1 Corinthians 6:15

Corinth was a Roman colony and a busy port on the isthmus between two seas, wealthy from trade and home to many peoples, philosophies and religions. It was known across the Greek and Roman world for sexual immorality, so much so that the Greek verb korinthiazomai, “to Corinthianize”, meant to practise fornication. Among the city’s many temples was one to Aphrodite, which was associated with temple prostitution. Sexual licence was woven into the city’s religious and social life, and many in the church had come straight out of it.

Paul has just rebuked the church for tolerating a man’s immorality (1 Corinthians 5:1–13) and for taking one another to pagan courts (1 Corinthians 6:1–8). He has warned that fornicators, adulterers and others like them “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9–10), and reminded the Corinthians that in Christ they are sanctified and justified.

Two ideas lay behind their careless attitude. One was a misuse of Christian freedom. They had been set free from paganism and from the law of Moses, and some took that to mean that anything was allowed. The other came from Greek thought, which often divided the spiritual, counted as good, from the physical, counted as worthless or evil, so that what a person did with the body was thought to leave the soul untouched. The resurrection of the body sounded foolish to such hearers, and at Athens, when Paul spoke of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. Paul answers both ideas by teaching that the whole person, body and spirit, was made by God, belongs to God and will be redeemed by God. The principles he sets out here carry on into his teaching on marriage (1 Corinthians 7), on food offered to idols (1 Corinthians 8–10) and on spiritual gifts.

“All things are lawful unto me” was most likely a saying that went round the church in Corinth, and Paul quotes it twice. The word éxesti means “it is permitted” or “it is right”, something that law or custom allows. There is truth in the saying, and Paul agrees with it as far as it goes. In Christ we are free from sin’s dominion and the law’s condemnation, from the ceremonial and civil laws of the Old Testament, and from the legalistic rules men add to them. The danger lies in taking the saying alone, as if it meant that anything goes.

Each time, Paul follows the saying with “but”, allá, a strong word of contrast, and adds a test. The first is whether a thing is expedient. The verb symphérō means to bear together or contribute, and used this way it means what is profitable, what does a person good. A thing may be allowed and still fail to build up the one who does it, the people around him or the work of the gospel. Paul applies the same test later in the letter, where he adds that lawful things do not all edify and that each of us should seek another’s good (1 Corinthians 10:23–24). In his teaching on food offered to idols, the believer who is free to eat gives up that freedom when eating would make a weaker brother stumble (1 Corinthians 8:9–13, Romans 14:13). Freedom is given to us so that “by love” we “serve one another” (Galatians 5:13).

The second test is mastery. The verb exousiázō means to exercise authority over something, and in the passive, as here, to be controlled by it. “I will not be brought under the power of any” means that Paul refuses to let any habit, desire or pursuit rule him, even a lawful one. Our freedom is for belonging to Christ alone, and a thing that becomes a dependence or an addiction takes his place. So two questions belong to every choice: “Is it good for me and for others?” and “Does it control me?” They lift us from asking what we can get away with to asking what will most glorify God and build up others. They also keep freedom from turning into antinomianism, the belief that Christians are free from the moral law.

Christ won this freedom for us: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law” (Galatians 3:13). He came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17) and lived it perfectly. Though he had all authority, when he was tempted in the wilderness he kept even a real need such as hunger under his Father’s will (Matthew 4:1–11), and he became “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). Paul calls the free man “Christ’s servant” (1 Corinthians 7:22), and the Spirit grows in us the fruit the KJV calls temperance, which is self-control (Galatians 5:22–23).

The second saying, “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats,” is most likely a Corinthian proverb as well. “Meats” means food in general. The saying treats an appetite as morally neutral and short-lived: the stomach wants food, food is there to fill it, and both pass away. Applied to sex, it meant that the body has its appetites, that satisfying them is simply meeting a bodily need, and that the soul is unaffected.

Paul grants the first part. In “God shall destroy both it and them”, “it” is the belly and “them” is the food. Eating and the organs made for it belong to this life, and the God who made them will bring them to an end, because the raised and glorified body will have no such needs. People sometimes ask whether this means God will destroy the believer’s body. The end Paul speaks of is the end of eating, and the body itself has a lasting purpose, which the second half of the verse gives.

The word for fornication, porneía, is broad. It covers all sexual activity outside marriage as Scripture defines it: prostitution, adultery, sex before marriage, incest and every other sexual sin. The word for body, sōma, in Paul’s writing means more than a shell around the soul. It is the whole person as God made him, an integrated whole, and it is the body that will be raised. The word for Lord, kýrios, means one supreme in authority, a master, and used of Christ it speaks of his ownership of believers, bodies included. So the body belongs to the Lord and is meant to serve him.

