Today's message directly touches on the subject of the prodigal son, who squandered his share of the paternal wealth with harlots. In a few words, the Apostle Paul sums up our entire Christian understanding of the body, its needs, and its role in our human life.
It is noticeable from the beginning that Paul’s comparative style in the letter gives special clarity to some words. He uses two words, the belly (the stomach) and the body. As if he is talking about two different things, Paul speaks about two functions of the body, or two uses of it: he describes the first use as the work of the belly, while the second use is related to foods and pleasures…, all of which God will destroy. But “the body” (which has a belly and needs foods and eats them) means, in Paul’s language here, our body in a second position that he describes in the best words. This body is the temple of God and it belongs to the Lord and the Lord belongs to it and will glorify it. So here we are actually talking about the same body (belly-body) but in two different uses. Therefore Paul uses the same expressions by replacing the words, saying: “The foods belong to the belly and the belly to the foods, and God will destroy both” and then: “The body belongs to the Lord and the Lord to the body… and he will raise us up also by his power.” So the body can be used for a position that God will destroy and it can be used for a position that will be glorified. Just as it can be an instrument of humiliation, it can also become an instrument of glory and honor. What is this and that situation?
There is no doubt that the use of the word “stomach” is intended to indicate a way of life that is only concerned with satisfying the stomach with food and fulfilling desires and whims. Food and sexual desires are indeed natural needs. But these needs are not ends! All of these, when used to satisfy a need, are pure, but when they become for the sake of satisfying a desire, they enter into the service of the “stomach,” that is, worldly life, which God will destroy. Therefore, Paul here acknowledges the necessity of food, but he drops it from the realm of ends to the realm of passing needs that will not continue with the body that God will glorify, but will end with the body that will return to dust.
Some people in Paul’s day thought that satisfying the “belly”, that is, being full of food and satisfying every sexual desire in the body, was something natural, normal, and not condemned, as it was in the law of life and required by the life of the body (belly). For them, adultery was a natural act and a biological movement in which there was neither evil nor good. But Paul responds to them here without despising this body. The body is not inferior to the soul and must be gotten rid of. Because Paul does not depict human life within an unrealistic spiritual framework.
The needs of the body are a reality in the human being. Man is not a being imprisoned in his body, but his life is in his body and from it. And through this body he expresses the meaning of his life. Thus he can consider the goal of his life to be food and desires, and limit his human goals to these needs. This man no longer has any responsibility or goal except to satisfy this body, and satisfaction here does not mean fulfilling a need, but rather filling himself with food to the point of gluttony instead of satiety, and satisfying sexual desires not to the point of human relationship but to the point of violence and selfishness. This body (a way of life) will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:50).
The needs of the body, the existential truth, when they are fulfilled in a way other than selfish satisfaction, that is, when we practice them within the limits of actual need and not within the framework of lust, when they remain a need and do not become an end, then they are pure and chaste, and then the body becomes for the Lord and the Lord for the body. Man lives in this body, giving it his needs, but instead of this body being a temple for all the gods of whims of gluttony, fornication, and violence of all kinds, it becomes a temple for the Holy Spirit.
The spiritual law, according to Paul, to make the body an instrument of dignity is: “Everything is permissible to me, but not everything is beneficial.” This is exactly what “fasting” means! We use everything not in its permissible form but in its appropriate framework. Is it permissible for me to eat not to the point of satiety but to the point of bloating? Yes, it is permissible. But it is not permissible. Because when this body makes its needs a burden on it, it cannot become a temple for the spirit, but then in violence. Thus, when we serve it in chastity, and chastity is the removal of the superfluous and unnecessary, the body can become an instrument of struggle to acquire the spirit, and it becomes a temple for it. That is why the Apostle Paul says, “I complete in my flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ in his body,” and he says, “Now Christ is magnified in my flesh,” when his chains and sufferings become a call for testimony and evangelism for the sake of Christ. Man does not express his love for God “spiritually,” that is, in meanings, but also physically, that is, in prostrations and fastings. A man who is physically luxurious will not know God spiritually. The body is the tool of worship. A body that does not worship with chastity does not give us a soul or life, but rather leads us into a life of the “hollow” that revolves around foods and desires, and God will dispel these and those. If the body were not hungry, how could we fast? If it were not lustful, how could we be chaste? If it were not necessities and desires, there would be no struggle for chastity!
So what is the standard for knowing what is “okay”? Where do we know that the need has been met and that what is beyond that limit is lust? What is the indicator that alerts us that the body is now a temple for the soul or is beginning to become a cavity for food?
The most important thing in man is his freedom, which is the standard of his spiritual life. There is nothing bad in this world except what enslaves man. A free man is a being who flies to heaven, but the burdens of desires hold him back. We can eat freely, but only to a limit without losing it. We can use anything to the limit beyond which it begins to dominate us. There we must be free from it in order to remain free. In this sense, the Lord said: “If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out; for it is better for you to enter heaven with one eye than to enter hell fire.” The warning line that alerts us to the need to rise above something and abandon it is the limit when this thing begins to entice us instead of serving us! Because our true passion should be the love of the divine, and everything else should be for the service of needs. What is required is for the heart to remain for the Lord, and the heart here means the goals and desires of man.
The body is not for fornication, but the body is for the Lord. If the needs of this body generate hunger in us, we will only satisfy the hunger and preserve the body by fasting for the Lord. If the body carries sexual desires, the Christian disciplines sex in marriage and preserves chastity. We give the body all its needs, but without these dominating our goals.
Metropolitan Boulos Yazigi
