The chapter opens abruptly. "Dare any of you"—a strong expression of disapproval—"having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust?" Judaism had taught the Jews not to go before Gentile judges with a lawsuit against their brethren; the Romans had accorded to the Jews the right to settle their disputes among themselves, and Christians at that time might avail themselves of this rule (Lunge). But St. Paul, true to his ruling method, views the matter from Christian ground and treats it solely on the principles of the gospel. The argument in the preceding chapter concerned social relations, the present argument applies to civil relations, and yet they are sympathetic in his mind. Emotion is an associative force, and often establishes or rather discloses connections of ideas not perceptible in the "dry light" of intellect. In both these arguments the underlying sentiment is the same, viz. the dignity of Christian character and the supremacy of its obligations over interest, custom, usage, and every form of self not compatible with the generous spirit of sacrifice "for Christ's sake." Bear in mind, then, in reading St. Paul's Epistles, that if at times you lose the compactness of logic and its tenacious unity, you are always sure to find that more interior tie which binds thought to sentiment and displaces order for the gain of a higher method. Method, rather than order, marks the thinker whose vocation is to instruct the mass of mankind. Saints, as saints exist in the ideal of Christianity, "shall judge the world." They are to rule with Christ, to share his glory, and be acknowledged by the universe as participants in the final triumph of his mediatorial authority. If so, the mediatorial honour in future prospect has a certain scope of present activity, since it could not be then unless it were now. Of the character of these functions and the circumstances incident to their display, what know we? They fall under that law of reserve which the Lord Jesus spoke of when he said, "Of the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power," we are kept ignorant, and are the better for the ignorance. Details of great facts may intensify the intellect of sense, and work damage to the higher mind. If Christ was the Son of man, and as such filled the sphere of humanity, while admitting as such the limitation of his knowledge in one direction, viz. "of that day and hour knoweth no man," surely we need not perplex ourselves as to specific theories bearing on this subject. Christianity lays the stress on intelligence rather than on information, and, in fact, assures us that restraint is essential in our condition to equable development. St. Paul argues from the future to the present; thus, "shall judge the world,… shall judge angels;" and the conclusion is emphasized,—"how much more things that pertain to this life!" On this ground of the spiritual superiority of the saints in Christ, he claims that the judgment of believers may now be most advantageously exercised. It is a training in the school of Christ, and the discipline, while varied, is adapted to the highest good. Does St. Paul mean to put earthly tribunals under the ban? By no means. Again and again he sought their protection against Jews and Gentiles, and, if Roman law had not befriended him, his apostleship as men reason would have had a speedy termination. Who was more explicit and earnest than he in urging the doctrine that human government was a Divine ordinance, and as such to be obeyed and honoured? And who among statesmen and philosophers ever saw as deeply into the nature and functions of sovereignty as an essential element of the idea of man in the scheme of the universe? In law, in its administration of justice, in its protection of persons and property, in its power to verify and conserve the multitudinous interests of society, he recognized the right arm of Providence. The sense of providence must be social no less than individual, must transcend geographical bounds, and embrace the human family as a family of "one blood," or it failed of its office. So, then, he has no issue with law and its adjudications as such. But the uses of the law by Christians; the common and facile resort to it in order to gratify covetousness, pride, ambition, revenge, and any and every form of selfishness;—that is the grave matter before his mind. "There is utterly a fault among you," a weakness, a repudiation of noble sentiment, a departure from the idea of the true self in Christ, "because ye go to law one with another" before unbelievers; brother arrayed against brother; and this exposure of a mutilated unity, with its accompanying evils, made in the presence of men whose criticisms would be only too eager to detect and magnify your imperfections. This is one aspect of the matter. But you gain your rights. Ay, and rights may be purchased too dearly. Go to law and get your rights; and then, as you retire from the seat of judgment, think of what you leave behind you—what losses of sentiment, trust in others, hope of humanity, brotherliness of heart, perchance even integrity and honour. Right and rights, how often they part company, and the one is the burlesque, the shame, the bitter contempt of the other! "Rather take wrong;" it is altogether a manlier thing, if done for Christ's sake. Lord Erskine, when at the bar, once said to Dr. Parr, "Accommodate the difference amicably.