‘Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ. Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it not be. Or do you not know that he who is joined in close union to a prostitute is one body, for “The two, says he, will become one flesh”. But he who is joined in close union to the Lord is one spirit.'
The fact that our bodies are members of Christ is stressed. And these arguments bring out that in sexual relations there is a metaphysical aspect which is not present in eating. Such relations not only result in physical unity but in a kind of metaphysical unity. This is why they were provided and are so tightly regulated, and abuse of them so decried and so serious in God's eyes. Sex binds men and women in a unique way which goes beyond just a physical experience.
As members of His body we have been made one with Him in His body. That too is a spiritual experience which goes beyond the physical. We have been united with Him in spiritual unity. But to have sexual relations with a prostitute is to prostitute that unity, it is to destroy that unity and produce rather a fleshly ‘spiritual' unity with the prostitute which is totally degrading, as well as being both temporary and meaningless, and it is especially harmful because it is metaphysical and mars our spiritual union with Christ. Indeed this is one reason why all sexual misbehaviour is harmful for it has the same result. Sex affects us in our deepest beings. In it we give of ourselves. We must choose between the prostitute or Christ. We cannot have both.
The union between Christ and His people is wonderfully expressed here. By ‘eating of Him' by coming to Him and believing in Him (John 6:35) we have been made one with Him and are united with His body, something which we express every time we take the bread and wine (1 Corinthians 10:17). It is because of this spiritual union that we will be raised with Him, and have been raised with Him (Ephesians 1:19 to Ephesians 2:6). Thus we are ‘members' of His body.
So we are to see that in a unique way our body is the Lord's and sacred to Him. That is why to engage in illicit sex is to insult Him, misuse His body, and cause a break in our spiritual union with Him. How can we make His sacred body one with a prostitute, especially a godless or idolatrous prostitute? (The quotation comes from Genesis 2:24).
What a contradiction is this, a body which is a member of the body of Christ, crucified for us, and our spirit made one with the Lord, and then to make our body, which was to be presented as a chaste virgin to Christ (2 Corinthians 11:2), one flesh with a prostitute. This cannot be. It is only to say it to realise how inconsistent, indeed how horrific, it is, and even more so when the prostitute is probably a sacred prostitute seen as united to a ‘god' and to devils (1 Corinthians 10:20). We can only turn away in horror from the very idea.
The argument also brings out the glory of true sex. Between a man and a woman who are united in marriage it is a holy thing. Two persons who are both members of Christ's body, are themselves by it united as one within that body. That is one reason why we should not be ‘unequally yoked with unbelievers' (2 Corinthians 6:14). We then unite outside the body. Although God then graciously ‘sanctifies' those in the home (puts them under His protection from evil) as in the case described the marriage took place before the person became a Christian (1 Corinthians 7:14).
‘But he who is joined in close union to the Lord is one spirit.' This contrasts with becoming one body with the prostitute, for Paul has to guard against any suggestion that uniting with Christ in one body has anything to do with physical alliance. The union with Christ is a spiritual union through the Spirit.