Take your Bibles, if you would, and open to the book of 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians chapter 6 is where we are in our study of this letter. We're in the midst of a section that is covering sexuality. It's a section on what it's like to live in the midst of a Christless society where immorality runs rampant. And so we've been in this section since the beginning of Chapter 5. We're now nearing the end of Chapter 6, and we still have yet Chapter 7 in front of us. This is a corrective section of this letter. Most of this letter is that way. Paul is responding to questions that were sent to him, to messages that had been sent to him from this church that he had planted some four, maybe five years before he's writing this letter. He's responding to particular queries and he is trying to sort out what has been exposed as some pretty serious issues going on in this church. So I said all that to say it can be a little heavy week after week to sit under the rod of the teaching of the Apostle Paul that so exposes not just the dilemma going on in Corinth, but the dilemmas going on in our own life and in our own society. So before we jump into chapter 6 again, I want to ask you to look at chapter 1 again. Because there's an umbrella that rests over all of this correction. And the umbrella is recognized in verse 3, where Paul writes, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God, he says in verse 4, always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus. So as we make our way through these difficult corrections, please don't disconnect from the umbrella of God's grace that is always sufficient for whatever sin we find ourselves entangled in. all right so first corinthians chapter six this morning we're gonna focus on verses twelve through twenty but i actually want to begin at the end of that uh... i want to work through the text starting from the end starting at verse nineteen because they're the apostle paul lays down in those two verses and which is really two sentences i suspect the guiding principle for all christians as it regards The matter of natural human passions. What I'm talking about is those things that bring us pleasure. They satisfy us and therefore we're attracted to those things. Pleasures that we sense. Pleasures that we feel. Pleasures that we taste. Any kind of pleasure that we enjoy with our bodies. So this principle that he lays down in verses 19 and 20 is the principle that instructs us in all areas concerning our bodies. Alright, so look with me at verse 19 there in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? Whom you have from God and that you are not your own for you've been bought with a price therefore glorify God in your body now Paul says that the body you walk around in, the body I walk around in, the body in which we experience life, the body that feels and tastes and enjoys, the Apostle Paul says very clearly there as a matter of principle, that body is not yours. That body is not yours. Now some of you, most of you perhaps will recognize that among fellow believers in other traditions we might say, and I'm thinking here in particular about other believers that we might know or that we are aware of that worship together in a more charismatic context, okay? So you know who I'm talking about, believers who are more expressive in their worship. more energetic, more engaged, we might say, in their worship. They express themselves, and they do that pretty regularly, and if they stop expressing themselves, it's not uncommon for the preacher, in those charismatic circles, when he's making a point, to make the point that you are now supposed to express yourself in some way as it relates to that point. So, for instance, the preacher might say something like, from Scripture, God loves you. All right? So that's a good point. It's an important point. God loves you. And then, and here's that expressive part of worship I'm talking about, the pastor would say, God loves you, and then he would say, now I want you to look at your neighbor and say to them, God loves you. You've seen that, right? And you're really hoping I'm not about to ask you to do that. But I am. All right? I want you to look at your neighbor and say, God loves you. See, that's not so hard, is it? It really is okay to express yourself in a simple way when you're gathered together in worship. Now some of you are thinking, that was really uncomfortable. But listen, that was only practice. Because here's what I want us to do now. Listen to y'all. We need to get a microphone on the congregation so I can hear all the humps. Let's take Paul's principle, the principle stated there in 1 Corinthians 6, verses 19 and 20, and look at your neighbor and tell them this, it's not your body. That was fun. You can see it right there. Look at it. Look at your Bibles. Now you guys are getting out of control. Look at your Bibles. The end of verse 19, you are not your own. The beginning of verse 20, you have been bought with a price. God owns you. He bought you and the price was extremely high. God bought you with the shed blood of His own Son, Jesus Christ. And that means, Paul says, that your body is not your body. My body is not my body. Now, he's going to repeat this principle, which is why I'm nailing it down now. He's going to repeat this principle and we get to chapter 7. In the next chapter, look at it. You can flip over there. It's on the next page in my Bible. Look at verse 4. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise also, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Your body is not your own. God owns your body. And as God, the rightful owner of your body, He has ascribed authority, if you're married, over your body in marriage to your spouse. He has a right to do that because He owns your body. You follow that? So the one who owns your body exercises his right And in marriage, He transfers authority over your body to your spouse. It's not your body if you're married as a Christian. And furthermore, you don't have authority over it. Your spouse does. Now, I'm a little ahead of myself. That's for next week or maybe two weeks from now. But these are principles. These are bedrock principles. We would call them divine principles. These are God's principles. Now, if you're not married this morning, and many of you are not married this morning, there's just one principle. Your body is not your own. If you are married, I've introduced you to two principles. Principle number one, your body is not your own. Principle number two, you don't have authority over your body, your spouse does. But this morning's principle is very simple. That body you have is not yours. Not your body. Now, in what sense is it not mine? Because some of you are saying that makes no sense. So in what sense is it not mine? In what sense is this body that is mine not mine? That's an important question or we'll misrepresent the principle. So let's nail that down. Paul isn't ignoring that it's still your body. Look again at verse 19. You are not your own. Verse 20. You have been bought with a price. End of verse 20, therefore, result of that, glorify God, now look what it says, in your body. The body that is not your own, now by the end of verse 20, is yours again. So we have to say, in what sense, Paul, am I to understand that it's not my body? Because that seems curious. Now, if you're a Christian, or you've been a Christian very long, you study your Bible, it is curious, but it doesn't surprise you that we have that kind of language in our Bible, that we have to think more carefully about. For instance, in Psalm 24, we could read this. You don't have to turn there, I printed it. It says, The earth is the Lord's and all it contains. Everything is God's. And then in case you get confused, it's not just the world, but it's those who dwell in it. You belong to God. That's just an unequivocal statement that God owns it all, right? That's Psalm 24. So, it's not my body was not Paul's idea. It was God's idea through the psalmist way back in Psalm 24. But not only is it not your body, listen, it's not your car, it's not your house, it's not your job, those are not your toys, and those are not your clothes. Right? That's what this verse says. None of it is yours. It belongs to God. That's the principle. It's simply God's way of regularly reminding us that He's absolutely sovereign and Nathan this morning even pointed us that direction once again. But in His sovereignty, He has delegated authority over all aspects of these things that He owns. And so He has individually to us, appointed to us, delegated to us authority over things that aren't ours. And in that sense, they are ours. We become, a biblical way of saying it, we become stewards of all those things that God has given us. Never forgetting that is really important to living the Christian life. Never forgetting that all you have is not yours, yet at the same time has been entrusted to you, therefore you treat it as if it's yours, you steward it as if it belonged to you. That's just how we understand God's mediation of all this wonderful stuff that He has created. Now, so that we don't just kind of rush past that, I want to be sure we get that, you could turn to Exodus 20. You might flip over there. It's the first of your Bible. It's right next door to Genesis. And Exodus 20, right away, some of you know, you're turning to the first record in our Bibles of the Ten Commandments. Exodus chapter 20 lists the Ten Commandments that God gave Moses on the mountain. They start out with commandments about our relationship with God and they end up with commandments about our relationships to one another. I want to focus on that part, our relationships with one another. They start in verse 13. You shall not murder, actually I could have started with verse 12, honor your father and mother. Verse 13, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, you shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that belongs to, look at that, belongs to your neighbor. This is the same God who said, it all belongs to me, is now telling us, I've delegated, I've appointed you stewards over things, and those things belong to you in a practical sense, in a horizontal sense, in the way we relate to one another. Therefore, you cannot take another person's life because it belongs to him, right? You cannot take another person's wife because she belongs to him. You cannot take another person's things because those things belong to them. You cannot even want the other person's things. You can't covet those things. You can't want their life. You can't want their lifestyle because they belong to them. They do not belong to you. They belong to them. All right, so you've got that? Everybody's got that. This is going to be really important for the next three weeks, so be sure you get this. Now let's go back to our body, let's go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Because there again, just reminding us of what we've said, it's not your body. Yet, how you use it as a steward of it, right, is your responsibility and in that sense it is your body. Verse 19, real clear, it's not your own body, it was bought. Now live in such a way in your