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Our Bodies, Ourselves
By
Skip Ryan
Park Citites Presbyterian Church
Dallas, TX
January 24, 1993
I Corinthians 6: 12-20: "Everything is permissible for me"-but not
everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"-but I will not
be mastered by anything. "Food for the stomach and stomach for the food"-but
God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but
for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By His power God raised the Lord
from the dead, and He will raise us also. 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! 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." But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with
Him in spirit.
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his
body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know
that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have
received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price.
Therefore honor God with your body."
I want to discuss a couple of related ideas from this text, our attitude
toward our own bodies and sexual immorality. Then, as well, I'll address
some of the issues concerning the sanctity of human life.
I fear that there is something here to offend everyone. While there is a
certain danger in using humor to address such serious subjects,
nevertheless, I can't resist, and sometimes humor makes a point better than
we can make it with long and sober faces.
Some time ago there was a letter to the editor which was, in itself, a
response to a previous letter which had made the contention that until a
perfect contraceptive is found, abortion on demand must remain legal. This
person who wrote this second letter responded to that contention-namely,
that abortion on demand must remain legal until a perfect contraception is
found.
The letter read as follows: "I am happy to report that there are at least
two methods of contraception that are 100% effective. The first is made by
several manufacturers. This amazing breakthrough is called clothes. They are
available over the counter and without a prescription. People who don't want
children should wear them. The second is an oral contraceptive. You just
form your lips and tongue the right way, breathe out, and the word 'no' is
sounded. People who choose not to use the above methods and, instead, choose
to engage in an act that was designed to create human life should stop being
so surprised when a human life is created by their actions."
I hope humor does begin to make the point. Paul begins to make the point in
this particular passage by entering into it very carefully. Before he gets
into the subject of sexual immorality proper, he discusses the notion of
what Christians have called throughout the centuries "Christian liberty"-the
idea that Christians are to be free except where they are bound by
Scripture. This is a very important principle. "Everything is permissible
for me" - but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for
me"- but I will not be mastered by anything.
The Apostle Paul is making the very important point that Christians must
understand their liberty in the Lord-that Jesus Christ has set us free from
the laws and the traditions of men. That which binds our conscience must be
only the Word of God.We don't lay on one another a set of extra-biblical
commandments.
But the Apostle Paul makes us understand that this freedom is bound by a
couple of important principles. One is that we must consider whether
something is beneficial. Some translations put the word profitable there. In
other words, is it advantageous to my spiritual life? Some things are
biblically allowable, but they may not be biblically wise.
Let me give you an example. Certain movies, we could say, are allowable for
Christians to go to. I can't find a place in the Bible where it says, "Thou
shalt only go to 'G- rated' movies." But some of us have learned, sometimes
the hard way, that there are certain movies with certain ratings that we are
wise, biblically wise, to avoid, even if it is biblically permissible to go.
We must discern what is profitable or beneficial for us.
The second principle is that we must not be mastered by anything, or under
the power of anything. In claiming our Christian freedom we must not be
brought under bondage to anything. Let me give you another
illustration-alcohol consumption. Does the Bible anywhere teach that alcohol
consumption is wrong? No, I do not believe it does. But, at the same time,
Christians are to be very careful that they are not brought under the power
of alcohol, that we do not need it and that somehow an occasional use of
alcohol does not slide over into a regular "needy" dependence upon it in any
way. Do you see the line that the Apostle Paul is asking us to draw?
In verse 13, Paul zeroes in on the main topic here. It reads, "Food for the
stomach and the stomach for the food. . ." (Note that's in quotation marks.
I'll get back to that in a minute.) -but God will destroy them both. The
body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for
the body. Now here the word sexual immorality is one Greek word, the word
pornea; literally translated unchastity. Sometimes it's translated
fornication or prostitution. It's a general word that throughout the New
Testament is used to describe all kinds of sexual immorality. In other
words, it's a very inclusive idea. Some Corinthians in the church were
apparently arguing that sexual license was a natural thing, as natural as
eating. They were saying, food for the stomach and the stomach for food.
After all, we have to eat, don't we? And sex is just another sort of impulse
of the human body and, therefore, the body is for sexual freedom and sexual
freedom is for the body.
Now Paul says an emphatic "no" to license for three reasons. The background
of these three reasons, of course, is that he says an emphatic "yes" to the
right use of our sexuality. Let me say this clearly and up front so that all
that follows here is put into this framework. Sex is good. It was made by
God. He designed it. We didn't invent it. God did. It was His idea.
Sexuality is a very good thing. It's the way God designed us. Like many good
things, it has it's proper place where it is to be fully enjoyed. Of course,
the problem with pornea, or sexual immorality, is that it is taking the
fireplace away from the fire.