“And the Lord for the body” makes the relationship run both ways. The body is given to the Lord, and the Lord gives himself to the body. He cares for it, makes it holy, lives in it by his Spirit and will raise and glorify it. The Son of God took a human body himself, “And the Word was made flesh” (John 1:14), and lived in it without sin, which shows both the worth of the body and the way it is to be used. Paul makes the same appeal elsewhere, that we “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God” (Romans 12:1), and he tells the Thessalonians that God’s will is their sanctification, that they abstain from fornication and keep their bodies in holiness and honour (1 Thessalonians 4:3–5).

The verse also speaks to the idea, common today, that a person’s body is his own to do with as he pleases. The believer’s body has been “bought with a price” (verse 20), so how we use it is a matter of stewardship for God’s glory.

Paul now gives the reason the body matters: “God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power.” The verb egeírō means to wake, rouse or lift up, whether from sleep, from sitting or from death, and here it means bodily resurrection, first of Jesus and then of his people. The word “and”, kai, ties the two together, so that what God has already done for Christ is the pattern and the guarantee of what he will do for us. The one who acts is theós, God, who alone can bring life out of death. “By his own power” (dia tēs dynameōs autou) uses dýnamis, from a root meaning to be able, a word for strength that often means a mighty deed or miracle. Our hope of resurrection rests on God’s power and will, and so it is certain.

Believers have new spiritual life already, but the raising in this verse is the raising of our bodies at Christ’s return. Paul gives a whole chapter to it (1 Corinthians 15), where he teaches that the raised body will be glorified and spiritual and still a true body. He calls Christ “the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Corinthians 15:20–22), the first of the harvest that promises the rest. The Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to our mortal bodies (Romans 8:11), Christ will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body (Philippians 3:20–21, 3:21), and Jesus himself says, “I am the resurrection, and the life” (John 11:25).

Set beside verse 13, the contrast is plain. God will bring the belly and its food to an end, and he will raise the body. A body that is headed for resurrection has dignity now, and what we do with it has eternal weight.

“Know ye not” opens verse 15, and Paul asks it again in verses 16 and 19. Each time he means that the Corinthians ought already to know what he is about to say. Here it is that “your bodies are the members of Christ.” The word mélos is a limb or part of a body, as a hand is part of a body. Believers are joined to Christ so closely that their very bodies belong to him as his members, sharing his identity, purpose and destiny. Christ is the Head of this body, the church (Colossians 1:18).

Then comes the shocking question: “shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot?” The word pórnē means a prostitute, a figure every Corinthian would recognise, and one often tied to pagan worship. Elsewhere in Scripture the harlot is also a picture of idolatry and unfaithfulness to God, though here Paul means an actual prostitute. His answer is mḗ genoito, which the KJV renders “God forbid”. Built on the negative mḗ, it means “may it never be”, and it is Paul’s strongest way of rejecting a thought with horror.

Paul names the harlot as the starkest case, and the principle reaches all porneía. Any sexual union outside marriage takes what belongs to Christ and joins it to another. Paul tells the Ephesians that fornication and all uncleanness are unfit even to be named among saints (Ephesians 5:3).

“He which is joined to an harlot is one body.” The verb kolláō comes from the word for glue and means to glue together, to cleave, to stick fast. Paul uses it for a bond far deeper than a passing encounter. His proof is the word spoken at creation, “for two, saith he, shall be one flesh,” from Genesis 2:24. The word sárx, flesh, can mean the meat of an animal or the human body, and “one flesh” is the union of two persons, in body, heart and spirit, into one.

People ask whether “one flesh” belongs only to marriage. God made this union for marriage, and marriage is where he meant it to be. Paul’s point is that the sexual act creates it by its own nature wherever it takes place. A man who goes to a prostitute therefore forms a real bond with her, an unholy one that misuses God’s design and sets itself against his union with Christ. Paul later calls the one-flesh union of husband and wife a picture of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:31), which is part of why its misuse is so grave.

Christ cleanses those who come to him, sexual sin included: “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The strength to live purely comes from his Spirit, for “if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Romans 8:13).

