How do we live in freedom with our entire being?

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

¹² You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything. ¹³ You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. ¹⁴ And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead.

¹⁵ Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! ¹⁶ And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.” ¹⁷ But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.

¹⁸ Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. ¹⁹ Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, ²⁰ for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

This is a passage that I haven’t spent a lot of time in; the message feels rather simple and pointed towards a particular pastoral need. However, after a couple of read-throughs, it becomes apparent that ‘the body’ is a central theme to this passage, or rather, that stewardship of your body is important.

Paul addresses gluttony in the initial verses and delves deeply into sexual immorality, and in the middle of this verse 14 reminds us that our bodies will be raised like Christ’s; so it is important how you live and treat your body.

At the beginning of this passage, Paul shows that wisdom is not being applied despite having the ‘right’ to do anything. Excess and exploitation of the self or others are rampant. And the solution is so simple; we must exercise wisdom in our choices to avoid indulging in gluttony.

We have this nuanced understanding of engaging in food, acknowledging that there are shades of grey in how we approach it; however, the message about sex has no ambiguity: “flee from sexual immorality.” For many sins, we often test how close we can get to the line (not that this is a good practice!!), but the powerful nature of sex makes it difficult to retreat once we approach that line. This command to ‘flee’ resonates beyond its original audience because it remains so necessary. We must be on guard and flee from sexual immortality.

Paul’s concluding thoughts, ‘’you are not your own, you are bought at a price’’ Even outside of the context of this passage, a sobering thought: we were bought at a great price; we are desired. But do our actions reflect that? Are we living for ourselves, or are we living for the one who paid it all for us?

Written by Nick Molteno