Fire is good. It would be hard to live without it in many respects. Most of
us have a fireplace in our living rooms, family rooms or dens. But fire
belongs in the fireplace. If you take that fire out of the fireplace and
build a bonfire in the middle of your den, it will not be good. And that's
exactly what Paul is suggesting we do in this matter of sexual immorality
when we take something good and we use it in a way that it should not be
used.
So Paul gives an emphatic "no" to sexual license and he does so for three
reasons that he relates in this passage. First, he says the body is for the
Lord and the Lord is for the body. There's a very important word that he
chooses there for body. There are a couple of alternatives he could have
chosen, one being the word sarks. That is a Greek word that is usually
translated in our New Testament flesh. The problem with the word flesh is
that it doesn't really mean what Paul is saying here. Flesh is man in his
weakness; man in his sinful fallen condition.
The word that the Apostle Paul uses here is the word soma. The word soma
means body, or specifically, not just in reference narrowly to our physical
body but to the whole personality of man that is animated through our body.
Now this is a very subtle point, but it's key to your understanding
everything that the Apostle is teaching us here.
You do not have a body. I hope I have your attention. You do not have a
body. You are a body. Paul refuses to allow your body to become an appendage
to your real self. That was the Greek problem. It's the problem that I
believe is deeply ingrained into the way Christians think today. It's the
problem of dualism-the idea that the essential you is something different
from your body. That's not biblical. Your body is you. You are your body.
You cannot separate your body from the rest of you. It's not as though your
spirit is in one place; your soul in another; and your body in still
another. That brand of Christian teaching is false, at best, dangerous, at
worst.
No, you are a body. The Bible treats you as a whole, what one might call
psycho-social-unity. You can't be separated from your own physical self. To
say that the body is for the Lord means that the whole of all that you are,
the whole you is to serve God. Everything that you are is to be offered to
God. It is not as though you serve God through your spiritual self, but it
doesn't really matter what your body does. That is actually what the Greeks
in Corinth were doing. That's why the Apostle Paul wrote them this. They had
this incredible idea that somehow the soul was the most important thing, and
as long as the soul was serving God in some narrowly religious or spiritual
sense, it didn't matter what they did with their bodies.
That theory also meant that the body could be suppressed and repressed. That
idea emerged in medieval Catholicism, where there were people wearing hair
shirts, beating their bodies, walking on nails and doing ridiculous things
to demonstrate that they could hold their bodies in check. Greek thinking
expressed the theory in sexual license-the idea being that it didn't matter
what you did with your body. You could eat, drink, be merry, do whatever you
wanted with your body because, after all, it was the soul that was really
important.
To that notion, Paul is saying an emphatic "no!" It's the same teaching, I'm
afraid to say, that we see cropping up in the church today through many back
doors. It's the influence of the New Age movement on the church-the idea
that you are a spirit somewhere out there wandering in the universe, and
that the spirit just happens to inhabit your body for a short period of
time. The body becomes unimportant. We Christians have embraced that idea a
bit, and somehow we don't think our bodies are important. The next time
you're tempted to think that I want you to remember that you are your body!
The second reason that Christians cannot agree with the world about sexual
freedom is in verse 14: By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and
He will raise us also. Why does Paul talk about the resurrection here? He
gets to that later in the book of Corinthians. Why here? It's for a very
important reason.
The whole of the New Testament witnesses to the fact that God raised the Son
from the dead. In other words, He did not cause Jesus, when He raised Him
from the dead, to live as a disembodied spirit. Jesus has a body. He not
only had a body; He has a body. He was resurrected in His body. That same
resurrected, glorified body right now sits at God's right hand in heaven.
That body will one day return for God's people. When we go to heaven we will
see that body and look into that face. So the particular focus of Paul here
on the resurrection of Christ is connected to the future resurrection of us
believers. We are connected to Christ in His resurrection. As Christ was
raised, so, too, will we be raised, not as disembodied spirits but as
bodies. Paul underscores the importance of the body.
If our bodies are to be raised from the dead as Christ's body was raised
from the dead, then they are not to be used for any improper use. Whatever
we do with our physical bodies, they are to be treated, in life and in
death, respectfully.
I'll never forget the time that I was called to the University of Virginia
Hospital to identify a member of our congregation who had been killed
tragically and immediately in an automobile accident. They led me down to
the hospital's basement morgue. The fellow who was showing me this room was
very cavalier about it. He threw open the door and there was the body of my
friend. It was being treated with disrespect, casually thrown onto some kind
of stretcher. I was infuriated. I was so infuriated I went to the executive
director of the hospital, who was a member of our church. I gave him a
little pastoral talk about the way his physicians and medical personnel
needed to respect the bodies of human beings.
