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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
6:12-20 Sexual Immorality and the Body's Resurrection. Some of the Corinthian Christians were using prostitutes, theorizing that bodily appetites were matters of indifference for Christians just as they apparently were for everyone else. Paul reminds them that the bodies of Christians are one with the resurrected Christ and, in risen form, the Christian's body will be eternal. What they do with them now, therefore, is important.
6:12-13 "All things are lawful." The quotation marks around this phrase, both here and in 10:23, have been supplied to indicate that it is probably a commonly used slogan among the Corinthians. "Food . . . for the stomach." Probably another Corinthian slogan. The Corinthians have adopted from the culture around them the idea that the body is permitted to have everything that it craves. Paul knows that human desires are tainted with sin, which uses these desires to master the person for its own evil purposes (Rom. 6:6, 12, 16-22; 7:7-25).
6:14 Jesus' resurrection was only the first step in the general resurrection of God's people that will occur on the last day (15:20). Jesus' body and the believer's body, therefore, are eternal (15:42-49), for God will also raise us up; the eternal nature of the believer's body should affect his or her present behavior. See 15:30-34.
6:15 bodies . . . members of Christ. Already in 1:13 Paul has hinted that the church is Christ's body and that divisions in the church are incompatible with this truth. See also 12:12, 27; Eph. 1:22-23; 4:13-16; 5:23; Col. 1:18.
6:16-18 Unity with Christ is incompatible with all sin (Rom. 6:6) but particularly with sexual sin. Because sexual union has a spiritual component, sexual activity outside marriage is a unique sin both against Christ (1 Cor. 6:15) and one's own body (v. 18; see Prov. 6:26, 32). Within marriage, sexual union is not only allowed but has positive spiritual significance (Gen. 2:24; Eph. 5:22-33). Flee. Paul also tells the Corinthians to "flee from idolatry" in 1 Cor. 10:14. Idolatry and sexual immorality were closely connected in Israel's history (Ex. 32:6; Num. 25:1-2) as well as in Paul's thinking about the problems in Corinth (1 Cor. 10:7-8).
6:19 temple of the Holy Spirit within you. The Spirit of the Lord lives within individual Christians (v. 17), making each Christian's body a temple just as the church, corporately conceived, is also a temple where God's Spirit dwells (3:16). You are not your own. As with other gifts from God (4:2, 7), Christians are to exercise responsible stewardship over their bodies.
6:20 bought with a price. The image is borrowed from the slave market (7:23; see also Rom. 6:17-18), Christ's blood being the purchase price (Eph. 1:7; see also 1 Pet. 1:19; Rev. 5:9).