… I can scarcely figure to myself a situation in which a lawsuit is not, if possible, to be avoided." This is another aspect of the matter. Alas! there is an aspect yet sadder. Law is used as a means to inflict a wrong. "Ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren." What gigantic wrongs have been perpetrated under the name of law, we all know; but who can tell how far this spirit, which uses justice to accomplish injustice, has gone forth into all the relationships of men, and vitiated life among the sacred retreats of home and the Church? The depravity of man's lower nature is fearful, not because it is cruel and brutal, but because it is continually reinforced and invigorated by the depravity of his higher nature. What is true of the individual in this respect is true also of society. History and our own observation warrant the statement that the grossest perverters of law and justice have been found among those who were wealthy, or in high office, or otherwise influential. Their example, in very many instances, has worked downward, just as certain poisonous gases, too heavy to ascend, have infected the air on a level with us. Then follows a question containing its own answer: "Know ye not that the unjust shall not inherit the kingdom of God?" His impassioned formula, "Be not deceived," introduces a catalogue of immoralities that shut out men from God's kingdom, in which we have a startling revelation, common with St. Paul, of bodily sins. Such were some of you. But how different now!—washed, sanctified, justified, in the Name of Christ, and by the Spirit. Would they fall back into their heathenish practices? Within the compass of a few verses, St. Paul gives us principles that permeate civil society no less than religious. If carried out, we should have much less law and much more equity, and both law and equity would be immense gainers by the change. The tendency of the argument is the thing to notice. That tendency is to give men a true spiritual conception of themselves, and to develop their thought of self in accordance with God's thought of them. The sense of public justice may compel us to resort to law, but this will not conflict with St. Paul's idea. 'On the other hand, any abuse of an institution, whether governmental or domestic, whether ecclesiastical or earthly, is an abuse of manhood, and on this truth he expends the force of his reasoning. In these verses, as in the previous chapters, arguing, denouncing, exhorting, pleading,—it is the voice of a grand doctrine and a lofty trust and a sublime hope that we hear. And we hear it in the midst of strife and turbulence, out of the depths of a heart most sorrowful and yet "always rejoicing," and able to command itself and its faculties and resources whenever and wherever needed.—L.
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
The human body and its relation to Christ.
Among the objects about him proper for use and enjoyment—those objects which accorded with his nature and position as a redeemed man—was there anything from which he was excluded? "All things are lawful unto me," and, in this sense, liberty and law are identical, the measure of the one being the measure of the other. If law is of God, so is freedom; if the former is the expression of the Divine will and character, so is the latter; and if man is the image of Christ in law, so is he in freedom. Observe, then, that it is not law and liberty as existing in a perfect world that the apostle is considering, but as found in this mixed and disordered world, in which probation is going on to its eternal issues. Ideally "all things are lawful," and yet, because life is a discipline, how could it be otherwise than that liberty should be abridged? One of the main purposes of probation is to discipline the will, to choose for itself among a multitude of objects addressing our sensibilities. Scores of things appeal daily to our senses, and, if all our sensations are converted into desires, thence into motives, thence accepted by volition, and made a part of ourselves, then certainly this is not freedom for the ends of moral discipline, but freedom for simple and universal gratification. Freedom in St. Paul's view is not a final cause, it is a means; and he would have the Corinthian remember that one of their greatest obligations was to restrain this freedom. The freedom itself had a large range as to the objects allowed its use and enjoyment. Should it cover the whole area of activity? Nay, says the apostle, this would be bondage in another form. "I will not be brought under the power of any," for "all things are lawful unto me," which is to say, "all things are in my power," and I will exercise my power by imposing limitations on self indulgence. Of course, then, this restraint put on individual freedom is our own voluntary act. Such is the stress laid on personality that a man's Christian virtue must be specifically his own, and recognized by infallible signs as his own. Development is a common duty, self development segregates a man from his fellows that he may grow in a given way. Self denial is a common duty, but under this law of individuality in using our freedom, self denial assumes a variety of shapes, and becomes wonderfully potential in human affairs by