Making Sense of 1st Corinthians CH6-b
Where do our ideas of what freedom means come from? What do we think real freedom is? Is it to be able to do whatever we want? Whenever we want? Have we learned everything we know about freedom from the lyrics of popular songs? Here’s a mishmash of freedom ideas according to rock stars, see if you recognize any of these:
I'm free to do what I want
any old time
I'm free, free fallin'
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now
And this bird you cannot change
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill
Just as free
Free as we'll ever be
I want to break free
It's a free-for-all and I heard it said
You can bet your life
but how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind
Ah, the great theologians of our time. Drug addicts with daddy issues. Teaching us since the 60s that the highest form of freedom is to put our necks in the guillotine and our naughty bits, too. The generation that embraced the concept of “all you need is love” did their best to mutilate society with casual sex and dangerously low birthrates. They tried to convince us that Jesus was a hippy who wouldn’t want to harsh my mellow.
As we continue Making Sense of 1st Corinthians, we’ll find that things haven’t changed much since the Bible days. St Paul turns his focus to what it means to be truly free, which means to be free in Christ. To be free in Christ is not to have autonomous freedom—it’s to have the freedom to be what we were created to be instead of being a slave to our appetites and impulses.
Let’s pray as we get started:
Father in heaven,
As we read out loud
all the regulations you have given us.
Help us to rejoice in your laws
as much as we do in riches.
As we study your commandments
and reflect on your ways.
Help us to delight in your decrees
and not forget your word.
Especially because of Jesus, the Word made flesh. AMEN
Okay, we’re picking up 1st Corinthians in chapter six, starting at verse 12:
“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything.
They thought since they had been set free by Jesus they could do whatever they wanted. I don’t know anyone who thinks like that these days, do you? Well, except almost everyone.
They had some popular sayings, they had said them so many times they actually believed them. “I have the right to do anything.” “Last time I checked it was still a free country!” “I’m free to do what I want any old time!”
Paul says, “Yeah, you’re free to do whatever but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”
Luther said, “The Christian is a perfectly free lord of all subject to none.” Everybody likes that part, but that’s only the first half of the quote. “AND the Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” In other words, Jesus made us free so we would be free to serve each other instead of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
So just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Just because you have the freedom and opportunity to do something, doesn’t mean it would be good for you. Jesus didn’t set you free from the chains of sin just so you could slip your hands right back into the shackles. Sin is a tyrant. It always promises freedom but it doesn’t deliver. It’s always a trap.
We’re all slaves to whatever temptations we give into. That’s what it means to be mastered by something. You are a slave to whatever temptations you keep giving into. That’s not freedom.
Verse 13: You say,
“Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.”
Plato and the Greek philosophers had a really low view of the body and the physical world. They thought it was only shadows. Illusions. It didn’t matter what you did with your body, it’s just a shell that your spirit is going to escape from someday. The only things that really matter are spiritual things. Virtues. Ideas. Words. Which they called “Logos.”
And then Jesus came along and said He was the Logos made flesh. The Word made flesh. The spiritual made flesh. That both body and spirit are important. That matter matters. That was a scandalous idea at the time. I think it’s still a scandalous idea. God became a human being with bad breath and body odor.
But they thought the body didn’t matter. Do whatever you want with it. If you’re hungry, eat. The pure and holy spiritual God is going to take your soul to heaven when you die. So, if it tastes good, eat it. If it feels good, do it.
But Paul wants them to understand that it’s not good to just blindly follow our appetites. He’s making a connection of our cravings for food to our cravings for sex. As if, since they are natural, they must be wholesome.
It’s the same today. People say, “God just wants us to be happy, He’s the God of love, He doesn’t care what people do in the privacy of their bedroom—I think God’s got bigger things to worry about than who we choose to play naked sex games with.” “Sex is natural, sex is fun.” Any of these things sound familiar? Nothing ever changes. People are still telling the same demonic lies two thousand years later. But Jesus has a very different message for all of us that He’s set free.
Verse 13 goes on to say,
“The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.”
Your body matters. What you do with your body matters.
You’re not just a spirit trapped in a body. You ARE your body. Your soul has a body, and your body has a soul. You are both. Our Christian hope is not to die and go to heaven as a disembodied spirit. Our hope is that when Jesus returns, our soul and our body will be reunited. Our hope is in a real bodily resurrection. Just like Jesus.
Sometimes at funerals, people get carried away in the moment and say things like “this shell isn’t grandpa Joe. Grandpa Joe is in heaven with Jesus. This is just an abandoned meat suit.” No. Wrong. That body is Grandpa Joe and when the Lord returns in glory, that body is coming back from the dead. Grandpa Joe was no mere mortal. C.S. Lewis said you’ve never met a mere mortal. We are all supernatural, eternal creatures. we’d be tempted to fall on our face and worship Grandpa Joe if we saw him for who he’s going to be someday.