body so as to bring glory to God. That's the idea. Now if we back up from that principle and back up to the beginning of the section, we'll see that Paul is teaching this principle as a foundational means by which we address and correct wrong views about the use of our bodies. There is a right way to use your body that will bring glory to God. There's a wrong way to use your body, and Paul wants to correct the wrong ways in which we use our bodies, and that principle is the bedrock that undergirds it. More specifically, for our text in front of us, for the Corinthian Christians in view, Paul is going to deal with wrong views that Christians have concerning their bodies in the area of sexual morality. Paul is talking about Christians who are using their bodies in the wrong way as it regards sexuality. They're wrong about their bodies. They're wrong about what they're doing with their bodies. They're wrong about the very basics, the deep desires and the passions of their bodies. They're wrong about it. They need to be corrected. And that's what he's doing. So if you back up now, we'll see how he arrived at the principle that he stated in verses 19 and 20. Let's see how he got there. And when we get there again, I think it'll make sense. Now he begins this section by quoting, apparently, some Roman and Greek axioms. Some, like, little pithy truth statements that were apparently very common in the day. He's quoting from Greek think, we could say. So look with me in verse 12 of chapter 6. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I'll not be mastered by anything. Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food. But God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality. but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. Now, God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be. Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For he, God says, the two shall become one flesh. But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with him. Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Now I said that begins with Paul citing or quoting what were apparently some very common perspectives or axioms in his day. Now I don't know what Bible you're reading this morning, but I'm reading out of the New American Standard. This is a reprint of exactly what I just read for you that I have on my screen. And I put that up there because you can see that it's just printed with basic punctuation. Most notably, I want you to notice there are no quotation marks in that translation of my Bible. Do you see it behind me there? Or it's probably in your lap. No quotation marks in verses 12 and 13. But you need to understand that's misleading. The Greek language which Paul was using, it was the literary language of the day, does not have any punctuation marks. If you're looking at a Greek manuscript, there is no punctuation. And so the only way you can understand what a writer is writing is you have to work really hard, which is really a good discipline, to the context. What are they saying? And therefore we can understand how they are saying it, and we can linguistically punctuate it even while we read it. Now most of us can't do that if we're reading Greek, but we can do it reading English. If you just took all the punctuation out of a paragraph and you had some idea of the context of the author or the speaker, you could probably get the punctuation in the right place. But we don't have any punctuation here, and the New American Standard doesn't add any punctuation here. And I'm just submitting to you that perhaps there should be some punctuation here. Some quotations. Who has the ESV Bible this morning? Raise your hand. This is what you're looking at. And it has quotations. It has quotations around all things are lawful for me, which is twice repeated. All things are lawful for me is in quotations. And in quotations is, food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food. So in that translation, if it's accurate, you can understand that Paul's quoting something. He's not saying it, he's quoting it. Somebody else is saying it. And the one saying it, well it's that common Greek axiom that apparently was very common in the day. Now, it's helpful, right? It's helpful to see the quotations. You wouldn't have seen it in the original, but so you understand, Paul, I think, is using a rhetorical tool that Jesus used all the time, and Jesus didn't need any quotation marks, because Jesus would do it like this. Jesus would say, you have heard it said, and then he would say it. And then he would say, but I say, and then he would correct it. And he didn't have to have any quotation marks because he's just telling you right up front. You've heard it said, I didn't say it, but you've heard it said this. Now I said this to correct what you heard said. Paul is using the same device, but we don't have the quotation marks to give us the guide. So you can see Paul is quoting something and that's helpful. So what is he quoting? He's quoting first there in verse 12. It's there twice. All things are lawful for me. All things are lawful for me. Apparently, that was a very common phrase that simply said, I can do whatever I want. Right? I can do whatever I want. Everything's lawful for me. Then they said, apparently, food is meant for the stomach and stomach for food, which would apparently mean the physical aspect of me is distinguished from any other aspect of me which might be spiritual or immaterial. And so there's the idea of physical appetites in apparently an off-used phrase, and the idea of absolute independence, complete