In this passage, Paul wants us to focus on the use of our bodies this side
of the resurrection and in light of it. We are going to be raised by the
exertion of God's power just as Christ was. Our bodies, therefore, are the
locus of God's redeeming power. As Paul says in Romans 6: Do not go on
presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of
unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead.
Anticipating our own resurrection, we are to present ourselves to God as
alive from the dead now. Therefore, we treat our bodies accordingly, and we
use them accordingly.
The third reason that Christians cannot agree with the world in its
understanding of sexual freedom is in verses 15 and 17: 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! Then in verse 17: But he who
unites himself with the Lord is one with Him in spirit."
The issue before was the fact that our bodies were made for the Lord.
Secondly, that they are the objects of the resurrection power of God. Here,
the issue is what is called our union with Christ. Paul is teaching that
believers are united to Christ in the closest possible way. We are members
of His body-parts of His body. Sexual immorality is so wrong because it is a
misuse of the parts of Christ's body. Sexual immorality is to take away
(that's the language Paul uses there when we take our body and give it to a
prostitute or steal is the way it could literally be translated), parts of
Christ's body from their proper use- and from their proper union with the
Lord and unite them to another.
My wife's wallet was stolen a couple of weeks ago in a grocery store. In the
midst of all the flurry of thousands of dollars being charged on a couple of
credit cards and checks being forged literally within a few hours of the
wallet being stolen-the thing that hurt us the most, and hurt is not the
wrong word, was the abusiveness of what had gone on. Someone had taken
something that was ours and was using it improperly. That's why God is so
upset at the notion of sexual immorality. It is taking that which belongs to
Jesus. We are members of His body, part of His body and misusing its
members. That's why sexual immorality is so wrong from Paul's perspective.
Members of Christ's body are stolen and made members of a prostitute here,
or in some other way used improperly.
For Paul, sexual union is so intimate it makes two people one. That's what
he says in verse 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' (from Genesis 2). In God's economy, when two people merge, join
together, unite, (same word as saying we are with Christ) with one another
sexually-what is going on is more than simply the interaction of two
physical bodies. As I've said, you are your body. You cannot separate your
physical activity from your spirit. Therefore, the merger of two people is
much more than just the physical act. A person united with Christ cannot go
around indiscriminately uniting himself or herself to others.
What you do with your body, your whole being, bears on your relationship
with the Lord. When you engage in sexual immorality, in pornea, you ignore
the fact that your body is united to the Lord. This is pernicious dualism.
It suggests that you can do anything you want with your body and it doesn't
matter to the essential you. But the Apostle Paul says that you cannot
separate your essential personality from your body. It's untrue to who you
really are.
A man named Louis Smeades, a professor at Fuller Seminary in California,
says it this way in his book Sex for Christians: "No one can really do what
the prostitute and her customer try. Nobody can go to bed with someone and
leave his soul parked outside. And, in fact, sexual immorality is committing
an offense against the essential personality that I am."
Remember, your body is you. In this sense, the feminist slogan: "my body, my
self" or "our bodies, ourselves," is quite accurate. We are identified with
our bodies and harm done to them is harm done to our truest self. Brothers
and sisters, and those of you who are single or anticipating marriage,
please hear me on this-this is the strongest reason why you may not marry
outside the Lord. If you know the Lord you may not marry someone who does
not. The reason is not just because of one little verse that says we must
not be unequally yoked, but the whole theme of Scripture that says you
cannot take your body and join it to that of another when there is an
essential, profound difference in your personality caused by the fact that
you are united to the Lord and the one you're contemplating marrying is not.
So all of sexual practice that is immoral is wrong because it seeks to do
that with your body that you have no right to do 1) because you are the
Lord's, 2) because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and 3) because you
have been united with Christ by His sovereign action.Paul restates this
imperative in verse 18: Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man
commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own
body. Here he's really not saying any more than he's said before, but he
says it in a different way. Other sins affect the body, but in this sin a
man takes his body which is meant for the Lord, will be resurrected by God's
power and is in union with Christ even now, and he sins against it. Sexual
immorality is a sin against the whole of the person.
In verses 19 and 20, Paul adds two more arguments, recapitulating what he's
saying. In verse 19, he says: Do you not know that your body is a temple of
the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? We use that
phrase a lot in our Christian jabber with one another, but think about the
implications . Positively, it means that dignity is given to the whole of
our lives. Everywhere we go we bear God's Spirit with us. Negatively, it
means that we must not mistreat or misuse our body, especially in a context
of sexual immorality because God dwells in us.
The second thing, in verse 20, You are not your own; you were bought at a
price, alludes to the practice in the ancient world of slaves where someone
would redeem a slave by purchasing him and then setting him free. We have
been bought with a price. Paul doesn't mention what the occasion or the
price is, but we know what it is. The price was Jesus Christ's life, His own
life blood in His body, His essential person, which was given up on the
cross of Calvary for us.Now we are free. We are slaves to none and we're
enslaved to nothing-real Christian liberty! But we must regard ourselves as
belonging not to ourselves but as belonging to Jesus who bought us with His
own blood.
