Paul’s Response to the Matters of Immorality in the Corinthian Church, Rev Dr John Kwasi Fosu

Amazing Grace Baptist Church, Hamburg Bible Study Material on 1 Cor. 6:9-20

Introduction

This lesson focuses on Paul’s response to the matters pertaining to sexual immorality in the Corinthian Church. While we cannot defend the Corinthians for their sins, we seek to understand why they fell into them. It seems that no city presented more opportunities for immorality and vice than did Corinth. The very religion of the city (the worship of Aphrodite) was nothing but prostitution in the name of religion. These believers had been rescued from lives of terrible sin but were tempted to go back. Paul knew that some of the believers were looking for excuses to sin, so he clearly refuted every argument that they might bring up. The approach used to study the Passage of 1 Cor. 6:9-20 is that of rhetorical questions and answers. Rhetorical in the sense that Paul reframes the issues raised the Corinthian Church in the form of questions in his attempt to respond to them.

Can we sin and still go to heaven, if we are saved? (1Cor. 6: 9-11)

Certainly, people who are truly saved and thus born again will go to heaven despite their many failings.  However, the new birth in             Christ brings a new nature. This new nature means a new appetite. This means believers still have the ability to sin, but not the desire. Any teaching that makes it easy to sin is not rooted in the Bible. “Be not deceived!” Paul listed the awful sins that once had ruled their lives, then reminded them of what Jesus had done for them. “Such were some of you! But you are washed…sanctified…justified!” The believer is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) and proves it breaking with the old life. We do not inherit the kingdom of God refraining from sin, but we prove that we are going to heaven the godly lives that we live.

“Don’t believers have freedom and aren’t we free from the Law?” (1 Cor. 6:12-14)

Certainly, we are free from rules and regulations, but we are not free to sin. Freedom of the believer is never permission to sin. Freedom of the believers does not mean they are free to do what they please, but that they have been freed to do what pleases God. Furthermore, “freedom to sin” is really the worst kind of slavery! This is a way of saying that we must not be brought under the power of sin (Romans 6). “But,” you say, “if God gave us these physical appetites, certainly God wants us to use them.” That’s right: use them, but not abuse them. Your body is the Lord’s.  If you live in sin, that sin will destroy you and God will someday judge you.

“Can I not use my body as I please?” (1 Cor. 6: 15-20)

Of course not! To begin with, it is no longer your body.  It belongs to Jesus. Christ purchased you with Christ’s own blood. Back in Paul’s day, a slave could set himself free saving his money and depositing it with the priest at the local pagan temple. When he had enough money to purchase his freedom, he would take his master to the temple and the priest would give the master the money and declare that the slave now belonged to that particular god.  Christ paid the price to set us free from sin and we must use our bodies to please Him.

Furthermore, when we sin against the body, we sin against Christ and the Holy Spirit who has made the body His temple. Genesis 2:24 states that two persons joined physically become “one flesh.” The questions asked here are: How can a believer join his body, which is a member of Christ’s body, to such horrible sin? How can a believer defile the temple of the Spirit?

To Paul, believers are to glorify God with their bodies. Glorifying God with our bodies means the way we care for the body, the way we dress the body, the places we take the body, and the deeds we do in the body are all to honour God.

Conclusion and Application

It is obvious in contemporary times that the issue of immorality is a sensitive and thorny one. Its sensitivity is due to the cultural changes that seem to see sexual immorality as normal. In contemporary times, there appears to be a shameless increase in sexual sins. Timothy 3:5 had already warned us that immorality will be associated with believers and not only the people of the world in the end times. The attitude of the world is, “Everybody’s doing it, so why be different?” To Paul, however, sexual sins are sins against the Lord (who purchased our bodies), against the Spirit (who indwells our bodies) and against ourselves (1 Cor 6:18).

Moreover, issues of sexual sins are sensitive due to the positions on the subject the worldwide Church in that some churches and denominations have no problem with sexual issues such as same-sex marriages and sex outside marriages. Immorality is also a sensitive personality due to the fact many believers have personal past issues with its associated dimension of guilt.

Paul encourages believers to be careful about the issue of immorality in his view that immorality has a dimension of partaking in the Kingdom of God, that our bodies are united with Christ in our bodies and that Christ has bought us with a price. Believers are therefore called up to flee from sexual immorality and thus to honour God with their bodies.