autonomy over my own body. I can do whatever I want to do. Now when you read the punctuation, The one in verse 12 is an easy one. And we can understand why it might be quoted around Corinth because it is quoted around here, right? It's a pretty good way of summing up the axiom of our day. There is nobody telling me anything about my body. Everything is lawful for me. Stay out of my stuff. Stay out of my life. Don't tell me how to live with my what? Body. It's my body. It doesn't matter how it's challenged at its most egregious end, which is exercising an imagined autonomy that allows you to kill an unborn child, which is clearly not your body, but that's the extreme of it, to a much more casual, well, I'll eat whatever I want to eat kind of perspective, but they're all saying the same thing. What is that? All things are lawful for me. It's my body. So Paul is saying, you're wrong about that. Well, at least he's saying you're wrong about that in a sense. When you say, free, free, free, give me liberty, the Apostle Paul does not say, look at your Bible, does not say you don't have liberty, you're wrong. What he does say is you better watch that liberty. What he does say is when you exercise, quote unquote, rights over your body, you better be really careful. Look at it, it's right there in the text. He's saying, I'll say it this way, you say all things are lawful for me, I say you better be careful because they're not all good for you. You say all things are lawful for me and I say you better be careful because that freedom can enslave you. That freedom that you say you have can dominate you. He's not saying they don't have that freedom. In fact, He's the same, the Apostle Paul that's going to teach us for freedom that Christ set you free. He's the same Apostle Paul that's going to teach us in our study of Romans that the law no longer has any bearing over me. So he's not arguing against freedom of a human body to the one who has the body. What he is arguing is you've got to understand that kind of freedom can be really dangerous, number one, and number two, it can enslave you. And all this talk about freedom just becomes another enslavement all to itself. So of course the Corinthians who said, all things are lawful for me, didn't mean that nothing was against the law. They had laws. They had laws that constrained them. They couldn't just do whatever. But we know Paul's talking already from chapter 5 about sexual morality, about sexual liberties, and it was clear that there was no constraint in the Roman culture. You could do whatever you wanted to do with your body in the area of sexuality. We learned already that they would frown on incest, but it wasn't necessarily illegal. And so, the Corinthians are simply stating what the culture was saying, and that is, when it comes to sexual morality, I am free to do whatever I want to do. And the Apostle Paul says, wait a minute. Wait a minute. When you state that kind of freedom, you need to understand that freedom, look again at verse 12, has the potential to destroy you. Not everything you're free to do is helpful. Not everything you're free to do is good for you. It has power that freedom does, and it has the power to enslave you. Now, I just want you to understand, friends, how relevant this is to us, right? This isn't just relevant to the Corinthians, it's relevant to us. Because there are so many things in your life and my life, listen, literally thousands of things that we are free to do. thousands of things you're free to do today. We live in a society and a culture that offers up a veritable cornucopia of options as it regards the use of our body that might bring us some positive sense, some positive feeling, some positive taste, some positive experience, and you have a liberty that you are free to exercise in those areas. Paul would later teach, all things are lawful for me, All things are lawful for me, Paul would teach. But those things have to be sanctified and set aside for their proper use. We give God thanks for those things that He's given us and thereby we are constrained to use them in the appropriate way. Now all of you know people that are in this position already who have exercised their liberty and it now has enslaved them. Free to drink? Yeah, you're free to drink. But many are now held in bondage to that bottle. Are you free to eat? Yeah, you're free to eat. But many are now held in bondage to those appetites. Are you free to rest? You're free to rest. But many are held in bondage to laziness. You get it? liberties that have the power, if wrongly used, to enslave you and to steal the very freedom that you pursued when you began it. Now the next verse is verse 13. I still have the ESV up there. You see the quotation marks. But we have a problem here. Read what's in the quotation marks. Apparently the saying is, food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food. You say, And Paul says, but I say God will destroy both one and the other. Food and the stomach. That's a problem. Because if the first is what they say and the second is what he says, then he's not paying good attention to his Bible. The hungering for food doesn't end when you die. The hungering for food when you're glorified will not have passed We know that because we see Jesus in His glorified body after the resurrection. We see Him encounter the apostles all together in one room, shocking them that He's there. They couldn't believe it. He showed them the wounds in His hands and His feet. And then He looked at them and said, Do you guys have anything to eat? And they fed Him. And He ate it. So commentators