12 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. . . . I will not be enslaved by anything. 13 “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, . . . 14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!

1 Corinthians 6:12-15 (ESV)

The youth culture in the modern West hit a new low in the spring of 2000 when the pop group “The Bloodhound Gang” found commercial success with one of the most pornographic albums ever recorded. Parents and lawmakers were shocked by one lyric in particular that summed up the group’s attitude toward sex: “You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.” As grievous as this sick view of life is, it illustrates a mentality that increasingly characterizes the way many teenagers and young people view sexual relations outside of marriage. The notion of “immorality” is no longer a meaningful concept for them.

Apparently, that is the way the first-century Corinthians thought about the subject too. The Apostle Paul quickly found out that even the recently converted Christians in the city compartmentalized their sex life and their religious life into completely separate spheres. It was easy for them to think this way, because the cultural elites of the day supported the mentality. Some Greek thinkers considered sexual relations harmless so long as it did not become an addiction. The Cynics went even further by stating that since human beings were sexual creatures, there was no need to be embarrassed by their urges. They thus gave their approval to participate in sex acts in public.1 The Corinthians evidently spouted such theories back to the apostle in their written correspondence with Paul.

In responding to the Corinthians, Paul uses a rhetorical form known as a “diatribe.” He quotes the Corinthian position, “All things are lawful for me,” but adds a skeptical rejoinder, “but not all things are helpful!” The Corinthians thought that they could handle sex without being controlled by it. Paul knew they could not. He had been to Corinth, saw how the people there lived, and thus felt an obligation to give these young believers some very honest talk. The Corinthians had offered an analogy to the apostle: the body is to sex like the stomach is to food. Paul disagreed. The body, he told them, is not just a piece of meat that should be free to act upon any and every sexual desire that comes across its path. God made the body, and God has much better expectations for that which He has made.

The body, the apostle explains, was not designed for sexual immorality; it has a much greater purpose. When a person becomes a Christian, he does not merely assent to a series of facts. Something far more wonderful takes place. The believer embarks upon a mystical union with Christ that extends to an entire society of people—the Church. The Christian life thus puts an end to any narrow notion of “my body.” Not anymore, it is not. You are a part of Christ, Paul says, and vitally connected to a communion of saints. What harms the one, harms the many; but most of all, it dishonors the One. To have sex with a prostitute is not only a heinous individual sin, but it actually damages the mystical body of Christ. For Paul, it was an unthinkable thought: “May it never be” ( v. 14 NASB)!

The English philosopher Roger Scruton has lamented that “People no longer make love; instead they ‘have sex.’”2 That secularized mentality is not an option for believers. As members of Christ, God’s people must constantly keep before them the truth that they are not their own; they have been bought with a price. In a world in which the term “immorality” increasingly has no meaning, the biblical community must learn to see the word as being one of the most meaningful concepts of all. For those who despair at their own weaknesses, the word of hope is that the power to resist sin is not something one comes up with on one’s own. The power that raised Jesus from the dead (v.14) is the same one that draws the child of God away from his sin into a new reality of communion with the Creator and Maker of us all.
 
Footnotes:
 
1  See Craig Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 464-465.
 
2  Roger Scruton, The Times, July 15, 1997, 20. Italics added.
 
First Baptist Church of Perryville is located on Rt. 40, one and a half miles east of Route 222.