1 Corinthians 6 - James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary

LIVING MIRACLES

‘And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.’

1 Corinthians 6:11

The Evangel preached by St. Paul works miracles. It acted in some measure on all ranks of society; it even saved the waifs and strays of heathen cities like Rome, Ephesus, and Corinth. Men sometimes ask for ethics, for morality to be preached. But such preaching has been tried and it has failed over and over again. It softens no hearts, saves no souls, transforms no lives. Our subject divides itself.

I. There is the former state of these people.—They had been fornicators, adulterers, and such like. The very hand of the devil had been on them.

II. Now think of their present condition.

(a) ‘ But ye are washed.’ St. Paul did not say, ‘But you atoned for your sins by repentance.’ St. Paul did not say, ‘But you amended your lives.’ St. Paul did not say, ‘But you reformed yourselves.’ St. Paul said, ‘ But ye are washed.’

(b) ‘ But ye are sanctified.’ They had been set apart for the service of God. They had found the blessed life—the Divine ideal of what life should be. They belonged to Christ. They were to ‘occupy’ till He came. They themselves, talents, time, and money all belonged to Him. They were only stewards: all they had was only held on trust.

(c) ‘ But ye are justified.’ Justify means to pronounce just or righteous. ‘We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings’ (Article XI).

III. How the change came about.—‘In the name of the Lord Jesus.’ This name has not lost its wonder-working power. It can still work moral miracles. It can still transform and uplift human hearts and lives as in the far-off ages. Christ can touch the strings of the human heart, however hopeless that heart may seem to be, and when He touches the strings, sweet music is heard—a new song of praise and gladness. ‘… And by the Spirit of our God.’ For it is He that convinces men of sin and unites them to Christ, and reveals His “unsearchable riches.” ’

Rev. F. Harper.

Illustrations

(1) ‘ “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me,” so Christ says. “O solemn words! which leave no alternative behind them; but shut up the soul into a dilemma. You may have great virtue, as the world calls virtue; you may have great honour, as the world calls honour; you may have great love, as the world calls love; but the question comes back upon us, simple, irresistible, alone—‘Are you washed?’ ‘Has the blood of Christ ever yet been applied, by faith, to your poor soul?’ If not, it is all tinsel—all the rest is an empty show—you are not safe, you are not safe. Not for a moment. If you have any peace, it is false; if you have any hope, it is a lie. Not one grape of Eshcol may you eat; not one promise may you grasp; not one spot of Canaan can you call your own. You are not ‘washed’; you are not ‘washed’; therefore you have no part in Christ. ‘No part in Christ?’ Then where is your part?” ’

(2) ‘One day an old violin was put up at a London auction mart, and the auctioneer could scarcely get a bid. But when it was going for a mere song, a stranger came in and asked to see it. He took it up and began to play. He touched the upper strings and every one was thrilled. He played in quickened time and they wanted to dance. He began on his favourite G string, “Home, sweet Home,” and they all sobbed. It was the Master of Musicians, the great Paganini himself, and the despised violin was knocked down for one hundred guineas.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THREE STEPS TO HEAVEN

St. Paul draws a very dark picture of the past of the Corinthian Christians. ‘And such,’ he says, ‘were some of you.’ Will conscience speak very wrong in saying, ‘Such are some of you?’ In that black catalogue do you find your case, either in the letter of it or in the spirit of it? Were you not once, or are you not now, one of those ten classes? Does not the Spirit whisper that in one of those things ‘Thou art the man!’ Be faithful to yourself; be faithful to God in answering that question.

It is of such materials that the Church on earth, and the Church in heaven, is made. A place for us all; hope for us all; mercy for us all; heaven for us all.

I. But the first thing of all is to get rid of the past.—To separate that which was, and that which is to be. To cut off the sequence; to recast the life; to start another man. To this end, the first requirement is, to have the old all washed out; in some way obliterated. Like the stains, like the darkened colour of some old, defiled garment, they must be ‘washed’ quite out.

II. We need more than this; we need to be positively holy.—It will not be enough to be found without sins, we must be like God, if we are to live with God. He must see His own reflection in us. Now let us go on to see how this is done. We, being in Christ, the Holy Ghost comes and dwells in us. He has already come to you in the faith by which you receive the washing; but now He comes in all His holy, special, seven-fold offices. He comes to teach; to relieve; to comfort; to reprove; to purify; to heal, or, in one word, which includes all, He comes to ‘sanctify,’ and make us holy. The Holy Ghost in the heart is a Real Living Being; not simply a spiritual person. He draws; He speaks; He restores; He leads; He teaches; He imparts good thoughts and holy desires; He actually prays in our souls; and He empowers us with everything, and assimilates us with God in heaven; while in harmony with the inworking of the Spirit, God makes all outer things to ‘work together’ for the same end. The whole of life becomes a school of sanctification. Alike our sorrows and our joys, they have all the same end in view. They co-operate with the inner workings of the Divine Presence; some to humble us; some to cheer us; but all to help us to maintain the spirit of Christ. The imparted sanctification is the work of the Holy Ghost; the imputed sanctification is the holiness of Christ laid on, above all, and over all, hiding all deficiencies, and clothing the believer in a garment which covers the whole.

