1Cor 6:15-20 - Push-ups for Professors

15-20 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” 17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
The word "members" is used here in the same sense as our own arms and legs are called our "members". They are there in order to carry out the thoughts and commands of our minds - our will. They are the means by which the inclinations and desires of our inner being are effected in the world. In a similar way, our bodies are the instruments of the mind of Christ - the means by which His will is done in the world through our abiding faith and obedience. And this is also true of the whole body of Christ's church on earth, both local and universal.

Remembering that nothing that is on the outside can pollute a man, we look at this exhortation as a reminder to check our behaviour in order to know if our hearts are right before God. Sin springs from the heart. It springs even from the Christian’s heart, even though he has a new heart within him. Some people speak of two natures - the old and the new. But there are really two principles at work in every believer; one is the principle of life in Jesus Christ through faith, and the other is the principle of unbelief and disobedience which we call "sin".

All Christians sin and they make God a liar if they say they do not. Perfection is not possible on this side of the grave, or until Jesus returns. He is the perfect one. The Christian life is a constant warfare, waged with spiritual means forged and provided in and by Christ. The closest enemy is the one within the gates. True to the saying of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, the Christian has, in his very being, the most duplicitous and deceptive enemy of all - himself.

But the heartroot desire of the Christian, however self-sabotaged, however weak, however polluted, however blocked, stymied, frustrated, obfuscated, sapped, eroded and enervated, is to do the will of God. He wants to do it completely and perfectly even though he simply cannot. His best efforts fall far short. His most pious thoughts and deeds are tainted with a sin that cannot do anything but damn him. And this is where grace is remembered, and where it is most manifest and effective. We do not live by keeping the law in the letter, but in the spirit, by the grace of Jesus Christ who justified us before God once and for all and Who graced us with the faith that enables us to receive it.

So, the Christian is to remember that his body is an instrument of the Lord Christ, to do His will in the world. Now, Christ is holy and His purposes, thoughts and actions are all holy. He has called us to yield to holiness, which is to do His will. But if we regard iniquity in our hearts we cannot do His will. We cannot have two masters. We may fail our true Master a thousand times a day, but He must still be our Master and our heart’s desire must be towards Him.

It is possible, I suppose, for a person to be a new Christian and not understand the full implications of immoral behaviour. There may be vestiges of old living patterns and habits, as there are in all of us. But the Holy Spirit will shed His light upon these, convicting the saint and rooting them out - and the means by which He will do this is through the Word of God, both written and preached. Conscience alone is not enough, as we learned in Romans. It may be enough to condemn us, but it is not enough to save and to sanctify us. For this we need the finished work of Christ, received through faith in what the Word and the Spirit testify about Him.

And the Word here is testifying to Jesus Christ by pointing out what the fruit of His work must be, and also what it cannot be. The word is the means by which the desired behaviour is brought to the attention of the believer. It is rod and staff in the hand of the Shepherd Himself, by means of the indwelling Spirit. This word spoken (preached, read, prayed, taught) is the ordained means by which the true sheep are made into the image of Christ through sanctification of the Spirit. The command or the exhortation or the rebuke enlightens and enlivens the believer. It is light. It is life.

In our age and culture, the overt use of prostitutes has not been a prevalent thing. It is becoming more so - and prostitution has always been with us because the demand is always there due to the nature of fallen sexuality. In our age, we have the overlay of Christianity upon societal values. Even rank unbelievers in our society still have the restraint of Christian morality laid upon them. The heritage of our truly Christian forefathers still reverberates through the culture. But, like the vibrations of a once-struck bell, they are abating and will soon fall below the level of hearing.

Immorality is a judgement of God up society. It is not necessarily the cause of judgement - but it is clearly the result of God "giving them over" on account of unbelief and disobedience. God does not cause or command immorality but, when His restraining grace is removed, men simply do what comes naturally to their sinful hearts.

Corinthian society did not have the benefit of centuries of Christian teaching and example. It was almost unashamedly immoral. In fact, the name of this city of 1,000 temple prostitutes was used to coin a unique word; in the world of the time; to "Corinthianize" was a synonym for "to corrupt". The vestiges of conscience were largely suppressed, and those pagans who looked down upon Corinthian society were unwittingly illustrations of Romans 2:1 - blind hypocrites who rebelled against God in other, more inventive ways that were only outwardly moral.