step into these translations, this translation, and they know the quotation marks go somewhere, and this is one of the most common places to put the quotation marks, but now they've got a real problem, and the commentators will say, we've got a real problem here, because we're saying that apparently in our glorified bodies, after we die, you won't have any stomachs, and you won't have any stomach for food. But we know that's not true. If that were true, then we wouldn't be eagerly anticipating the marriage supper of the Lamb with a spread the likes of which we've never seen. If it's true that there's no stomach or no appetite in our glorified bodies, then it makes no sense that in the New Jerusalem, the river of life on either side is the tree of life, now rooted and expanded, that produces fruits to feed the nations for all eternity. These are all biblical truths. So we've got a real problem, and the problem is created by the quotation marks. We either need to take the quotation marks out, which won't help us. That would mean God is saying both those things. Or we need to move the quotation marks. That would help us. And there's one Bible translation, an excellent translation, by the way. It's called the New English Translation, and they move the quotation marks. And now they're saying that the culture is saying Food is for the stomach, and the stomach for food, but God or gods will do away with those. Now it all starts to make sense, because what Paul is referring to is an axiom that almost all of us know that comes from the Roman and Greek culture, and that's eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die. Anything won't matter anymore when you die. You see, they had a Gnostic view that ultimately would shape one of the first heresies that attacked the church, and that is a docetism that sees a distinction between the spiritual and the physical, and all things physical or bad, do whatever you want to, it doesn't matter, it'll all just die, and only things that really matter are the spiritual things, the immaterial things. This was a bedrock principle of Greek philosophy. So if you move the quotation marks, what Paul is saying is the culture is saying, it's just physical. Get over it. It's mine. It's my body. There's no law prohibiting me to use my body however I want. And anyway, it doesn't matter. It's just going to die. Now if that's where the quotation marks go, then let's see where Paul goes with it. Because where Paul goes with it is he says, in Christian thinking, You have appetites and you have desires and you're free to indulge in those, but they can get you in trouble and you need to be careful how you use them. You have sexual appetites, but it can get you in trouble and you need to use them with the proper constraints so that your use of that brings glory to God and not shame and destruction. And yes, these are just physical things. Watch. These are just physical things, but physical things matter to Christians. Look at it. It's really important. Verse 13. If the culture says it's just physical and it just dies, the Christian says, look what the Christian says at the end of verse 13. The body is not for immorality. The body is for the Lord. And watch, the Lord is for the body. And I would suggest if you're an underliner, you need to underline that in your Bible. The Lord is for the body. God is not anti-physical. He created the physical body. God is not anti-pleasure. He created pleasure. God is not anti-food. He created food. And God is not anti-sex. He created sex. God has an interest in your body. Look at it in verse 13. The Lord is for the body. He has a vested interest in how you use your physical body. And one day, Christians know it's this body that will be glorified. This body that's going to return to dust is the same body that from the dust God will glorify. This body matters. Do you understand that? Christians are confused about this. And the confusion is exposed when somebody dies. Because when somebody dies, Christians' brains go into lock All their theology goes in the closet and they just buy into whatever pithy phrase or idea we have about what happens when a person dies. So let's just pause for a minute and talk about what happens when a person dies. What happens when a Christian dies? Our body dies. Amen? It dies. I've been there, you've been there. What happens to our spirit? Does it die? It does not die. In fact, the Apostle Paul would speak to you and me as Christians that when we die, he would say we are absent from the body, but we are present with the Lord. There's a split between us as human beings when we die. We're complex human beings. We're complex human beings this morning. There is a spiritual side of us, and there's a physical side of us, and at death, it's divided. We leave this body. And we attend in the very presence of the Lord. But this body that's left behind isn't finished. This body left behind is useful. This body left behind will one day be the body God glorifies for us so that one day at the resurrection we'll be whole for the first time ever. Glorified bodies and souls united forever. Your loved one in heaven, if they were a believer, is living in the presence of Christ, they're living in paradise, but they're living there as a disembodied spirit. And Paul even here is teaching that. Don't lose heart. The Lord is for the body. Don't lose heart. He hasn't forgotten the body. He hasn't disregarded the body. And one day that body will be resurrected. So I want to settle this real quickly, because early on in the church, Christians who had come to know the Lord and were