III. This leads to the third step, ‘justified.’—‘Justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.’ In the Bible, the word ‘justified’ means a person is accounted righteous before God, though he is not really righteous in himself, but rather a poor, miserable sinner! If we were ‘sanctified’ to the utmost point we can reach, we are not ‘perfect’; we are not good in the sight of a holy God. The whitest heart in this church is black by the side of the perfections of God. Therefore God provideth the remedy; now He hath ‘made a way whereby He can be just, and yet our Justifier.’ God sees every believer, every real believer in Christ, covered with Christ. He imputes to that man the very beauty, the holiness of the whole life of Jesus. He, poor sinner, is as though he had lived Christ’s life, for he is one that is ‘perfect and entire,’ wanting nothing. That is justification.

So we are first ‘washed,’ then ‘sanctified,’ then ‘justified.’ ‘Washed’ with the blood of the Son of God, ‘sanctified’ by the Holy Ghost, ‘justified’ by the Father.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE BODY

‘What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?’

1 Corinthians 6:19

The beauty of the temple of the body, its real beauty, reflects entirely the inner life of the man. What are features, however delicately formed, without expression? And what makes the expression which we love and admire? What, but thoughts, real thoughts. Love, tenderness, sympathy! Have you ever observed how, as a person becomes more thoughtful, wiser, kinder, holier, that person grows handsomer and lovelier? Or, equally, on the other side, sin lowers, vulgarises, spoils, even distorts the countenance. When is any one so physically handsome as when he or she is saying, or doing, or thinking something of love or kindness. The real beauty of ‘the temple’ after all is its consecration. It is the spirit which is the beauty.

I. What a sacred thing it would be if we always carried with us the thought and the feeling: ‘I am a consecrated being. I am a being set apart for the sake of religion. This beauty of mine is the temple.’ How horrible some sins would look! How inconsistent and how out of place some of our amusements! A temple! the shrine of God here! the shrine of God doing this! What a strength and comfort, what an armour, if we can realise anything of these holy exercises in the conflict with evil! In prayer—‘I am a temple. Poor, weak, miserable sinner as I am, I am consecrated by my baptism—by my own surrender of myself—by the holiness within me. I am dedicate! I am Thine, O Lord; I have appropriated Thee. The structure may be ever so unworthy, but I am a temple.’ Oh! how holy would that man’s life become! how the tongue would speak! how the mind would think! how the heart would beat! ‘It is all a temple! Thine, Lord! And all I say, and all I do, and all I feel, it comes to Thine earthly temple, and goes up to Thine heavenly temple.’

II. And when you are dealing with some fellow-creature, what a difference it would be—what a new character the whole transaction would assume—if you would remember and recognise the fact that that person is ‘a temple.’ However poor and wretched—however weak, I may say however wicked—he is ‘a temple of God.’ Notwithstanding all I say or think, the Holy Ghost may be, nay the Holy Ghost is in that man—working, striving, elevating, ennobling. I am close to the Holy One! I am close to ‘the temple’! What a changed aspect would your intercourse with that man take! what a reverence to the lowest, the most offensive man in the world—to the worst man!

Illustration

‘There is a great danger in religion—as there is in everything else—of a want of proportion. And this disproportion of truth is often the worst of errors. To avoid an extreme on one side, we run into the extreme on the other side, and the reaction is violent. Take, for instance, the relation of the body and the soul. To a man in his natural state the body is much more than the soul. He can see his body; his soul is a matter of faith. The body can give him immediate pleasure; the pleasures of the soul lie chiefly in the future. To the care of the body there is little or nothing to oppose itself; to the care of the soul, the opposition, both from within and without, is very strong. Hence, to keep or restore the health of the body—that is, to provide for that body, to feed it and indulge it, to dress it and to adorn it, to think of it and talk about it—takes by far the greatest part of a man’s life. The soul, at the very best, has just its few minutes, or perhaps a few half-hours, in the course of a week. The body is everywhere every moment. When a man becomes religious these two things change places. The body goes into the shade; it is almost out of sight. The soul is everything. Is it not the one thing worthy of thought? What is the body? A thing to mortify; a thing to keep down; a thing almost to be forgotten, if not to be despised; a mere clog. In all this there is an extravagance.’

