Thinking About Your Body

1 Corinthians 6:12-20
January 17, 2021
Ordinary 2
William G. Carter

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.” But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

Among all the slogans tossed around over the last ten months, here’s one that I believe to be true: “The body is big business.” I don’t recall who said it, but it might have been uttered by the proprietor of a local gym. He was complaining how the health department shut him down as the corona virus took off. Offended by the action, he unlocked the doors and texted all his customers. That earned him a visit from the local police, with the threat of a whopping fine.

As I remember, his explanation ran in two parallel directions. The first was his affirmation that I believe to be true: “The body is big business.” Nobody can question that. People pay good money to join a gym and work out. They will hand over cash to purchase vitamin supplements and work-out clothing. They will join Weight Watchers and sign up for Zumba classes. Most of them feel better when they exercise. When they feel better, their positive spirit justifies the cost of getting in shape. For the gym owner, and for others in the industries of fitness, wellness, and health, “The body is big business.”

There was a second explanation which accompanied the first. His complaint was the temporary loss of his livelihood. People could not pay him when his gym was shut down. There were still expenses of rent and utilities. He wanted to keep most of the workers, and felt he needed to pay them something. But his chief offense was that somebody Out There was telling him to shut down. That’s what bothered him the most. And so he threw open the doors and declared, “I can do whatever I want.” So the authorities visited him again.

Those two slogans are familiar to us: “The body is big business,” and “I can do whatever I want.” In a strange way, both slogans intersected in the ancient city of Corinth. Situated by the sea on a narrow land bridge between the northern and southern halves of Greece, Corinth served as a way station for those passing through.

This may have been why the apostle Paul went there. He wanted to preach the Gospel in a high-traffic area. It was like plucking a ripe dandelion and puffing on the seeds. With a good gust of breath, the Gospel would spread. Jesus would be preached. The kingdom of God would take over the empire of Rome. That was his hope.

But this was Corinth. And one of the realities that a short-term preacher doesn’t realize is that much of the time you are preaching against the wind, not with it. You can lay out your five or six good sermons and then ride off into the sunset. Tomorrow morning, the people who hosted you are going to return to what they knew before you ever came to town.

The city of Corinth was known for a couple of things. The first was the Asclepeion. Named after the Greek god of physical healing, this was the temple where you went to get your body fixed. Did you break a leg? Hobble over to the Asclepeion. Shatter your wrist in a fall? The Asclepeion would patch you up. Have some trouble with your eyesight? The Asclepeion promised renewed vision.[1]

Here's what happened there. The ancient priests would make clay replicas of each broken body part. The damaged person would pay them a small fee. There would be incantations, a sacred fire, some dancing. Then the priest would cast the clay replica into the sacred fire and pronounce the patient healed. For another small fee, of course. The body is big business!

No wonder, then, that Paul frequently refers to human body when communicating with the people of Corinth. He refers to the church as “the body of Christ.” He also offers a homily in chapter 12, when he says, “The eye can’t say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ and ‘If all we had was an ear, how could we smell?’” When we hear such passages, we know he was addressing people who lived near the Asclepeion. A good sermon illustration always points to what the people already know.

I mentioned the second long-established institution last week. High on the mountain that towered above the city was the largest of the three Temples to Aphrodite in the region. Aphrodite was the goddess of love, beauty, and the three P’s: pleasure, passion, and procreation. If you were looking for love, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation, you could aim to Corinth.

On the way up the mountain to make your generous offering, there were one thousand courtesans ready to welcome you in your pursuit of love, beauty, and the Three P’s, all for a small price. Like the man said, “the body is big business.”

I can’t imagine Paul, the very traditional Jew, wandering around in such a place. It was like New Orleans on Fat Tuesday, or the docks of San Francisco before the US Marshalls rode into town. Maybe that’s why Paul didn’t stay there very long. He preached for about 18 months in Corinth, then crossed the sea to the big city of Ephesus. After he left, the Corinthian congregation began to come unbuckled.

As we heard last week, the church had splintered into rival groups and they were bickering. There was some immorality in congregation, which you can read about in chapter 5. Some church members were dragging one another into court. And as we can infer from today’s portion of chapter 6, other church members were wandering up the hill to visit Aphrodite’s love merchants.

No doubt, Paul tossed and turned through a few sleepless nights, and mulled over how to respond. As he reflected on the matter, the Corinthians’ behavior wasn’t simply because they were surrounded by those who believed the body is big business. At the core, it was the second slogan – which you and I know all too well. I’m referring to that premise, “I can do whatever I want.”