relishing in the grace of God and the reality that their sins had been forgiven, and were now placing their confidence in this truth, the truth is this, you will live forever. And then they started dying. And the Thessalonians in particular, the Christians that gathered at the church at Thessalonica, they were concerned about the fact that these Christians who were going to live forever were now dying. How are we to think about this, Paul? Well, Paul says you need to think about this. 1 Corinthians chapter 4. I tell you, for the sake of time, let me just show it to you here. I don't want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about what's happening now that some of your friends are dying. They're asleep, he says, first of all, which is the common word for death as it pertains to a believer, because they don't ever really die. And I want you to understand it, because if you don't, then you'll find yourself grieving like everybody else grieves, and you shouldn't grieve like everybody else grieves, because as a Christian, you need to know this. Number one, verse 14, if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, which you must believe if you're a Christian, then we also believe that God will, look at this, bring with Him Those who have fallen asleep as Christians. So if you believe that Christ rose again and you know he's coming back again, Paul says when he comes back, you need to understand he's not coming by himself. He's bringing a crowd with Him. Do you see it? He's bringing with Him every Christian, every saint who ever died in the Lord is coming back with Him. So, we have to try to picture this, because it's a real thing. And there we are that day, and here they come. And you're a Christian, and here they come, and there is Uncle Bob, and Aunt Sally, and Mom and Dad, if they were believers, and they're with Him. However, He's not finished. Verse 15, we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, we won't go ahead of those who've fallen asleep. They're coming back. And now he says, now watch, we won't go ahead of them because, verse 16, the Lord will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet of God. And now he says, look, the dead in Christ will rise. Well, I thought they were with him. Well, they were with Him in their souls, but they don't have their bodies. And you Christians who are worrying about what happened to, you know, Grandpa Bob, who died as a believer, well, he was absent from the body, and he was present with the Lord. And one day he'll come back with the Lord, and guess what he's going to get? He's going to get his body. And you don't have to, Paul says to the Thessalonians, you don't have to worry about that. In fact, he'll get his body first, before you get your new body if you're alive in that day. He'll get his body first. That's what he says. And then we, verse 17, who are alive will be suddenly caught up and changed in an instant, he teaches elsewhere. And we'll all be together in the clouds, in the air, in our glorified bodies, and we'll live forever with Jesus. Verse 18, he says, that's meant to encourage you. It is meant to encourage you that you understand what happened to your loved one when they died. Are you with me? It's a great comfort to rightly understand the body and to understand this body is one day going to be resurrected. Why? We'll go back to our text in 1 Corinthians 6 and you'll see why. Because the body is for the Lord and the Lord is for the body. He hasn't forgotten it. So what's the principle, Steve? Listen to me. Your body matters. And it doesn't just matter then, it matters now. It matters now how you treat your body. And just in case you're wondering, I chased a rabbit there, look at the next verse. God hasn't just raised the Lord, He'll also raise us up. Now you know exactly what Paul was talking about, right? Makes perfectly good sense. Makes perfectly good sense what he was talking about. And that's why the quotation marks need to be put in the right place. Otherwise it doesn't make any sense. Now it makes perfect sense. The point is primarily the importance of your body. And you need to think about it. You need to think about its future, and you need to think about its present. Because there's a right way to use this body, and there's a wrong way to use this body. In other words, these principles have implications. These principles have an implication in your life. And the implication of the principle addressed presently is how it impacts sex. How it impacts sexual. Use. Of a Christian's body. Verse 12, it is not for immorality. Why not, Paul? Because it has a far higher purpose. The body is not for immorality. Why not, Paul? Because it has a more dignified purpose. The body is not for immorality. Why not, Paul? Because immorality only brings mortality. It only brings death. God has a greater purpose than that for your body. It is not for destruction. And immorality destroys the body. That's what Paul is saying. And friends, I think here is where we so often fail in the church. We spend a lot of time in the history of the church talking about sexuality and immorality and why you shouldn't do it and you can catch this disease and you can break up that home and you'll ruin your kids. You know, you've heard it all. All the reasons why you shouldn't engage in sexual immorality. All of them are good reasons and Paul wouldn't turn his back on the destruction that he mentioned already way back in verse 12, that these things can destroy you. But that is insufficient motivation against the temptations of immorality that will invade every Christian