None of these comments either excuses or vindicates anybody. As the text points out, justification is to be had only through union with Jesus Christ by faith. The immoral and the so-called "moral" are all equally sinners in need a saviour. And Jesus Christ is the only Name under heaven given among men whereby they must be saved. But union with Christ is first and foremost a spiritual union. Our hearts have been renewed. Our desire is, for the first time in our lives, towards God and doing His will and seeking His approval.

But this change is seminal, not mature. We must grow. We will make mistakes. Sometimes we will struggle inwardly against our own flesh because our bodies themselves, with their remembered surrenders to sin and their inherent fallen weaknesses, are to be subdued through the spirit in order to be presented as a living sacrifice - which is our spiritual (or reasonable) service.

This subduing by the Spirit is the active side, and submission to the word of God is the passive side of the same coin. Without the Spirit we cannot subdue and without the Word we cannot know what to submit to or how. One educates and the other effectuates. And we are the vessels in which this is all taking place. Our wills are being conformed to the will of God. But only the grace of Jesus Christ makes this possible. We all fall short all the time and are in need of grace. It is precisely when we forget that our best efforts are still tainted with a sin that must be bathed in the blood of Christ that we are in the greatest danger. At such a point we stand upon the down slope of the precipice of self-righteousness and self-justification, and the pit lurks near to hand.

If we truly believe, then, can we take Jesus Christ with us into the things we do with our body? Can we give ourselves to lust, contrary to God’s word, and take the Living Word along with us? This is a complex question. Jesus is always with us if we belong to Him. So no matter where we go and no matter what we are found doing, He is there. He is in the brothel, in front of the TV and present with us as we let our minds dwell upon unholy things. The point is that we are commanded and exhorted not to be found in unholy thoughts and practices.

But when we do (and we all do) then Jesus is no less there with us than when we are performing the most holy acts of worship and obedience. But there will be abject misery for the believer in this situation. He will find himself doing what he does not want to do and not doing what he does want to do. The principle of life in the Spirit strains within him and bridles against the sin. He feels guilt and shame and disloyalty and helplessness and even hopelessness. He may even lose the assurance of his salvation altogether. And this prospect surely is a horror that, when placed before us, ought to galvanize us to run from such things into the arms of Christ.

In the case of physical acts of sexual immorality it must be borne in mind that the acts themselves are outward manifestations of an inward spiritual adultery. All outward acts are first formed in the will, through the affections of the heart. But the Christian is not the same as the pagan in this respect - he has been bought with a price. He is not his own. His body is not his own. The whole kit and caboodle was purchased from its natural condition of perdition by the blood of Christ and according to the will of God. It is precisely this fact which is known to the reborn life within each believer. He knows that Someone has taken up residence in him and that the Someone has a just claim upon his whole life.

God cannot fail to bring each and every true child of His to completion in Christ. God is, after all, sovereign over all things, including the wills of His creatures. But He accomplishes this through the obedience of the faith He wrought for them and in the power of the Spirit He has placed within them. He makes known His character and will through the word and His children strive to be found following Him. They learn obedience. They grow in grace and in favour with God and men. They come to understand their position as repositories of the very nature of God to do His will in the world. They begin to see themselves not just theologically, but experientially as sons, heirs, adoptees and beneficiaries of the covenant. As such they are led to walk in their integrity, and not to defile the body in which God dwells.

The full redemption of the body is not yet manifest, though it is certain for all believers. Until then, our bodies are weakened through indwelling sin. They will be this way until Christ comes or until we die. But our bodies are also redeemed, dead as they are, by the resurrection power of Christ. They are maintained and animated and persuaded and induced, even as weak and creaky wrecks - shadows of what they once were in Adam - not so that we may glory in what we do for Christ while in them, but so that we may glorify God for what Christ did for us. Our very faith, our life, our preservation and perseverance in these treacherous forms testifies to the miraculous power and grace of God for as long as He pleases to uphold and keep us here. As Charles Wesley wrote:

See a stone hang in air,
See a spark in ocean live,
Kept alive with death so near,
I to God the glory give.