the diversity it presents. In this view the self denial of A is no guide for B. The special form of your self denial may not commend itself to me, nay, it may be hurtful to me; and, assuredly, it will lose its virtue if I adopt it merely because it is yours. And hence the value of example in this respect is not to create a slavish imitation on the part of others, but to set forth the worth inherent in the spirit of self denial. If this principle, so boldly urged by St. Paul, had been faithfully adhered to, it would have saved the Church from many inconsistencies. Private opinion, while it is content to be such, may be over stringent, and yet do no great harm. But in many cases it exceeds the limits of individuality and takes shape as the tyranny of public opinion. Morbidness is rarely satisfied till it acquires notoriety before the eyes of men, and so it comes to pass that we have ecclesiastical agitation and legislation about many things—for instance, amusements—concerning which no exact standard can be set up foreverybody. If we could have an exact standard, it would not compensate for the loss of personal freedom, since this is precisely one of those matters in which self denial owes all its excellence to the restrictions that it imposes upon itself. St. Paul's emphatic "I" in this connection is the "I" of every redeemed man, and accordingly, as a universal prerogative, this exalted characteristic of individuality is most carefully guarded. And how is it guarded? To say nothing of what Christian freedom is in itself as delegated by God in Christ, and conditioned widely different from Adam's sovereignty in Eden; to say nothing of its original limitations by the Divine Law, and the fixed barriers over which it may not pass, and, if true to itself, cannot pass; what is this liberty but a glorious privilege to be made still more glorious by our own self enacted laws of restraint? It is a new limitation peculiar to man. It is a limitation which each man under the grace of the Spirit originates and executes in attestation of his own endowments as God's redeemed servant, It is sonship in its most beautiful and tender form—the "Abba, Father," which is not heard in the responses of the Church, nor in hymns of social worship, but is an utterance that rises to God in those hours when loneliness is a supreme joy. I have the power; I will not use it; I will deny myself its exercise, and I will do it because "all things are not expedient." What other eye save his own could penetrate those mysteries, from which he draws reasons and motives for particular acts of self denial? Mysteries, we say; for many an advanced believer yields in this phase of experience to half awakened instincts and undefined impulses. How can ministers of the gospel, how can Churches in their official capacity, get at the knowledge of what is wisest and best in those matters that belong to the very highest attributes of personality as the ground of individuality? "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." "Fully persuaded" he can never be unless he use his liberty untrammelled. If you dogmatize and legislate, the full persuasion cannot be the outcome of "his own mind." If God can trust him, why not you? The safeguard has been provided—it is expediency. And this sense of expediency or of fitness and propriety is a conservative and prudential force, which operates to check all excesses, and binds about the man the golden cestus of moderation. Expediency is never self willed and arbitrary. It presides over tastes and the minor moralities no less than over the more prominent virtues; nor does it trifle with trifles nor disdain the helps of look and tone and manner, but is cardinal to whatsoever reflects the man upon his associates. Keenly alive to discriminations, it educates us to know the best from the merely good, and, by its fine tact and subtle sagacity, goes on swift wing to the noblest objects. It considers, as though it were a part of itself, the welfare of others, and thus becomes a guarantee that a man's liberty shall not invade the rights of his fellow man. And remembering that "all things" are his only so far as he is Christ's, he realizes that it is "no more I that live, but Christ liveth in me." Then St. Paul proceeds to dwell on the sanctity of the human body—a favourite topic, on which he expends much thought. In the third chapter he had discussed it, and in subsequent passages, every one of them singularly clear and vivid, he recurs to this great topic. Here the leading idea is that our bodies "are the members" of Christ's body. "The body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." And hence St. Paul, in his concrete method of thinking, refuses to separate, even in thought, body and soul, as they are connected with redemption, Matter and mind are perfectly unlike; they are known to us only by their infinite contrariety; and yet matter and mind meet and unite as body and soul, and the union is human nature. These two substances grow each in its own way, the natural union at birth becoming closer and yet closer as years progress, and the body subordinating itself more and more to the mind's service, in the mature man—the mechanic, the accountant, the artist, the poet, the philosopher—a vast advance has occurred in i he nearness and adaptability of the corporeity to