Prayer of Thanksgiving: Give thanks to God for all the blessings he has given you and your family.

Prayer of Supplication: Pray for the needs of those in our church and your community.

Bible reading and commentary:

Read: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20

As a compassionate Pastor, Paul is concerned that the Corinthians are using their freedom in Christ as an excuse to indulge in sexual sin. So he takes this occasion to explain the limits of Christian liberty, warn of the dangers of sexual immorality, and reminds his readers that their bodies are holy temples consecrated to the Lord. Sexual sin is not an indifferent matter. It is a serious sin with severe consequences. It’s not the same as food and drink, or books, movies, sports and so on. Each Christian is to apply the principles of God’s Word to those matters. Certainly we are not to cause division over such trivial matters. But to tolerate sexual sins in the church is not permitted.
The Christians’ greatest freedom is found in service to Jesus Christ and his church. Christians are God’s holy people who are united to Christ by faith and therefore must live lives of moral purity, offering their worship and labor as spiritual sacrifices to God.
When Christians consider what they can and cannot do, they should realize that the only things that are permissible are the ones that are beneficial and useful for public welfare. Christian liberty is limited by the moral law. The whole church of Christ is like a body, in which all should live and do all things, not for themselves, but for the whole body, not for their own advantage, but for the benefit of the entire community. Christians need to think about the consequences of their acts. While something might be lawful, it may not be beneficial (who said Christianity was easy).
Union with Christ by the Holy Spirit makes the Christian’s body a sacred object, destined for resurrection and glory. Paul draws the Corinthians attention to this and its ethical ramifications. As a result of union with Christ, their bodies are members of Christ and it is unthinkable to join the members of Christ to a prostitute. Sexual sins contradict their union with Christ.
Like Joseph fleeing from Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39:12), believers are to be vigilant daily in consciously fleeing from sexual temptations in all its forms. Other sins are done outside the body, however when he commits fornication he sins against his own body. The Holy Spirit indwells each believer as his Holy place. This is the theological basis behind the command to flee sexual immorality. We do not claim ownership of our own bodies. We are to be wise stewards of the bodies we have been given.
Chapter 6 works out in detail the relationship between doctrine and practice. Paul draws the reader’s attention to objective truths: you have been justified, your bodies are members of Christ, and your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. This should make us think about who we are in Christ and the importance of purity.
Calvin on 1 Corinthians 6:18: Having treated honorable conduct, Paul now shows how much we should abhor fornication, presenting the enormity of its wickedness and ugliness. Now he develops this by comparing it to other sins, stating that fornication alone of all sins puts a mark of disgrace on the body. The body, it is true, is also defiled by theft, murder, drunkenness, as Scripture testifies: “your hands are polluted with blood” (Isaiah 1:15); “You have presented your members as instruments of iniquity for sin” (Romans 6:19), and similar verses. Some people, in order to avoid this inconsistency, have interpreted the clause “his own body” to mean “those who are united to Christ.” But for me, this interpretation is not at all convincing… Thus my explanation is that Paul does not completely deny that there are other sins which dishonor and bring disgrace to our body, but he simply means that the sin of fornication defiles our body in a different manner than with other sins. My hand, indeed, is stained by theft or murder; my tongue by slander or perjury; my whole body by drunkenness. But fornication leaves behind a stain impressed on the body unlike other sins. According to this comparison, or rather, on the basis of this argument of greater-lesser, other sins are said to be outside the body, though not because they have no effect whatsoever on the body.