh. A person led around by his passions is under the power of the flesh and no longer acting like a free man.

Does it really matter what we do with our bodies? What are our bodies really? This has actually been a philosophical battle for millennia. How are we supposed to think about this very physical existence that we have as human beings? What are we supposed to think about our bodies? Idea One: The body is the tomb of the soul. That's the ancient Greek Plato. Idea Two: The human body is only a machine. That’s the early modern Frenchman Rene Descartes. Idea Three: The body is what I immediately am. I am my body. That's the Twentieth Century Frenchman Jean-Paul Sartre. Each had an idea about the human body, what it is, and what it is for, what it means, and what its purpose is.

Here’s the truth: What we think about the significance and purpose of our bodies will direct a whole lot of our lives because we have this physical existence. The Corinthian Christians were confused about their own bodies. Look at 6:13. “Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them.” Paul here quotes what the Corinthian Christians were saying. What is the stomach? It is an organ of the body with one purpose, to process food. The stomach is for food; food is for the stomach. Then they applied that thinking to the body and sex. Sex is just another natural appetite, as natural as eating. Hungry? Go eat. Want sex? Go pay for it, or watch it on your computer.

But Paul continues. The body is not for sexual immorality. What is it for? The body is for the Lord, he writes.

Let’s go back to Plato for a moment. He wrote a clever word play, “Soma sema.” That’s Greek for, “The body is a tomb.” We're just these eternal souls riding around, you know, our body is like a robotic suit that our souls pilot for a while. That's why pagan societies, particularly those influenced by some of these Greek tendencies, always practiced cremation. Let's burn the dead body and set its soul free to finally be rid of that awful tomb, the body.

Christian teaching is different. The body is for the Lord. Then Paul writes something even more amazing. He continues, “and the Lord for the body.” How could the body be a mere tomb for the soul when the eternal Son of God took human flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary?

Paul continues, “And God,” verse 14, “both raised up the Lord, and will also raise us up by his power.” The Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, in his work of salvation took to himself a true human body and a reasonable human soul. And so, how dare we have this low view of the body as a temporary useless thing that we can do with whatever we please. The body is for the Lord, the Lord for the body, and just as the Father raised up our Savior to life, so too he will raise us up in our bodies on the last great day.

Our salvation is a complete redemption. God doesn't just save souls floating around the world. He saves human beings. And the human being as created by God is both body and soul. Christians have a physical existence, a spiritual existence, one person, both body and soul for the Lord. For the Lord! What does it mean that we are united to Jesus? Does it mean that our souls are united to Jesus, but our bodies not so much? Wrong. We belong to Christ, body and soul. Even when we die our bodies are still united to Christ, awaiting the Resurrection.

Verse 15. “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” We are united to Jesus as human beings, not as disembodied souls. Our redemption is a complete redemption. Praise God that that is the case. But brothers and sisters, it has profound implications for how we live our lives.

On the matter of sexual immorality and men going to prostitutes, we have seen, first, what freedom means: freedom from our passions so that we can obey God. And we have seen, second, what our bodies are for: they are for Christ who has redeemed and will redeem them. Now we come to the third point. These bodies of ours are made for eternal pleasures that come at the Resurrection. We should wake up every morning and in our fight against sin remember that the day is coming when we will be resurrected bodily. So how could we ever think about uniting our members with a prostitute, giving ourselves – our bodies that are united to Christ – to sexual immorality?

What did our coming Resurrection cost the Lord? “For you were bought at a price,” Paul continues. Therefore, verse 19, “You are not your own.” Here is a complete contradiction of what the world is saying today: “This is my body to do with whatever I please.” Wrong, brothers and sisters! You were bought with a price and you are not your own. Every morning, we're to think about the future and coming reality of Resurrection. Every day we are to think about the past and accomplished reality of Redemption. Every evening we can remember, finally, that the body is not a tomb at all. It is a temple. It is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Paul writes another wonderful “Do you not know?” question. Verse 19: “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God?” The living God has taken up residence within us. By the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, having been cleansed by the blood of Christ and clothed in the righteousness of our savior, he has sent his Spirit to live within us. The church of Jesus Christ is the temple of the living God. So is the body of every believer.

In other words, true spirituality – “spirituality” is a horribly abused word in modern society – true spirituality is that which involves the blessedness of the Holy Spirit: who he is, what he has done, how he is working within us. That's true spirituality. And what does Paul teach us here? True spirituality honors the body! True spirituality remembers that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and are to be treated accordingly. How could we ever think of giving the members of our body to sexual immorality? Looking forward to the Resurrection, looking back to the cross and knowing that we are temples of the Holy Spirit, how can we treat our bodies as nothing but tools for the gratification of our passions?

Paul, by the Spirit of God, now gives us two commands to deal with temptations to sexual immorality. Verse 18: “Flee sexual immorality.” He does not write, “Hey, you're strong enough; stick around and fight. Just stand there. You'll be strong enough to withstand the enemy's attacks.” No. “Flee,” he writes. Flee sexual immorality. A vivid portrayal of such flight is Joseph tempted by Potiphar's wife. He doesn't have an audience. No one's there to see what he does or doesn't do. But faithful to the Lord, he flees. You are to flee!

We are all buffeted from every angle by the depravity of the world. We all have to flee. Remember what Paul wrote earlier in chapter 6. “Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you.” These are the people who made up the church in Corinth, and some were now tempted to go back to their former ways by the false ideas that they were “free,” that sexual immorality was just like eating food, and that their bodies did not matter. However, God had set them free from what leads only to death. Paul writes, “But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” Brothers and sisters, hear the word of the Lord to you, and do not hesitate to obey. That rising up within you of hesitation – that is of the evil one, and it is to be suppressed. Flee; flee from sexual immorality!

Before we move on to Paul’s second command, a brief word here to parents. The world wants your children. This has always been the case, but could it be more obvious than it now is that in our modern America they are coming after your children? That's where this drag queen story time comes from. Yes, it's a legitimate question to ask, why they want to be doing this in public at all? But an even more fundamental question I think is, why do they want the audience to be children? If you look at Disney+ and Netflix shows that are being pumped in front of our children, there is a clear trajectory taking place: it is away from God and towards sexual immorality. Parents, you are to pay attention, and to be aware and to protect your little ones and to train them up in the truth of Holy Scripture regarding the body and regarding human sexuality.

Flee sexual immorality. However, flee to what? We can’t just wander off aimlessly. Paul continues in verse 20, "therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.” We are to run toward the glorification of God in both body and spirit.

The world's view of Christian morality gets it all wrong, particularly on sexual matters. Christian chastity is not an outdated, boring, awful, repressive thing. We get to live in the light and in the freedom of the glory of God who has saved us. Winning the fight against lust, we gain the capacity to finally and truly love.

The world doesn't realize it is enslaved to lust and therefore blind to the reality of what true love even is. Only the Christian Church knows the true beauty and glory of sex, because it is the Christian alone that has the true picture of what human sexuality was created to show forth, namely the union of a redeemed humanity with the Lord Jesus Christ. The redeemed church is the bride of Christ, eternally united to her heavenly bridegroom. Marriage between a man and a woman is this beautiful picture of that union. It is a picture that must be protected. The marriage bed must be guarded from lust.

So, brothers and sisters, your fight against lust is a fight to truly love according to the new man. Your fight against lust is a fight to see more of Christ, to walk in his light, to enjoy that glorious union with the Lord Jesus that is yours. Living thus, you are light to the world and salt and you glorify your father who is in heaven.

– Alex Tabaka