man or woman. It's insufficient motivation to be motivated by the negative consequences. And the Apostle Paul knows that, and the church needs to learn that. If you want to help Christians battle the temptations that come at the point of sexual immorality, elevate the body to its right position. Elevate an understanding of the human body that it's for the Lord and the Lord is for it. And He has high hopes and incredible promises for the body. And you don't want to rob yourself of all those wonderful promises. Elevate the body and you will give Christians the bedrock principles to battle immorality in their lives. The truth about our body, that it has a great future, that it has an eternity, will necessarily impact how a Christian treats that body today. The same way you are impacted in how you treat something if you think it has a future use. If you think it's disposable, well then you'll treat it differently. And Paul is saying your body is not a disposable thing. Don't treat it like trash. Don't treat it like garbage. Don't treat it with immorality that will only destroy and enslave you. Don't do that. It's worth more than that. Verse 15, Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Not just future dignity, present dignity. Your body is a part of the members, the instruments of Christ. Elevate your thinking about your body. Why would you take something that is an essential instrument of righteousness for Christ and use it as an instrument, look at it, verse 15, and make it a member, an instrument of prostitution? Why would you do that? And he doesn't mention diseases, or marriages, or divorces, or any of that. What does he mention? It's a pitiful use of an instrument of Christ. Why would you do that? Why would you take something that is critical to the ministry of the body of Christ on this earth, individual members and their bodies functioning together for the glory of God, and take them and function in a completely abhorrent way, take it and prostitute it? Answer, 15, may it never be! May it never be named among Christians that we so lowered our appreciation for the body, which was for the Lord and the Lord for it, that we would prostitute that body, which could be an instrument of righteousness, and instead surrender it to unrighteousness for our own destruction and our own enslavement. And Paul is just simply saying, what in the world are you thinking, Christians? What are you thinking? May it never be is a good translation. There's another good translation which I prefer. God forbid that you would do that. You were united with Christ. This is the profound doctrine of union with Christ which we can't fully develop because Paul doesn't fully develop it here. And we're teaching what he says here, not what he says in Romans. He fully develops it in Romans. But he says here, you're united with Christ. And when you became united with Christ, listen Christian, it wasn't just your soul that was united with Christ, it was your body that was united with Christ. All of you is in union with Christ. And when you take that part of you that is a physical part of you, and you take it and join it in sexual immorality, you are taking Jesus with you. Because you can't be separated from Christ, because you belong to Him and He belongs to you. Now, my mother used to tell me, as a means of constraining my ordinary sinful passions, that you need to think about what Jesus would do. And you know what? That's really good counsel. What would Jesus do? But there's better counsel. What are you going to do with Jesus? Because if you're a Christian, you're taking Him with you. You're taking Him with you wherever you go. It's not about whether or not He sees you. He's with you. That's what Paul is saying. Now, there's two things you have to work to get your mind around. Number one, our union with Christ in salvation. And secondly, Paul is pressing you to understand your union with another person in sexual intimacy. Both unions are in view. As a Christian, you are united with Christ, and in sexual intimacy, you are united to that other person. There's a supernatural reality to the union of sexual intimacy that begs our own descriptions. And it is apparent that the Christians in Corinth hadn't just forgotten that, and they hadn't just embraced incest, they had embraced prostitution. They were going out and engaging with prostitutes. And we know that was common in the culture. It's just another way they were acting like the culture. And so under the guise of their autonomous freedom that the body is mine and only mine, they were exercising sexual licentiousness. Immorality was rampant. And Paul points out the dangers of that lifestyle. He points out the enslavement of that lifestyle. But most importantly, he points out you need to understand you're joined to Christ. That is a spiritual union, yes, but it also is a physical union. And when you have sexual intimacy, you're joined with that person. And it is a obviously physical union, but it also includes your spirit. When you join to a prostitute or in any sexual immorality outside marriage, you're joining Christ in a prostitution of what sexual intimacy was designed to be. You're taking Jesus with you. And that's insufferable in the mind of the Apostle Paul and should be in our own mind. But for a deeper understanding, look what he says in verse 16. You know that if you join yourself to a prostitute, you're one with her. Because, he quotes God, the two become one flesh. You thought it was just a fling. You thought it was two individuals just seeking personal pleasure. And the Apostle Paul and God Himself is