1 Corinthians 6:12-20 - Arthur Peake's Commentary on the Bible

Impurity is no True Expression of Christian Freedom, but Incompatible with the Believer's Union with Christ. The special case of incest and the warnings against impurity in the last section (1 Corinthians 6:9 f.) have prepared the way for this explicit and reasoned denunciation. Impurity was defended on the principle that all things were lawful, possibly a maxim in which Paul had expressed his own doctrine of Christian freedom. If so, here, as elsewhere, illegitimate inferences were drawn from his antinomianism, here to defend licence, elsewhere to discredit his doctrine of freedom by exhibiting its moral dangers. More probably the maxim was coined by those who defended licentiousness; Paul opposes to it the counter-maxim, All things are not expedient, i.e. there are things which involve moral and spiritual loss. All are lawful, he repeats, retorting: Yes, but if they are at my disposal, they shall not dispose of me; no habit shall make me its slave; slavery is what your boasted - freedom-' really means. Next he quotes an analogy by which impurity was defended, the organs involved are, in fact, fulfilling their natural function, just as properly as the belly in receiving food. He replies that the belly is but a temporary organ fitted to this sphere of existence not to the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 15:50); it will disappear as completely as the meats it consumes and digests (Colossians 2:21 f.). The retort might be made that the sexual organs belonged similarly just to this lower order (Mark 12:25), their gratification therefore was as legitimate as the gratification of the appetite for food. Paul does not state this, nor as yet explicitly meet it. He proceeds to speak of the body; the relationship of the body to the Lord is as completely reciprocal as that of meats for the belly. But in the one case the end is destruction, in the other permanence. The perishable has no such moral significance as the abiding; the immortality of the Lord (Romans 6:9) involves the immortality of the body. The body, therefore, as belonging to Christ and destined for immortality, must be used in harmony with its lofty destiny; impurity and Christ are utterly incompatible, the body cannot be dedicated to both. Speaking more concretely he now refers (1 Corinthians 6:15-17) to the partner of the sin rather than to the sin itself. The primal law of marriage (Genesis 2:24) affirms that husband and wife are one flesh. And this is true of illicit unions, the man and his paramour become in the act one flesh, his members become hers. But in the case of Christians their bodies are the Lord's members; what impious desecration to make them members of a harlot! He who is joined to the Lord in mystical union (in this context and in this sentence the union must obviously be mystical not merely ethical), coalesces into a single spirit with Him. Paul now touches the principle which justified him in speaking of the body rather than the specific organs in reply to the analogy from the belly. Fornication involves the body itself in a sense in which no other sin does, not even if it be a physical sin like gluttony or drunkenness. It is sacrilege against the temple of the Holy Ghost, and implies a claim to dispose of himself which no Christian can make. He does not belong to himself, he has been bought with a price. We have Pagan inscriptions from Delphi in which the manumission of a slave is represented as his purchase by the god with a view to his freedom (Galatians 5:1). The price here is no doubt the death of Christ (1 Peter 1:18 f.), but the metaphor of ransom must not be pressed, else the question arises, as in patristic theology, To whom was the ransom paid? It is most unlikely that Paul thought of the answer, for many centuries so popular, that since the devil was man's master the price must have been paid to him. The stress lies on the fact that they have been set free from the old bondage. But Christian freedom is bondage to Christ, whose slave Paul delights to call himself.