And even in this life, what we do with our bodies is part of our worship—part of our living sacrifice. We are to love God, worship God, with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Your body matters. What you do with your body matters. This same body that you drag around through all kinds of nasty weirdness and feed chips and queso until your pants don’t fit is the same body God is going to resurrect from the grave. Hopefully without the cellulite and stretch marks.
Verse 14: “By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.”
Is that how you think of the afterlife? A resurrected body. Your body. Because that’s the deal.
Philippians 3:20-21 “Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”
So our bodies matter. What we do with our bodies matters. We need to let go of these gnostic ideas that we’re just a soul, a spirit, that the physical world doesn’t mean anything.
In baptism, it’s our bodies that are washed. It’s our bodies that have the name of Jesus applied to them. I know, we’re not used to thinking about it this way. We’re more Greek Platonic spiritualists than Biblical Christians. Probably because we learned a bunch of our theology from hippies and barefoot worship leader hipsters instead of the Bible. Christianity 101 is Jesus became flesh. The Logos became flesh. The spiritual became material. He was baptized in His actual human body in an actual river. Our physical bodies, along with our soul and our spirit, are connected to His life, death, and resurrection.
In the Lord’s Supper, we eat and drink spiritual grace with our physical bodies. We commune in the body and blood of Jesus Christ. We receive the spiritual blessings of life and forgiveness physically. Orally. It’s a physical thing as much as it is spiritual. Don’t spiritualize these things so much that you miss the point. The Word became flesh. He lived and died and came back from the dead—God promises the same to us if we believe in Jesus.
Verse 15: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?”
We’re getting into the deepest mysteries of the Gospel here. You are the body of Christ. Each of you makes up a part of His body. Your physical body has been connected to Jesus Christ.
So, Paul asks them,
“Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.”
Well, that escalated quickly. We were having a nice conversation about baptism and the Lord’s Supper and being members of the body of Christ. All of a sudden he calls us a whore. What the heck, I thought we were supposed to talk about nice things in church.
Prostitution was legal and very common in the Roman Empire. It was especially embraced in Corinth. Remember, this place was like the Big Easy meets Las Vegas on permanent Spring Break. It was considered normal and perfectly acceptable for men to go to the temples of Athena and get down with the temple prostitutes. They had girls of every age and boys of every age to choose from. It was as socially acceptable as stopping for a beer on the way home from work. Just a little something to take the edge off.
And some of the members of this little church were all about it. It’s a free country, right?
Prostitution isn’t quite as common in our culture as it was in theirs. We still have the same sin though, we just call it “dating.”
Paul says that’s not what freedom in Christ looks like.
Verse 18: “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.”
Obviously, all sins involve using our bodies in some way. So, this must be something more than using our mouth for lying or our hands for murdering and stealing. This gets into the mystery of what’s going on in the two becoming one flesh in marriage. Sex is a mystery.
Somehow, sexual sin does something to us that other sins do not. And in some way, as Christians, we’re dragging Jesus into it with us in a horrific way. Kinda the opposite of worship.
Verse 19: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price.”
In Genesis, God breathed the breath of life into the first man. The word for breath in Hebrew is the same word as Spirit. God breathed His Spirit into Adam. Interestingly, it’s the same in Greek—the word for breath is the same as the word for Spirit. So, the first man had God’s Holy Spirit dwelling in him. Then there was the fall, and when man sinned, on that day man surely died. Spiritually. God’s Spirit left him and another spirit entered. When we are baptized, God drives out the spirit of the world, the flesh, and the devil—He replaces it with His breath of life. Our bodies once again become the dwelling of the Holy Spirit. That’s why we say every baptism is an exorcism. That’s why Paul says our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.
You are possessed by God. You are His possession. Jesus bought you with His own life.
You have been set free from the spirit of the world, the flesh, and the devil who used to dwell in you. There are still echoes of dark temptation that try to enslave you again. Any temptations that you continue to give into will be your master. But the good news is the Holy Spirit of God lives in you. You don’t belong to death and darkness anymore. You belong to Jesus. Your future is all about light and love. Doesn’t that sound better?
Last verse of chapter six:
“Therefore honor God with your bodies.” 1st Corinthians 6:20
That’s a command for sure but it’s a command with a lot of hope. God has made you holy. He’s made it possible for you to honor Him with your body. Again, I want to point out the word “body.” Don’t over-spiritualize the Christian faith. What you do with your physical body matters. Matter matters. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son to save us. The world.
May you honor God with your body. That’s what you have been set free to do. AMEN