The Body is for the Lord
Introduction: The Gnostic Lie of the Sexual Revolution
We live in a culture that is profoundly confused about what it means to be human, and the epicenter of this confusion is the human body. The central dogma of our secular age is a recycled heresy, a warmed-over Gnosticism that whispers the same ancient lie: your body is not you. It is a machine you pilot, a costume you wear, a playground for your desires, but it is not the essential you. The "real you" is your autonomous will, your desires, your identity, which you are free to invent and reinvent at your pleasure. The body is just the meat-puppet that carries out the orders of the sovereign self.
This is the philosophy that fuels the entire sexual revolution. It allows a man to say that pornography is a victimless crime because it's "just pixels on a screen," as though his eyes were not part of his body and his body not part of him. It allows for the lie of casual sex, as though two bodies could be tangled together in the most intimate of acts without tangling up the persons who inhabit them. It is what lies behind the madness of transgenderism, which declares war on the biological reality of the body in the name of an internal, subjective feeling. In every case, the body is demoted. It is treated as a piece of property, a disposable vehicle, instead of what it is: an essential aspect of your personhood, created by God for His glory.
Into this Gnostic swamp, the Apostle Paul wades with a bucket of glorious, ice-cold, theological reality. He presents a theology of the body so high, so robust, and so contrary to the spirit of the age that it is breathtaking. The Corinthians were trying to do what moderns do. They were trying to compartmentalize. They wanted Jesus for their souls on Sunday, and the temple prostitutes for their bodies on Friday night. They believed their spiritual identity in Christ had nothing to do with their physical activities. Paul confronts this not with a list of rules, but with a foundational theology of what the body is for. He tells us that our bodies are not our own, that they are united to Christ, that they are temples of the Holy Spirit, and that their ultimate destiny is resurrection. Therefore, what you do with your body matters for eternity.
The Text
All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! 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.” But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee sexual immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
(1 Corinthians 6:12-20 LSB)
Detonating Slogans (vv. 12-13a)
Paul begins by quoting the slogans of the Corinthian libertines, and then he systematically dismantles them.
"All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them." (1 Corinthians 6:12-13a)
The Corinthians had taken a truth about Christian freedom from the ceremonial law and twisted it into a license for sin. "All things are lawful for me" was their catchphrase, their justification for indulging the flesh. Paul does not deny the premise in its proper context, but he immediately subjects it to two rigorous tests. First, is it profitable? Does it build up? Does it contribute to the health of the body of Christ and your own soul? Second, will it master me? Or, to put it another way, will I be brought under its power?
Sexual immorality fails both tests spectacularly. It is never profitable. It introduces chaos, disease, heartbreak, shame, and guilt. It destroys trust, families, and churches. It does not build anything; it demolishes everything. And second, it is profoundly mastering. The world is filled with men and women who thought they could dally with lust, thinking they were in control, only to find themselves utterly enslaved. Pornography is a brutal slave master. Adultery is a tyrant. Sexual sin promises freedom and delivers shackles. Paul says that even if something is technically "lawful," if it is unprofitable or enslaving, a mature Christian will have nothing to do with it.
Then he addresses their second slogan, which is a false analogy: "Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food." Their argument was simple: the body has appetites, like hunger, and it is natural to satisfy them. So, if I have a sexual appetite, why not satisfy it? It's just a biological function, like eating. Paul's response is devastating. He says, "God will do away with both of them." The digestive process is temporary; it belongs to this current age. But, as he is about to argue, the body itself is not temporary. You are making an eternal decision with a temporary justification. You are comparing an apple to a battleship. The body is in a completely different category than the stomach.
The Resurrection Body (vv. 13b-14)
Having demolished their faulty logic, Paul lays down the positive theological foundation for the body's true purpose.
"Yet the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power." (1 Corinthians 6:13b-14 LSB)
This is the central thesis. The body has a telos, a God-given purpose. It is not for fornication; it is for the Lord. This is a statement of ownership and belonging. And the relationship is reciprocal: "and the Lord is for the body." The Lord Jesus is not ashamed of our humanity. He took on a human body, lived in it, died in it, and was raised in it. He is for the body. He is the great champion and vindicator of the human body.
And the ultimate proof of this is the resurrection. "God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power." This is the knockout punch to any Gnostic, body-despising worldview. Your physical body has an eternal destiny. It is not a disposable shell that you will shed at death. It will be raised, glorified, and perfected, just as Christ's body was. This fact imbues your body with an infinite dignity. How you treat your body now matters because this body, this very one, is destined for resurrection glory. To give your body over to sexual sin is to take a vessel destined for glory and drag it through the sewer.
