Text:

12 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are expedient. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not have the authority of anything. 13 Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food, and God will destroy the one and the other. But the body is not for fornication, but the Lord's, and the Lord is the body. 14 God has raised up the Lord, and He will raise us up also by His power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I take the members of Christ and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid! 16 Or do you not know that whoever is joined to a prostitute is one body? Because he says: “The two will become one flesh.” 17 But whoever clings to the Lord is one spirit. 18 Flee fornication. Every sin that a person does is outside the body, but he who commits adultery sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price. So glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.

the explanation:

In this passage of the letter, the Apostle addresses the problem of adultery in Corinth. Perhaps the direct background to this problem is that some of the Corinthians were influenced by the teachings of a religious sect called Gnosticism (or Gnosticism). These have teachings that are a mixture of paganism, Christianity, and a special philosophy about God and his relationship with man. In terms of the body, this band headed in two directions. The first says that the body links a person to matter, and hinders his salvation, and therefore it must be conquered and humiliated through asceticism and austerity, in order for the soul to get rid of its burden. As for the second trend, it saw the impermanence and annihilation of the body as a motive for practicing pleasures and indulging in them. This is because everything that is fleeting is fleeting, so there is no difference as long as the soul is pure. The second trend was influenced by some Christians in Corinth. Their motto was “Anything is permissible to me.” But Paul, in light of this situation, while he did not deny the validity of this statement, adds that “not everything agrees” with the person who followed Christ and became a member of his body.

“Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is agreeable to me.” Everything is permissible for me, but I cannot be controlled by anything.” Man is unlimited in terms of his freedom. What distinguishes him from other beings is that he is free to choose his actions. He stops at one of them and neglects the others. He accepts this and rejects that. But freedom, at this level, remains weak and empty of all meaning, if we look at it from the perspective of the Gospel of Christ. It is true that a Christian is not bound by law, law, or law, but this does not mean chaos. You are a member of the body of Christ, and therefore your being is not yours, and you are not for yourself, but for Christ who participated in his blood. From the moment of your baptism, you belong to Christ, joined to his body. This assumes that the things that are lawful for you at any time are no longer compatible with all of you, because they are precisely not compatible with the body of Christ. So, you cannot say: “I am free, I do what I want.” This is not freedom, but slavery itself. Whatever you want and do is controlled by you, whether you like it or not, and on this basis you are subject to what you do. You are a slave to sin if you practice sin. Christian freedom is freedom from sin, not just a trivial freedom to choose actions. Christ owns you because he is part of the slavery of sin, and in him alone your true freedom is revealed.

“But the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. God has raised the Lord, and He will also raise us up by His power.” Your body is for the Lord, not for anything else. He belongs to the Lord because the Lord came to him and took him. You cannot give this body to anyone other than the Lord. This statement does not contradict marriage. The Apostle says in another place: “The woman does not have authority over her own body, but the man does. Likewise, the man does not have authority over his own body, but the woman does” (1 Corinthians 7:4), but the two ultimately belong to the Lord, as they are no longer two, but one body of the Lord.

You give your body to someone other than the Lord through adultery. Adultery here takes on a broader meaning than its physical meaning. It reminds us of the accusation of adultery made by the prophets, in the Old Testament, against Israel when it left God and followed other gods. If your body or entity, which is you, makes it follow its desires, you will have committed adultery before the Lord. If you hand it over to someone other than Christ, you will have committed adultery. How do you hand over something that belongs to someone else? Your body is to serve Christ, to share in his suffering and death, to rise with him in glory. God raised Christ and He will also raise you, and this body of yours will participate in the resurrection, so you should not misuse it.

“Every sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the adulterer sins against his own body.” Adultery is not only a sin against God, or a sin against another human being, but also a sin against the body, because the body belongs to God, and it is not yours to dispose of with it as you wish. Every other sin is not related to the body to the same extent as adultery. Adultery is an expression of your abandonment of Christ, who took your body and made it worthy of glory. Throw yourself into arms other than his. That is the sin, to deny God who lives in you. “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, which you have received from God, and that you are not your own, because you were bought with a price?” It is worth mentioning here that adultery is the only reason for divorce, because it is precisely an expression of breaking the bond that exists between a man and a woman. The adulterous man and the adulterous woman did not respect the one-flesh relationship that existed between him and his partner. He took his body, which was not his own but belonged to another, and therefore the Lord's, and threw it into the arms of the one who did not own it. Marriage in this case is not possible, and unity is fragile. If this is the case on the human level, how much more would the problem become stronger if God was the other party?

Your body is called to be glorified, to become spiritual, “but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.” This body that was burdened with sin, which was an obedient slave to it, was taken by your Lord, who “will transform the body of our humility into the image of the body of His glory according to the working of His ability to subject all things to Himself” (Philippians 3:21). Do not leave your body to sin, lest it become insignificant, stinking flesh. Rather, hand it over to the one who owns it, and glorify him in it, for in the resurrection he will make you a stature of light.

Quoted from my parish bulletin
Sunday, February 27, 1994 / Issue 9