1 Corinthians 6

     6:1-8.  Paul continues to address moral scandals in the Corinthian church.  Corinth was a wide-open Roman free city, and the moral tone would have been all too similar to our own times.  It was mostly the damaged and wounded off-scourings of this excess that heard the word of forgiveness and redemption as good news (1:26 ff.).  But old habits die hard.

     Covetousness led to wronging and defrauding each other, which led to law suits before civil judges, and a scandal before the pagan world.  Far better to submit such things to church courts, where wise and spiritual men could sort it out, which should lead to submission and repentance.  If not, the contentious party could be removed from fellowship (5:13), and the other party could absorb the wrong as his share of the cross (7), and remember that he too was a sinner (8).

     6:2-3.  Church courts should be a reflection of the reign of the saints with Christ in the kingdom of heaven.  We do in fact reign with him now.  Judgment is both now and future.  The church has the keys of the kingdom, and when led by the Spirit, the judgments of the saints are confirmed in heaven (cf. Mt.16:19, 18:18; John 20:23).  All judgment at the last Great Day belongs to the Lord, but he will surround himself with the court of his people, who shall say amen, so be it Lord, to all his righteous judgments of men and angels (cf.Ps.122, esp.v.5; Mt.19:28; Rev.3:21, 4:4, 20:4).

     6:9-11.  These were the sins especially prominent in Corinth, but by no means meant to be more fatal than any other unrighteousness.  The past tense is used in v.11.  The elect have been saved by their faith in the finished work of Christ.  In him the condemnation by the law has been accomplished on behalf of the saints.

     6:12-14.  These verses correct a Greek notion that sins of the body die with the body, and the spirit is released to a purer life.  But Christ saves the whole man, and just as Christ was raised, so shall we be.  In this life God gives us good gifts to enjoy, like food, wine, sexuality, and all other physical pleasures.  The sin is not in the gifts, but in the perversion of them into gluttony, drunkenness, fornication, decadent revelries, and all such things that God will destroy with the man who does them.  With the trite joke of v.13, blame for the abuse of man’s natural hungers and desires is shifted from man to the Creator.  But the perversion of what God created as a good thing, to gross unnatural excesses, is not what the body was intended for, and God will destroy both the sin and the sinner.

     6:15-20.  Our bodies belong to Christ now.  We are one with him in a mystical union.  Involving our bodies in such unholy things as fornication is a pollution of the temple of the Holy Spirit.  This is sin against our Lord, our marriages, and our own bodies, which were meant for God’s glory.