Sacrilege in Christ's Members (vv. 15-17)
Paul now raises the stakes, moving from the body's destiny to its present reality. He asks a series of rhetorical questions designed to shock the Corinthians into spiritual sanity.
"Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! 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.' But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him." (1 Corinthians 6:15-17 LSB)
The argument is staggering. When you became a Christian, you were united to Christ. This union is not some ethereal, abstract idea. It is a reality that involves your physical body. Your hands, your feet, your eyes, your mouth, your sexual organs, are now members of Christ's own body. They belong to Him.
With this premise established, the conclusion is horrific and unavoidable. To take your body and join it to a prostitute is to take a member of Christ and join Him to a prostitute. It is an act of spiritual treason and sacrilege. It is to make Christ a participant in your defilement. Paul's response is the strongest possible negative in the Greek: Me genoito. May it never be! Let it not even be imagined among you.
He grounds this in the creation ordinance from Genesis 2:24. Sexual intercourse is not just a friction of skin; it is a profound joining, a "one-flesh" union. It creates a bond, whether you intend it to or not. This is why the world's idea of "casual sex" is a destructive lie. There is no such thing. Every sexual act is a covenantal act. In the context of marriage, it is a holy sign of the one-flesh covenant. In the context of fornication, it is a profane and demonic parody of that covenant, creating a one-flesh union that God has forbidden. The contrast is then drawn to the true union. The one who joins himself to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him. This is the ultimate intimacy, the ultimate belonging, that sexual sin defiles and counterfeits.
Flee the Internal Traitor (v. 18)
The command that follows from this high theology is not to negotiate or manage, but to run for your life.
"Flee sexual immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral man sins against his own body." (1 Corinthians 6:18 LSB)
The biblical response to sexual temptation is not to stand and fight a battle of wits with it. It is to flee. It is to run like Joseph ran from Potiphar's wife. You don't debate a house fire; you get out. You don't reason with a rattlesnake; you run away. Sexual temptation is to be treated with that level of urgency and seriousness.
Paul then gives a unique characteristic of this sin. In some sense, all sin affects the body. A drunkard sins against his liver. But Paul is saying there is a unique way that sexual sin is a sin "against his own body." Other sins are like an army attacking a city from the outside. Sexual sin is like a traitor inside the city walls opening the gates to the enemy. It is a fundamental betrayal of your own embodied self. It is a sin of internal treason, a civil war in your own members. It violates the very meaning and purpose of the body in a way that is uniquely destructive and self-defiling.
You Are a Temple, Not Your Own (vv. 19-20)
Finally, Paul brings it all home with two foundational truths that seal the argument: the indwelling of the Spirit and the redemption price paid by Christ.
"Or do you not know that your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body." (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 LSB)
If you are a believer, your physical body is a temple, a sanctuary, of the Holy Spirit. God Himself, the third person of the Trinity, has taken up residence within you. This is not a metaphor for your soul; Paul is talking about your body. This means your body is holy ground. To engage in sexual immorality is to commit sacrilege. It is to bring something unclean and profane into the holy place. It is to hang pornography on the walls of God's sanctuary. It is an act of cosmic vandalism.
And why is this so? Because "you are not your own." This is the deathblow to the modern idol of personal autonomy. You do not have the right to do what you want with your body, because your body does not belong to you. Why? "For you were bought with a price." This is the gospel. You were a slave to sin, and the Lord Jesus Christ purchased you out of that slave market with the price of His own precious blood. You are owned. You belong to Him, lock, stock, and barrel. Your body, your soul, your mind, your time, your future, all of it belongs to the one who bought you.
The conclusion, therefore, is not a suggestion. It is a glorious command that flows from this reality. "Therefore glorify God in your body." Your body is not a problem to be escaped or an idol to be served. It is an instrument to be used for the glory of God. It is the stage upon which the drama of your worship is to be lived out. In your work, in your rest, in your eating and drinking, and yes, in your sexuality, you are to display the goodness and greatness of the God who made you, bought you, and will one day raise you.
Conclusion: Embodied Glory
The Christian faith is not a disembodied religion for ghosts. It is an incarnational faith from beginning to end. It is about a God who took on a body, who redeems embodied people, who indwells our bodies by His Spirit, and who will resurrect our bodies for an eternity of embodied worship in a new heaven and a new earth.
The world's lies about the body lead only to degradation, confusion, and despair. But the truth of God's Word sets us free to live as we were made to live. Your body is not a trivial thing. It is united to Christ. It is the temple of the Spirit. It was bought by the blood of the Son. It is destined for resurrection. Therefore, flee from all that would defile it, and turn to the Lord who is for it. Glorify God in your body, for it, and you, belong to Him.