DIVINE OWNERSHIP

‘Ye are not your own.’

1 Corinthians 6:19

As Christians we are no longer our own. Jesus has acquired by His blood all rights of ownership over us. This is the great truth I desire to press upon you most earnestly and most affectionately, until it lays hold of your whole natures and exerts its true influence in your daily lives.

I. Ownership demands submission.—If ownership confers any privilege upon a man, it is surely the right to command with the certainty of being obeyed. And if we as Christians are the absolute possession and property of Jesus Christ, bought with His own life’s blood, it is His lawful prerogative to command and control every act and thought of our entire lives. It is His to speak and ours to obey. It is His to rule and ours to submit.

II. Ownership is a pledge of protection.—We are ever ready to guard our own possessions. No man would refuse to draw the sword in defence of hearth and home. Our treasures are made as secure as lock and key can make them. The more we value them the more carefully we devise the means to ensure their perfect safety. And shall not Christ protect the Church which He has purchased with His own life’s blood? Think you that our safety is of no importance to Him? St. Paul at any rate thought otherwise: ‘I know Whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.’ Oh, if we could only leave everything in the hands of Jesus!

III. Ownership confers enjoyment.—The cottage may be small and the garden that surrounds it may be nothing more than a narrow strip of soil in which the homeliest of homely flowers grow. A few pounds would buy the freehold in the open market. But let it be the cottar’s own and he will love it as no stranger could ever love. We are the King’s own. Our hearts are the King’s dwelling-place. Our lives are the King’s garden. Does He find enjoyment there? Sweetly did the Bride in the Song of Solomon invite the Bridegroom to visit His garden: ‘Let my Beloved come into His garden, and eat His pleasant fruits.’ Oh that the Church of Christ could address such an invitation to her Lord! Oh that we could individually welcome Him in such terms as these! Can we do so?

—Rev. G. A. Sowter.

ON GLORIFYING GOD

‘Ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God.’

1 Corinthians 6:20

Notice some of the ways in which the Christian is called upon to promote the glory of His God.

I. The primary meaning of the word ‘glory’ is opinion: the estimate formed of a person by others. The verb ‘to glorify’ will then signify, to exalt a person in the opinion and estimation of others, to enhance his favourable report with others. It will be seen at once that it is only in this modified sense that it is possible for mortals to glorify the great God. When we speak of glorifying God, we mean that we can in some humble fashion reflect some portion of His light, that others, seeing that reflected light, ‘may glorify our Father Which is in heaven.’

II. This is a high calling indeed: a higher we could not have.—Let us by the grace of the enabling Spirit rise to its responsibilities. The ‘good name’—we say it with deep reverence—of Him ‘Whose name is above every name’ has been placed in the Christian’s keeping. On him, on his walk and conversation, on his daily practice, it depends whether it shall gain or lose by the committal. What the world thinks of Christ and His cause will depend largely upon the testimony accorded to Him by those ‘who profess and call themselves Christians.’ It is very well to say that men ought to estimate Christ’s cause apart from the practice of its adherents; but men will judge of it according to what they observe that practice to be. From without, so long as she is true to herself, the Church of the living God has nothing to fear. From false friends, from the errors, the inconsistencies, the hollownesses of the unworthy amongst her children are her chief dangers to be looked for. It is ‘her own familiar friends, in whom she trusted,’ which did eat of the bread of her communion, who, when they ‘lift up their heel’ against her, wound her worst.

III. Now that you belong by your own act of self-surrender to your Lord; now that you are personally identified with His controversy in the earth, every time you thus trip you do Him hurt; each time you soil your hands in the business transaction with compromise of strict integrity you are driving home the nails into your recrucified Redeemer’s hands; each time your feet turn aside from the straight path of the saints you are repiercing His feet; each time your traitor thoughts are yielded to impurity or malice you are replaiting the wreath of thorn for His torn temples; each time your heart hides the sin on which daylight may not look you are thrusting the spear into His side. Beware how you walk, for the keen-eyed world is looking on.

IV. It needs no grand and imposing career to reflect the Divine glory.—Every falling raindrop contains a perfect picture of the landscape surrounding the line of its fall. There is no need for us to seek for exceptional opportunities, to be ambitious of pretentious achievements. In the economy of grace life has no commonplaces. If by the providence of our Father our feet have been set in the quiet byways of the world, in those ways we shall probably best glorify Him; nor add to our appliances by forsaking them for the broad highways of publicity and display. There is some danger even in the very use of such phrases as ‘Church-work,’ ‘Christian-work,’ in the implied fallacy that such work is confined to the more ostentatious efforts for others’ good. To the Christian all work ought to be Christian work; and the least solid and lasting ought not to be that which secures recognition in no parish statistics, and which is so unobtrusively done that the doer’s left hand knows not what the right is about, whom it is guiding, whom it is helping, whom it is blessing. The Saviour chose a lowly walk in life that He might understand life at its lowliest. And if his public walk occupied three years, His private spread itself over thirty. See to it, then, that you be not misled into thinking that you can best do God’s work in the Church by neglecting to do it at home. Whatsoever your hands find to do, do it with your might. Take Christ with you into every employment and into every company. Confess Him before men with firmness, but with humility. Be loyal to your Lord, and consider that everything laid against your good name is a reflection upon His.