saying, you have grossly misunderstood what sexual intimacy really is. It is a union of body and spirit. And it is intended as an indissoluble union, and you can't just walk away saying, well, that was good, and that was good, and that was good for me. Because there's more than just you involved. It's deeper than you thought it was. Do you follow me? It's way deeper than we treat it today in our culture. It's way deeper than many of you looking at me and listening to me this morning have treated it in your life. It's deeper than that. It's not just physical. There is a mystical union in that. And he says, why would you take Jesus to that? And the implication is, why would you do that? Verse 17, you joined yourself to the Lord. You're one in spirit with Him. So connection, physical, spiritual, inseparable, complex beings. And nowhere does that get deeper and more complex than in the area of sexuality. We all know this. All of you have walked that road, felt that temptation, and felt the emptiness that it can produce when it is outside of the glory and intention for God. But you endure the consequences for the moment of pleasure, and you chase it, and you chase it, and you chase it, and your spirit grows dead. dull and numb and you refuse to listen to not only your natural ordered tendencies, but God's intentions. And before you know it, you're sold out and you're just like a Corinthian and saying, don't tell me how to use my body. And Paul says, what are you thinking people? When you join yourself to Christ, you become one with Him. When you join yourself to another in sexual intimacy, you become one with them. Immorality and fornication is a sin. We know that. We could go lots of places in our Bible and see that. It's a sin for lots of reasons, but this is the reason Paul has in view. because it ignores the unity of intimacy. It ignores it. It pretends like it's not real. There's not really anything happening here. It's just two becoming, well, satisfied individually. That's just nuts, Paul says. Your Creator says it's a lie. Your Creator says there is no such thing as individual sexual intimacy. It is a corporate union function between a man and a woman. And it cannot function in any other way and bring glory to God. And that says something about solo sex also, which won't really be the subject of my discussion this morning, but you can follow that. The union is deeper than just two human beings, way deeper than just one human being. And you need to understand that, Paul says, or you'll fall. You'll fall to the trap of what? Pleasure. Independence. It's my body. Leave me alone. Understand, Christian, that sexuality is a sacred thing. It's not a thing to be prostituted at the altar of your personal freedom or your personal pleasure. And if you do that as a Christian, It is a blasphemy of the first sort because you're taking Jesus with you. That's what Paul wants us to understand. That's what God wants us to understand. It's pretty simple. It's not your body. It belongs to Christ. He bought it. And when He saved you, you were brought into a union with Him, not just your spirit, but your body also. And therefore, glorify God in your body, verse 20. Therefore, backing up to verse 18, flee immorality. Flee means run from immorality. Now there's more to be said, but we'll stop there. Because that statement, flee immorality, springs us right into chapter 7, where in verse 2 Paul will say, because of immorality, you really ought to get married. And I think it's a beautiful thing and an important thing and a good place to end right now. Where does the Christian run when he runs from immorality? Where does the Christian single run when she runs from immorality? She runs to marriage. He runs to marriage. Marriage. Marriage is the greatest protection, the God-ordained protection for every believer in this point of deepest exposure, sexual immorality. Now I'm talking to a whole other group of people that might come back next week. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your truth. We thank you for this reality that stretches our minds. First, the complexity of what it means to be a human. And then the incredible majesty of what it means to be united with Christ. It's a spiritual union and it's a physical union. And it is ultimately driving us to a higher plane of dignity and eternality and glory that requires in the present we begin to function in accord with that reality. Christ, establish your kingdom right now today in our hearts. And may we may we wrestle with this matter that's so prevalent This matter of sexual expression, may we wrestle with it, knowing that you don't just sit on the throne of our hearts, but you are in us. We are united to you and that that will dictate and govern. It's the best muzzle we can put on all these passions that seem so uncontrollable. Thank you, Jesus, for agreeing to live in sinful flesh by your spirit. But thank you, Jesus, that you don't just live there dormant. But that you're working in us and through us to conform us, that we might live in a way in our bodies that brings glory to Christ. This is what we desire. May you hear our prayer. May you be glorified. And everybody said amen. You've been listening to Pastor and Bible Teacher Steve Wilson of Grace Community Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky. We trust you've been encouraged and challenged by this message. If you would like to listen to more of Pastor Wilson's messages or obtain more information on the ministry of Grace Community Church, you can go to our website at gccbg.com. That's gccbg.com or call 270-781-2595. Yeah.