the wants, demands, and aspirations of the spirit. If the providential idea in education and culture be fulfilled, the cooperative activity constantly increases, each forward step a step for both, and the law of development taking effect in mutuality of advantage. Still more fully is this fact brought out in Christian experience. St. Paul's figures on this subject stand for facts. Bodily appetites cease to be mere animal instincts. They are elevated and purified. If Christ was raised from the dead, so too our bodies shall be raised, for the companionship of mind and matter as soul and body is not a transient but an eternal fact. One may speak of being "here in the body pent" and of the "body of humiliation" (vile body), but the idea of body as an investiture of spirit and an auxiliary to its functions is a part of the original scheme of humanity, and will have its complete development in the future life. Little do we realize that the resurrection man is now in a process of training as to his corporeal form. This training is double—mental and material—and hence, while it is true that certain physical functions will expire and be known no more, yet the effects of their experience will survive in the soul itself. "A spiritual body" is assured us by Christianity and confirmed to us by Christ's resurrection; and, agreeably to this doctrine, the present growth of body into the mind's service, the tuition of the senses, the reduction of the nerves to the will, the command which is acquired over the lower organs, all indicate that the resurrection man of body and spirit is now in process of formation. If this is true; if the resurrection is not only a prospective glory but a realization now going on by means of the present ennoblement and sanctification of the human body; and, furthermore, if Christ's education of his own body to the offices he filled as Teacher, Miracle Worker, Philanthropist, Redeemer, etc., as to the spirit actuating him, an example to his followers;—then surely we have the weightiest of reasons for regarding the body as the "temple of the Holy Ghost." Greek philosophy had abused the truth that all creatures are for man, and that he is the measure of all things. Professing Christians had followed a carnal philosophy in the application of this truth. And now that St. Paul has rescued it from its perversions and set it in its proper light, he may well urge the conclusion, "Ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." Could anything more timely, more momentous, more significant of the aim of Christianity as it respected the social regeneration of mankind, have been said by St. Paul? The sin of the body; that one sin which surrenders the body to another and degrades it as nothing else can degrade; that sin of sins, which debauches the body where it ought to be purest, and sinks lowest that which should be highest;—could its wickedness be set forth in stronger language than when he speaks of the body as the tabernacle, in which not only the soul but the Holy Ghost dwells? "Which ye have of God," and therefore "not your own," but "bought with a price." And yet this redeemed possession, the purchase of Christ's blood, a member of his mystical body, a tabernacle of the Spirit, alienated, abused, prostituted to the most shameful and the most fatal of all vices. Of nothing is it so true as of this vice, that we become like that with which we associate. Association is assimilation, and, in this case, assimilation is the most dreadful form of desecration. These verses (18-20) contain, as has been suggested (Alford), the germ of the three weighty sections of the Epistle about to follow. And we do well to enter into their meaning and implore the grace of God to assist us, lest we fail to receive the profound impression sought to be made. It is useless to blink the fact that among Christian nations and in the nineteenth century this colossal vice of a desecrated human body is the Satanic citadel of iniquity. Take all the vices and sins on earth, aggregate them in one huge bulk, and the misfortunes, evils, catastrophes, tragic disasters, put together, would not outweigh the consequences morally and socially viewed of this enormity. Half of the man goes straight and quick into the hands of the devil, and the other half, unless God interpose, follows on in a fascination of blindness exceptional among illusions. God help us! For verily "vain," in this instance, "is the help of man." We need a much larger and bolder discussion of the religion of the human body; and if writers and preachers would study the art of doing this work, the Church and the world would be vast gainers. Any way, this is open to us all, viz. to lay a much greater stress than is commonly done on the dignity, worth, and glory of the human body as seen in the light of Christ's teaching. Full justice is not done this subject, not even approximative justice, and, therefore, no wonder the body is disparaged, vilified, tolerated by many as a nuisance, and immolated by thousands as a creature of appetite and lust. "Bought with a price," the blood of the Lord Jesus paid for it—a glorious thing to be bought and not too precious a ransom paid, and now sprinkled by that blood and hallowed by the indwelling Spirit. Oh what intenseness of soul should go into the pleading, "Glorify God in your body"!—L.