It is really to block the normal pattern or flow of logic not to apply what
we have just been saying to the pro-choice movement in our culture today.
That a woman has sovereign, absolute sovereign control over her body is a
claim that is neither true in fact nor in principle. Every woman, as well as
every man, will one day lose control over her own body. Ask any woman in the
transitional stage of labor whether she has control over her own body. And,
of course, any woman will fall sick at times and, ultimately, she will not
be able to control the sickness or the circumstance that will produce her
own death. It is simply, factually untrue to say that a woman has control
over her own body.
What the feminist movement is trying to say with the slogan "our bodies,
ourselves" is to lay claim essentially to a Christian teaching about the
body that it is to be free from the arbitrary control of other people. This
is just what Christ does for us by purchasing our bodies He sets us free
from the slavery of men so that every woman has a God-given right to insist
that her body not be misused, that she not be mistreated, as was the case
for so long in human history, as an object or a possession especially for
the sexual enjoyment of men. Women have every right in the world to
absolutely insist that any and all forms of sexual abuse are absolutely
wrong. We need to hear our sisters in the Lord on this one, men.
But, dear women, you cannot have it both ways. If you say you are free then
you should recognize that your freedom comes from the Christian view of the
dignity of the person and you must let the other shoe drop. You are not your
own. You were bought with a price by Him who died for you. Alexander
Solzenietzen has said that we have an unusually American obsession with
rights, which is actually like a person trying to breathe with only one
lung. The other lung is called duty. Rights always mean duty, which poses
two implications:
Men and women, you must not use your body for sexual immorality. You must
not play with the Lord's possession. Let it be heard from this church today
in this city that we salute and we honor women who maintain purity before
marriage and who do so out of devotion to the Lord.
Young ladies in high school, let it be heard today that we honor you; we
regard you as princesses in the Kingdom for your determination to honor the
Lord with your physical body.
Let us also commend men who know that to properly think about their own body
means that they control their lives before they are married and after they
are married.
I simply want to say to men who think that, for whatever reason, you have a
right to do what you want-grow up! Grow up in Christ, brothers. Your body is
not your own. It was bought with a price. Honor Christ and honor your wife.
And young men, honor your wives-to-be with your body.
Let us also understand that in the Lord there is forgiveness for there is
not one of us who has done right in this area. We have all made mistakes of
body, mind, thought, whatever. Let us know that in Christ there is
forgiveness. In the gospel there is life and hope when we have made bad
mistakes.
The second implication is for women in the current cultural climate in which
we live. If your body is not your own, then you simply do not have the
choice many think you do about unwanted pregnancies. For the unmarried
woman, you forfeited that choice when you made the previous choice to use
your body for immorality. Remember the letter I read at the beginning?
People who choose not to use the above methods of birth control and instead
choose to engage in an act that was designed to create human life should
stop being so surprised when a human life is created by their actions.
Pro-choice means that one poor choice is not to be followed by a second.
Make the good choice! For the married and for the unmarried woman, you do
not have the choice to terminate an unwanted pregnancy because it is
inconvenient or it is financially difficult. Your body is not your own.
Abortion on demand as a means of birth control is an insult to nature and to
any human ethical system that is anything more than totalitarian social
manipulation. I don't know whether abortion can be stopped, and I fear for
the judgment that awaits our land. But may I modestly make one suggestion as
we close? Do not wage this battle politically. We'll lose. I'm not saying to
ignore the political process. I am saying that the real battle is a moral
and a spiritual one.
Many Christians have their hopes raised and dashed by the latest Supreme
Court decision or executive order from a President. Do not put your trust in
courts and legislatures. They will respond to the moral consensus in our
culture. They will not lead us. The very people we elect to lead us won't
lead us on this issue. It is too hot. The church will lead us. God's people
will lead us as there's a moral and spiritual revivacation in our land, as
people begin to think as believers-as I've been asking you to think. Then
there will come the possibility of a ground swell from the bottom up, not
from the top down.
It was spiritual revival in England that led to the outlawing of the slave
trade. We must pray for the kind of spiritual awakening that will cause us
all, men and women, to realize our bodies are for the Lord. Our bodies will
be raised by Christ's power. Our bodies are united to Christ, and because of
these things, sexual immorality is a tragic denial of our deepest identity
in Christ. And abortion on demand as a means of birth control is an
outrageous abuse of the principle of human freedom.
I am the temple of the Holy Spirit. I was bought with a price. So were you.
You and I are to glorify God with our bodies and not satisfy ourselves. We
are His.
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