—Bishop A. Pearson.

Illustration

‘There are phases of Christianity out of which the principle of pure loyalty has been dropped. Religion itself is a systematised selfishness—a compact by which the interests of my own soul are to be ensured, and these being ensured, its work is done. I am to serve God in order primarily to get to heaven. I attend church in order primarily to get good to my soul. “Lo, we have left all, and followed Thee: what shall we have therefore?” This mercenary spirit still lurks in the churches: a spirit which the best of us would scorn to recognise in such lower sphere as, say, patriotism. What true soldier would permit himself to think of decorations and promotion while engaged in thrusting an enemy from the shores of his country? The honour of his King and his flag is at stake: that is enough for him. Recognition comes, but it comes unsought and unthought of.’

RELIGIOUS USE OF THE BODY

‘Glorify God in your body.’

1 Corinthians 6:20

‘From the crown of the head to the sole of the foot’ there is not a part of our frame which may not be the embodiment of spiritual things, or the means for religious service.

I. The very hairs remind me of the tender care of my God for me, for are not all those hairs ‘numbered’?

II. The eyes, are they not inlets wherewith I may first take into my very heart and soul all the wonderful and beautiful works of God in nature and providence, and the written Word of His grace? And then by bright and loving looks spread peace and happiness? How much of Satan, how much of Christ, there may be in the look of the eye! The eyes are very eloquent. Remember the use and the power given to them, and ‘glorify God’ with your eyes.

III. And the mouth!—What action the mouth has for sin and self-indulgence, or self-denial and careful moderation for Christ’s sake! Be careful, when you bring your religion to your mouth, that you ‘glorify God’ with your appetites or your government of the appetites. Those are very strong words of Solomon. Are they too strong? They are the words of a man of great experience: ‘Put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite. Be not desirous of his dainties, for they are deceitful meat.’ And perhaps more than you are aware the mouth is the index of temper or of sweetness. Take care of your mouth. ‘Glorify God’ with your mouth.

IV. And the tongue!—That ‘fire,’ that ‘world of iniquity,’ which St. James calls it; but as Solomon calls it, that ‘tree of life.’ Your tongue! That thing of paradoxes. Are you thinking about it, are you really in your daily life consecrating your tongue; in your public worship as in your private; when you are alone in your own room, and when in society? Do you speak with that tongue what you ought, and when you ought, and where you ought about Jesus Christ? Who can calculate either what shame or what glory he can bring upon religion? What a curse or what a blessing that tongue may be; what a comforter, what a minister, what an instrument of salvation to men—that tongue! In all you have to do in daily life, it is not your inward feelings, it is not your secret appetites, that do it, your tongue must do it, your tongue must ‘glorify God.’ Does it? Does your tongue ‘glorify God’?

V. And your ear.—Take great care what you hear. Learn when to shut it and when to open it. A word may come in at that ear which may cling unto you, and be your millstone all your life long. It is an avenue of fearful power. Often ask Him ‘Who shutteth and none can open, and Who openeth and none can shut,’ to do with your ear what He did to Lydia’s heart.

VI. And your nerves.—You speak of your nerves. They are very good servants, but very bad masters. Take care of your nerves. Pray constantly for more calmness. ‘Glorify’ God with your nerves.

And all the senses—sweet handmaids of truth, and beauty, and pure enjoyment!—consecrate them. They are the Lord’s. Let all your senses ‘glorify God.’ And all your members!—hands, knees, and feet—keep every part of the body for God.

Illustration

‘We should look upon our body, and treat our body, as something given us to use and enjoy for God. A part of our likeness to Christ; a part of our present being which we are to meet again in another world; and therefore given us, here, to train and educate for the work and the services which that body is to render in heaven. For that is the body—a thing capable of being turned into the highest or the lowest uses; a marvellous structure to be dedicated; the temple walls of the inner sanctuary of the soul. Such being, then, the body, we should pray every morning of our lives about our bodies as much as about our souls. We should consecrate it in the morning to God, and we should deal with it all day long religiously, and watch and keep it diligently, and every part of it, as a very sacred thing.’