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON
1 Corinthians 6:1-8
Litigation; or, How shall Christians settle their differences and disputes?
Remarkable is the insight which this Epistle affords us into the interior life of a Church of the first age. We seem to be brought into the presence of remarkable virtues and of remarkable faults, and are impressed with the incongruity of the picture. One thing is certain, that human nature was then what it is now, and that Christianity offers the one Divine remedy for individual and for social ills.
I. IT IS TO BE EXPECTED THAT DIFFERENCES AND DISPUTES WILL ARISE WITHIN THE BOUNDARIES OF CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES. The occasions are manifold; the conflict of interests and of opinions and of tastes will account for not a few. It is irrational to suppose that human nature can be at once transformed from the condition of the self indulgent pagan, for example, to the position of a mature and holy servant of God. There are to be found in the Church on earth persons occupying every point intermediate between these extremes; and among such "offences will come."
II. IT IS SCANDALOUS THAT SUCH DISPUTES SHOULD BE BROUGHT BEFORE A HEATHEN TRIBUNAL. The Greeks were an especially disputatious and litigious race. It was natural enough that those who in the days of their heathenism had been accustomed to refer their disputes to the judges of the city should still carry any differences that might arise into the same courts. But reflection, as the apostle urges, must have made manifest the unwisdom of such a proceeding. Christianity proclaimed itself a religion of peace and love; and its adherents spoke of one another as brothers; whilst it was known that the great Lord had enjoined the forgiveness of injuries, and had himself set an example of such forgiveness. It is clear that for Christians to go to law with one another before the tribunals of the heathen was to create a scandal, and to bring both the religion and its professors into contempt. The same reasonings apply wherever, in our own day, the powers that be are unchristian, and the followers of Jesus are but as leaven in the mass of heathenism.
III. EVERY CHRISTIAN SOCIETY CONTAINS WITHIN ITSELF ELEMENTS CAPABLE OF DEALING WITH SUCH EMERGENCIES. According to the apostle's teaching, the "saints" shall be assessors with the Lord Christ in the judgment of the world and of angels; and those destined to fulfil functions so majestic may surely be entrusted with the settlement of trivial disputes. It is best if the two persons between whom a misunderstanding has arisen can compose their differences with no outside assistance; if this cannot be done, it is well to call in the aid of a Christian of calm, impartial character and of large experience, with a common agreement to accept his award without murmuring. There is surely a large opportunity for the exercise of the virtues of wisdom and justice in such directions as these. Much bickering and heart burning might be avoided were there a sincere and general desire to act upon the counsels of the apostle. The courts of justice, even in Christian countries, might thus be relieved of much of their business, to the advantage of the whole community.
IV. THE BEST PREVENTIVE OF QUARRELLING IS A DISPOSITION TO SUFFER INJURIES RATHER THAN TO RESENT OR EVEN TO REDRESS WRONG. There is something very startling and very grand in the apostle's sudden, unexpected questions, "Why not rather take wrong'? why not rather be defrauded?" These are "counsels of perfection." The alternative already suggested is good; but this is better far, however it be opposed to the inclinations of" the natural man." Christ has given us an example of suffering wrong. From the world we are bound, if it be so ordered, to accept with patience language of contumely or treatment of injustice. And it is suggested that, even amongst those who are fellow members of the same body, there may be mutual forbearance, there may be a patience amounting to magnanimity, a renunciation of rights which shall make it clear of how little importance are all those matters upon which it is possible for good men to differ.