Verse 17 answers verse 16 with the same verb: “But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” The “But” is dé, “joined” is kolláō again, and “is” is estí. The man joined to a harlot becomes one body with her, and the believer joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. The Greek is hen pneuma, from heîs, one, and pneûma, a word that can mean breath or a current of air, the human spirit, or the Spirit of God. Here it speaks of the believer’s spirit joined in living fellowship with the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Christ. This bond is as close as glue and holier than any other, and it is the deepest reason to flee fornication, because we already belong to someone.

The one we are joined to is the kýrios, the Master who holds authority over us, so the union is one of submission, allegiance and close fellowship. It began when we came to Christ, and it continues as we live in him. The Spirit of God dwells in all who belong to Christ (Romans 8:9–11), and his life sets us free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:1–4). Jesus promised “another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever” (John 14:16–17), told us, “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4), and prayed “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee” (John 17:21–23). Paul writes, “There is one body, and one Spirit” and one Lord (Ephesians 4:4–6), Peter says we are made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), and Paul says “your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). This union is a foretaste of the full union with Christ we will know in eternity.

“Flee fornication.” The verb pheúgō means to run away, to shun, to escape. It is a present imperative, a command to keep fleeing as a settled way of life. Paul chose a word for running, because with this sin the safe course is to get away quickly and on purpose from the places, thoughts and opportunities that lead to it, before temptation can catch us standing in a weak position.

The word porneía comes from porneúō, to act the harlot. It covers every sexual act outside the marriage of one man and one woman as Scripture defines it, and it is also used figuratively of idolatry, the unfaithfulness of the heart to God. Paul gives the positive side in the next chapter: “Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband” (1 Corinthians 7:2). Hebrews says, “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4).

“What? know ye not” uses eídō, a verb of seeing which in the perfect tense means to know. Paul is reminding the Corinthians of something they already know and are failing to live by.

Greek had two words for a temple. Hieron was the whole temple area, courts included, and naós, the word Paul uses here, was the sanctuary itself, where the god was believed to dwell. The believer’s body is that inner sanctuary, as the holy place of the tabernacle and the temple was the place of God’s presence in Israel. Corinthians living among temples would have grasped at once what it means for the body to be such a place. “Your body” is singular while “your” is plural, so each believer’s own body is the Spirit’s temple. Earlier in the letter Paul uses the same picture for the church together: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). Both are true.

The Spirit is “in you”, living within. And he is the Spirit “which ye have of God”, God’s gift, received by grace. He is the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9), whom the Father sent in Jesus’ name (John 14:26), and his dwelling in us flows from our union with Christ in his death and resurrection (Romans 6:3–11). His presence is what makes the body holy.

“And ye are not your own” follows from this. Heautoû is the reflexive pronoun, “yourselves”, and Paul’s point is a change of owner. God has taken possession of the house he lives in, and our bodies, wills and lives are under his rule. As Paul writes to the Romans, “For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:7–8).

“For ye are bought with a price.” The word gár, “for”, gives the reason we belong to God, and it is the ground of the command that follows. The verb agorázō comes from the word for marketplace and means to buy. It was commonly used for buying slaves, and it describes a change of master: we were slaves to sin, and God bought us out of that bondage to be his own. The word timḗ, price, means value, money paid, or esteem. The price was the death of Christ, as Peter says, “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18–19). “In whom we have redemption through his blood” (Ephesians 1:7), and in heaven the Lamb is praised, “for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood” (Revelation 5:9). Paul says it again in the next chapter, “Ye are bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 7:23). The cost shows how greatly God values those he bought.

“Therefore glorify God.” The verb doxázō means to make glorious, to honour, to praise, to magnify. We glorify God when our lives show who he is and bring him honour. The command reaches the body, meaning our actions, our sexual conduct, our health and the use of our strength, and the spirit, meaning our thoughts, desires, attitudes and worship. The whole person honours him. “Which are God’s” closes the argument: body and spirit both belong to the one who made and redeemed them. Paul later says the same of all of life, “whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Jesus lived this way in his own body, saying, “I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29), and the glorious body he was raised with is the pattern for ours.

These verses give us a high view of the body. It is for the Lord, he will raise it, it is joined to Christ, and the Holy Ghost lives in it. That dignity reaches every part of life, and it bears most directly on sexual purity. We keep ourselves for marriage, or keep the marriage bed undefiled, because we are honouring the one who owns us and lives in us, and his love is the motive.

Paul’s two tests for our freedom are worth carrying into every choice: does this do me and others good, and does it master me? When a temptation comes, the wise answer is to leave quickly. And when we have fallen, the price that bought us is the blood that cleanses us. The Spirit who lives in us gives strength to put sin to death, and the God who raised Jesus will one day raise these same bodies in glory.