The right to do anything

1 Corinthians 6:12–17 (NIV) — 12 “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” 17 But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

Paul repeats two of the excuses the Corinthian believers were using to justify their sexual sins. The first is, “I have a right to do anything.” Since we are under grace and not the law, do you see the (faulty) reasoning behind that statement? What is Paul’s response? Do you agree with Paul?

The second excuse is an analogy, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” To paraphrase: “We don’t follow the dietary laws, God gave us a stomachs and hunger pains as well as food to satisfy those pains, and none of that is going to matter in heaven anyway.” Implied is that God created us with sexual parts and sexual desires and a means to satisfy those desires, and it’s not going to matter in heaven anyway.

To see the faulty reasoning in this second excuse, consider the original food analogy. If we use this as an excuse to eat nothing but sweets all day long, how is our health going to be affected? Did God create us and our stomachs to eat nothing but sweets? To switch to the sexual counterpart, did God create us to satisfy our sexual appetites with whoever and however we please?

Paul presses his argument further: Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? That’s a good question. Did you know that? So often we emphasize the spiritual aspect of being a follower of Christ and don’t think about the physical aspect. Our bodies is joined with Christ himself in some way. Do we want to drag Christ into whatever physical thing we are doing whether it’s sexual or something else?

For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” 17But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. What does that mean to you today? Do you think about being united with the Lord, about being one with him in Spirit? If you and I were to truly consider that how might our lives be changed?