1 Corinthians 6:12-20
12 All things are permitted for me, but not all things are of benefit. All things are permitted for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, however God will do away with both of them. But the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. 14 Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are parts of Christ? Shall I then take away the parts of Christ and make them parts of a prostitute? Far from it! 16 Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, “The two shall become one flesh.” 17 But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. 18 Flee sexual immorality. Every other sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you have been bought for a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
Controlling our appetites is, and seems that it always has been and may therefore alway be, inextricably connected to our spirituality. Possibly because in large part, virtue is the result of controlling our appetites in some way. Stoics value self denial because they recognize how it makes you a better person and that creates value to your life and the life of those you are in community with. While food is meant for our stomachs to digest to give us health and energy and the purpose of our stomachs is to digest food, they can still become something that becomes our God. I wonder if what Paul is saying when he says that “God will destroy them both”, is that anything that becomes our god that is not God, will destroy us and and therefore God in his great love sets Himself against anything harmful to us.
Creation Story Revisisted
In verse 12 Paul harkens back to the story of Cain and Abel, where Cain is told that sin is lurking at his door but he can rule it. Cain chooses not to and disaster ensues. So when Paul quotes their saying about how they can do anything in their freedom because they are not under the law, he then reminds them of Cain and how they have a responsibility to not let sin rule over them. Paul doesn’t argue with them, he simply reminds them that this issue of free will has been an issue from the beginning of time and how they handle their freedom of choice has drastic consequences.
Paul moves on to their sexual appetite perhaps because it offers a great analogy to make his point. He raises outlandish rhetorical questions that make us shun even picturing them in our heads. He again brings them back to the creation story to remind them of the foundations upon which God created man…and woman, “The two shall become one flesh”. And that is the foundation upon which our sexuality was designed by God. God creating woman from man – splitting the one into two – gave us sex as a bringing back together the two to become one again. Paul seems to be saying that this fundamental truth about the gift of oneness that we can experience in the flesh with one another, is also true about who we are in Christ. We are now one with Christ in our bodies! Therefore we glorify God in our bodies when that is the context that we live out that which God created in us. Is Paul addressing the sacredness of sex and their misunderstanding of their freedom in Christ? Is Paul addressing their misunderstanding of who they are in Christ? I believe yes to both of those questions.
“It’s Just A Garden Snake, It’s Harmless“
It seems that all sin starts in our thinking. The thought, “All things are permissible for me” seems harmless. But just because the story doesn’t include a snake slithering up to the church spewing distorted ideas about their freedom in Christ, doesn’t mean that that is not what is happening here. Perhaps we can understand a talking snake metaphorically as a bad idea that works its way into our thinking by appealing to our egos and/or appetites. Ideas that appeal to us in that way always inevitably end in destruction and regret. “Eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Don’t you want to be like God?” Well that is an idea that certainly sounds good. We are so easily deceived by good sounding ideas. Perhaps that is why we need God’s mercy and love and grace. I wonder if a seed began to grow in the church that our freedom in Christ means that Christians can indulge in whatever desires they have without penalty because, they are forgiven. It is not hard to see how that appeals to our appetites. But bad ideas move quickly to become actions and behaviors which have consequences that ultimately lead us into the trap of enslavement and chaos. Our freedom can be the very thing that enslaves us. Paul reminds us that our freedom in Christ does not mean we can abandon our responsibility to rule over the sin that lurks at our door. Yet he is also reminding us we have this unfathomable gift of the glory that God bestows upon us by uniting His Spirit with our flesh!