"Learn how sublime a thing it is
To suffer, and be strong!"
T.
1 Corinthians 6:11
Past, present, and future.
In the two preceding verses the apostle has described, in terse, plain terms, the awful vices to which the heathen inhabitants of Corinth were addicted. To his enlightened mind the kingdom of Satan and the kingdom of God were diametrically opposed; and the test by which Paul judged them was the test of moral character—a test which the reason and conscience cannot but approve. The apostle knew from what a slough some of his Corinthian converts had been delivered, and he points the contrast between the kingdom in their person and history.
I. A BLESSING AS RESPECTS THE PAST: THE CHRISTIAN IS WASHED FROM MORAL FOULNESS. The language of this passage must have gone home with power to some hearts: "Such were some of you!" They had indulged in sins of the flesh and of the spirit, in vices which were deemed pardonable, and in vices which were deemed vile, in transgressions against their own nature and against society. Some had been notorious and flagrant, others ordinary, offenders. But all had contracted moral defilement. And what had Christianity done for them? What has it done for all to whom it has come? It has purified them from their old sins. "Ye were washed." The lustration of baptismal waters was a symbol of the purification wrought in the spirit by the redemption of Christ, by the Holy Spirit of God.
II. A BLESSING AS RESPECTS THE PRESENT: THE CHRISTIAN IS RENEWED IN HOLINESS. Forgiveness and cleansing from impurity may justly be regarded as the means to an end; i.e. to hallowing or sanctification. This is the positive, to which the other is the negative, side. Set free from vice and crime, the subject of the Divine power of the cross comes under a new and inspiring influence. The Holy Spirit creates the nature afresh. No inferior power is adequate to produce a change so vast. It is a proof of the Divine origin and adaptation of Christianity that it attempts and achieves a task so superhuman. These moral miracles of sanctification constitute an evidence of Christianity which is to many minds the most conclusive of all.
III. A BLESSING AS RESPECTS THE FUTURE: THE CHRISTIAN IS JUSTIFIED FROM CONDEMNATION. The expression employed refers to the government of God and our relation to it. Justification is acquittal at the bar of the righteous Judge. By anticipation Scripture represents this acquittal as already pronounced in the case of those who have accepted the terms of salvation. For such the Name of Jesus Christ avails, and in such the Spirit of God graciously works. Justification is conferred now; but the full benefit of it will appear by contrast in the day of judgment.
APPLICATION.
1. The question is suggested to every hearer of the gospel—Could the apostle have used this language with reference to me? Are the signs of this mighty change manifest in my life?
2. The reflection is suggested to those who have experienced this moral transformation—How wonderful and how effectual is the grace of God! How vast is the debt of gratitude we owe to the Father who loved us, the Saviour who redeemed us, the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us!—T.
1 Corinthians 6:12-16
The sanctity of the body.
At Corinth idolatry assumed a most imposing, luxurious, and voluptuous form. It is quite in accordance with all we know of the opulent and pleasure loving inhabitants of and visitors to "the star of Hellas," that those controversies and scandals which are dealt with so fully in this chapter should arise in a Christian society planted by the apostle at Corinth. It should be more especially noticed that there is a sufficient reason for the remarkable fact that sexual matters should be treated more fully in this Epistle than in any other part of the New Testament. The apostle in this passage demolishes the sophistical arguments and excuses by which certain professed Christians at Corinth were disposed to defend the practice of fornication. It was said that matters relating to the bodily life were indifferent to the moral welfare of men, that as an enlightened man will eat this food or that, irrespectively of any superstitious prejudices, inasmuch as food and the digestive system are naturally in corelation with each other, so he will satisfy the sensual appetites of his body in whatever way may be convenient and agreeable to him. Against this doctrine of devils Paul here argues, not on grounds of asceticism, but on grounds which must be conceded as secure by the moral and especially by the Christian thinker.
