1 Corinthians 6:11-20, The Message - Don’t you realize that this is not the way to live? Unjust people who don’t care about God will not be joining in his kingdom. Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don’t qualify as citizens in God’s kingdom. A number of you know from experience what I’m talking about, for not so long ago you were on that list. Since then, you’ve been cleaned up and given a fresh start by Jesus, our Master, our Messiah, and by our God present in us, the Spirit.
Just because something is technically legal doesn’t mean
that it’s spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I
could get by with, I’d be a slave to my whims.
You know the old saying, “First you eat to live, and then
you live to eat”? Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing,
but that’s no excuse for stuffing your body with food, or indulging it with
sex. Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body!
God honored the Master’s body by raising it from the
grave. He’ll treat yours with the same resurrection power. Until that time,
remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master’s
body. You wouldn’t take the Master’s body off to a whorehouse, would you? I
should hope not.
There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as
much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two
become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must
not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more
lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.” There is a sense
in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate
the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and
God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another. Or didn’t you realize that
your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you
can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for?
The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the
spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and
through your body.
As we
talked about in an earlier reflection, Paul wrote this letter to the church in
Corinth to address specific problems that the congregation he had served for a
year and a half was struggling with. In
chapters 5-7, Paul addresses the broad category of sexual immorality that
evidently was prevalent in the Corinthian church. One man was having sex with his mother-in-law
(um.. ewww!). Others continued to participate
in the Temple prostitution that was prevalent in Corinth. There were still others engaged in obviously inappropriate
sexual relations. The worst part was
they all believed and stated that it all was completely fine. “Christians are freed by God, so we can do
anything we wish,” was their claim.
At the
core of Paul’s response to all of this is this; to do whatever you want isn’t
freedom. When you live that way, you have
become a slave to your whims and desires.
And especially when it comes to sex, this can lead to even bigger
problems. When the covenantal, spiritual,
and sacred aspects of sexual intimacy are removed from sexual acts, the results
create brokenness and misery in our relationships and community. Mistrust and anger begin to abound. In the middle of this discussion about sex,
Paul inserts a quick response about Christians taking other Christians to
court. It seems out of place in a
section about sex until we think about the brokenness, mistrust, and anger
created by taking sex too casually. The community’s
relationships had degenerated to the point that they were taking into secular
courts.
Sex is
a good thing when it happens in the context of two people who are in loving covenantal
relationship with each other. It is in
danger of becoming an unhealthy and even harmful thing when it happens outside
of that context. It can even become
another form of slavery. We are seeing
the result of this play out now with the plethora of sexual addictions on the
rise in our present time. It matters
what you do with your body because your body is the spiritual property of God
and your spouse. We are called to honor God and our spouse with the use of our
body.
Even
though the issue Paul is responding to is sex, Paul’s teaching has larger
implications that twenty-first-century Christians should take seriously. We live in a culture that is moving more and
more into a “do whatever seems good to you and trust that God’s grace will make
it okay” mentality. Paul is trying to
point out that doing whatever you want when ever you want with whoever you want
works against the power of God’s grace in our lives. Trusting in God’s grace means that we do all
we know to do to live in healthy relation to God and people knowing that where
we fail, grace will “fill in the gap” so to speak. Grace is even more powerful in the life a
Christian when it is a partnership.
Question: Are there
areas of your life that do not honor God or people who you claim to love?
Prayer: Psalm
51:10-12 - Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit
within me. Do not cast me from your
presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your
salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for people you know who are struggling with problems caused by sexual
immorality and infidelity.
Song: Let’s Talk
About Sex – Salt N Pepa
I couldn’t resist. No really, this song actually points to some
of the same problems Paul was trying to address.