The people of Corinth glorified freedom. They valued freedom of expression before Paul sailed into town. They heard him preach in the synagogue, “We are free in Christ.” It is the liberating message of the Gospel. Thanks to Jesus, we are not bound to the status quo. We don’t have to do whatever everybody else is doing. We can claim a different set of values. We can live by a different code. Thanks to the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we are free.

The Corinthians heard him say this and breathed a sigh of relief. They heard him say, “We are free!” In fact, that’s all they may have heard him say. If that’s all you hear, or all you want to hear, it resonates with a long-established principle that still guides a lot of people in our own time and place, namely. “I can do whatever I want.” That I am free to pursue my own desires. That I am under no restriction about how I wish to live my life.

It’s an enticing premise. When my sister and I were teenagers, we were sitting on the couch one night watching a beauty pageant. One of the contestants declared, "I am my own person, I think for myself, I am responsible for my own dreams, and I am sufficiently empowered to pursue them."

My sister said, "Wow! She's got it together. I bet she's going to win." Indeed she did.

The idea sounds so enticing, that "I belong only to me," that "whatever I want to do, I can do." It sounds like freedom, but it’s something else.

This is the point at which the Apostle Paul enters the conversation. The word in the air is that “all things are legal for me,” a wonderful liberating freedom, and Paul quickly adds, “That doesn’t mean that all things are good and helpful.” You hear the difference?

Think of the kid who starts smoking and can’t give it up – that’s enslavement. Think of the man who loves good food and can’t get enough of it – it dominates him. Think of the person who takes a quick peek at a naughty picture, or puts a bet down on a card game, or kisses somebody they don’t even know. They felt free to do something, and then they do it again, and it attaches to them. Soon it takes over.

Is that freedom? No, it’s another form of enslavement. A lot of addictions begin with presuming we are free to do whatever we want. That’s how Paul warns his people. “All things are lawful for me,” says the apostle Paul, “but not all things are beneficial.” “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.”

What are those things that look so pretty that we cannot see they are deadly? What is it, that promises to set us free – but shackles us and demands even more?

Paul cuts to the chase: we don’t belong to ourselves. We belong to Christ. We are free from living like the rest of the pack because we belong to Christ. We are liberated from the need to consume other things, or consume other people, because our value comes from the love of Jesus, “who bought us at a price.”

This is how he refers to the death and resurrection of the Lord, how it has both freed us from sin and death, but bound us to the One who truly gives life. “He bought us at a price.” The language is from the ancient slave market, where redemption meant purchasing a slave to set the slave free. That is the meaning of redemption.

So how should we live as free people? Paul says, “Glorify God with your body.” What a radical thing to say! Some people have always thought religion is supposed to free you from the baggage of flesh and blood, that somehow the liberating ideas will lift us out of our carcasses and closer to heaven. Absolutely not, says Paul. True faith begins by inhabiting our own skin, by walking on our own feet on the land where everybody else walks.

After all, Christmas came just three weeks ago, and with it, the stunning revelation that the Eternal God who is Spirit was found in a human baby named Jesus. The Word took flesh. God spoke in human words. In the human touch of Jesus, God healed aching human bodies and fed human stomachs. The word “spiritual” does not signify something amorphous. St. Athanasius put it this way, “God sanctified the body by being in it.”

Or as the apostle Paul declares to the church, “Don’t you know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?” What we do with our bodies reflects how God’s Spirit works in us and through us.

So the kids can say to the grandfather, “You have to stop smoking. Your lungs are a temple of the Holy Spirit.” The mother can say to her middle schooler, “Please stop eating so much junk food; your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” The apostle Paul could say to all the Corinthians wandering up the hill, “Knock it off.”

It matters what we do with our skin and bones. It matters what we speak with our tongues and how well we take care of our feet. It matters if our A1-C is too high or our blood pressure is too low. It matters if we don’t get enough exercise, or if we fill our blood stream with toxic substances, or if we pollute our minds with too much cable news. Our lives matter because God can work to redeem the world through our bodies.

We know this to be true. In the love of Jesus, we do not feed the hungry by wishing it so; we prepare them meals. In the power of God, we do not comfort the grieving by praying for them from a distance; but by listening patiently to broken hearts. In the communion of the Holy Spirit, we do not correct the world’s injustices by thinking about them; we speak up with our tongues, organize up with our minds, step up with our feet, and push forward for constructive change.

Paul looks across time and space to his people and tells them the truth: “You were bought with a price.” Your slavery has been paid off by the Lord who love you more. Look to the cross and consider the extravagant price!

Do you know how much God has loved us, to claim us as God’s own? I think you do. That’s why it makes perfect sense to glorify God with our bodies.


(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] https://www.corinth-museum.gr/en/archaeological-site/sanctuary-of-asklepieion/