I. THE GROUNDS UPON WHICH CHRISTIANITY ESTABLISHES THE SANCTITY OF THE BODY. As here presented, they may appear to some readers to be mystical, but in fact they are in harmony both with the facts of human nature and with the great doctrines of the New Testament.
1. The Lord Christ and the body of man are "for" each other. In his incarnation Christ has assumed the human body, in his ministry he has honoured it, in his death he has redeemed it. Not the soul only, but the body, is God's creation, and the object of Christ's regard, and partaker of the benefits of his mediation. As the Lord is for the body, so is the body for the Lord.
2. More particularly, the bodies of Christians are members of Christ. The ransomed and renewed humanity is one glorious whole, one Divine organism, the Lord Jesus being himself the authoritative Head. If the Head, the informing Spirit, is holy, must not also the subordinate members be also pure and consecrated?
3. Christ having been raised from the dead, it is appointed that the body of every follower and friend of Christ shall share in this resuscitation and exaltation. In what way this shall take place is immaterial to the argument. The spiritual renewal is the earnest of the high and immortal resurrection of the whole man. These things being so, the body of the Christian standing in relation so intimate to the glorious and holy Mediator and Lord,—is there any consistency between such a connection with the King of saints and a life of filthy sensuality? The incompatibility is apparent and undeniable.
II. THE PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES WHICH FOLLOW UPON THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE BODY. These are broadly distinguished into two classes.
1. Food is a matter of indifference. Many weak Christians laid great stress upon clean and unclean food; some objected to eat what had been or might have been offered to idols. Now, the apostle claims all this as a province of Christian liberty. Diet was a matter "without" the body. All things were lawful. Those who ate and those who refrained from eating were forbidden to despise one another; for both alike were called upon to act in this matter "as unto the Lord."
2. Impurity is absolutely forbidden. There is a vital difference between the satisfaction of hunger and the gratification of the sexual appetite. This latter is only permissible within the boundaries of holy matrimony. Fornication is an abuse of the body, a defilement of Christ's members, an insult to the Lord himself, whose property it not only takes by theft from him, but hands over to a harlot. This is very plain speaking on the part of the apostle. But it is just; and if it was necessary in those days, it is equally necessary now. Physiology is often invoked to sanction vice; but it is well to listen to the nobler and purer counsels of the apostles, which are not more in harmony with the loftiest ethics than they are with the soundest conclusions of physical and of social science.—T.
1 Corinthians 6:17
Christ and his people are one.
It was the wont of the apostle to associate the commonest duties of life with the highest motives drawn from spiritual realities and relations, in dissuading from the sin of impurity, he might have adduced considerations drawn from physical laws or from social conditions; but it is more in harmony with his convictions and habits to appeal to the loftiest principles of the Christian religion.
I. THE BOND WHICH UNITES CHRISTIANS TO THEIR LORD. It is a personal relation which is here asserted, and evidently not one of mere external association, but of vital and spiritual union.
1. It is a bond of faith. "Whom not having seen," etc. Christians receive with cordiality the gospel concerning Christ; they receive Christ himself to dwell in their hearts by faith.
2. It is a bond of love. They are joined to him as the bride to the bridegroom, in a spiritual affection, in love "stronger than death."
3. It is a bond of affinity. Drawn to Jesus as sinners to the Saviour, they remain with him as friends congenial in character, in disposition, and in aims.
II. THE CONSEQUENT UNITY BETWEEN CHRISTIANS AND THEIR LORD. They are "one spirit."
1. They are in a spirit of subjection to the Father, whose will and law are authoritative and supreme.
2. They are one in the love of all that is holy and morally admirable. The sympathy that exists is sympathy with regard to matters of the highest moment, with regard to the principles that animate and the aims that dignify the moral life.
3. They are one in the bonds of an immortal fellowship. Christ's prayer for his people was, "That they may be with me where I am"—a prayer which the Father is graciously and constantly answering.
III. THE PRACTICAL PROOFS OF THIS UNITY.