1 Corinthians 6:12-20

1 Corinthians 6:12-20
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.

We have freedom in Christ to do anything that is not strictly prohibited in scripture.  However our "freedom" becomes bondage when we become slaves to that freedom.  I used to smoke cigarettes.  I was a full blown addict smoking 2 1/2 packs a day.  I absolutely HAD to have one or I could not function.  No matter if I was one who did not consider smoking a sin, it had become my master and therefore it was sin.

Food.  No one will argue that food is a sin.  Yet in some ways food has become a sin for me because of the volume and more importantly why I eat.  I eat for comfort when I am upset or anxious. Food has taken the place of God in this area and therefore foods eaten for those reasons are sin.  I'm only speaking for me.  You deal with what God brings to your mind.

¹³ You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
  
Here the people are saying to Paul, "Our bodies need food and our bodies need sex.  Sex is like eating a meal for the benefit of the body.  Our bodies are temporal and will be destroyed, so what does it matter what we do with our body?"  Sounds perfectly logical from a human perspective.  The problem is our bodies were not made for sexual immorality.  They were made for the Lord.

¹⁴ By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. 

God's standard for sex is hard.  I struggle as a divorced man who was married for over 16 years.  I never had to put the brakes on and stop for all that time.  Now I must retrain my mind.  I must not allow myself to get into situations that could cause me to chose the flesh.  If God can raise Jesus from the dead He can help me live a pure life.

 ¹⁵ Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! ¹⁶ 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.” ¹⁷ But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

The city of Corinth had temple prostitutes.  It was part of their worship to pagan gods.  Think of the abomination of going to a pagan temple and becoming one flesh with a prostitute all the while claiming to be part of the body of Christ.  

Today we are no different.  There are thousands of places for men and women to go and worship the god of self and fulfill our fleshly desires.  I can't go a week without some spam email inviting me to join a group for "no strings attached" sex.   But there are strings attached to all sexual intercourse outside of monogamous marriage.  The two become one so there will always be that emotional bond.  An unwanted child can come of the affair or worse abortion being used as a form of birth control and you live the rest of your life with murder on your conscience.

Verse 17 tells us was are one with the Lord in spirit.  Galatians 5:16-17 says, "So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want."  

¹⁸ Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.

Run!  Don't play.  Don't see how close you can get without crossing some line you have drawn in you mind.  That line will not stay put and you will keep moving it till you can't stop.  Run!  Be like Joseph and flee.

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; ²⁰ you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

This body is not mine.  Jesus bought it on the cross.  I need to honor God with it.

God Bless.