1 Corinthians 6:12

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient. All things are lawful unto me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Meats for the belly and the belly for meats, but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God has both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His own power.

Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid! What, know ye not that that which is joined to a harlot is one body? For two, He says, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man does is without his body, but he that commits fornication sins against his own body.

What, know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? For you are bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and your spirit, which are God's.

Father, we ask as we look into Your word now that You would give us wisdom and understanding, that You'd guide us in all truth by Your Holy Spirit. Lord, the passage that is before us is a challenging one, one that truly has applicable exhortations for us who are living in the year 2010 just as it did to those living in Corinth in the first century. So, Lord, we do pray that You'd speak and that You would open our ears and our hearts to understand.

And know what it is that you're speaking to us. For we ask it in Jesus' name, and all God's people agreed, saying, and you can be seated.

All things, says Paul, are lawful unto me. It seems that this phrase was something that Paul had taught the Corinthians while he was present with them. He'll use almost the exact same phrase again when we get to chapter 10, 1 Corinthians 10, verse 23, where he writes, "All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient. All things are lawful for me, but all things edify not."

The Corinthians, as we saw in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 9 through 11, had misapplied Paul's teaching there. Paul had told them that they were to be separate from those who practiced idolatry or immorality, fornication, and adultery. As a result of Paul's teaching, they withdrew themselves from the culture around them, from the people of the city of Corinth. Yet, they allowed such sinful behavior to remain within the church. Paul had to clarify in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 that when he told them to come out and be separate, he meant that they were not to allow these things in their church. It was not that they were not to interact with people in the world who were involved in such things, because then they would have to come out of the world.

Here again, in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, Paul shows once more that they were misapplying his teaching. He had clearly taught them when he was with them that all things are lawful, but they had taken that and applied it in ways that he never intended.

Just about every other religion in the world is built upon the premise that you can attain a level of righteousness or enlightenment by adherence to a prescribed list of rules. Every different religion has different rules. They say if you keep these things and do these things, you will attain righteousness, enlightenment, nirvana, or whatever it may be. But Christianity says that such efforts are vain. Apart from the divine intervention of God's redemptive power, there is no way that we can attain any form of righteousness.

This is really one of the glorious realities of salvation: that our righteousness comes by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus and the work that He did on our behalf. Once we are redeemed, we experience in Christ a kind of liberty that is unknowable.

To the unsaved of this world, we have a freedom in Him that this world does not know. Christians are free to enjoy the righteousness that they have from Christ, and we delight in an absolute certainty that we have a right standing with God right now. No other religion offers that; you can know for certain that you are right with God in the very moment, not because of your works, but because of what God did on our behalf.

As well, we have a confident assurance of future glorification. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we will be with the Lord one day. Other religions don't have that. What a glorious reality! All of this comes by grace that has been granted to us in Christ, apart from our work to obtain righteousness or to maintain that position with the Lord. There is no sacrifice that we are bound to offer. We're not compelled to observe a certain day above another. There are no dietary restrictions or regulations that we have to heed. We are free of all such things in Christ.

This was Paul's clear teaching to the church at Galatia. We studied the book of Galatians about a year ago, and there we saw a church that had received the gracious gift of salvation. However, after Paul had left, they became bound up in a kind of ritualistic legalism, where they believed that to keep the position we have in Christ, we have to do A, B, C, or whatever it may have been. They thought they had to keep holding on to these laws and rules and follow these days, or else they would not maintain the position that they had.

Paul wrote the letter of Galatians to address that false teaching. When he went to the city of Corinth and established the church there, he taught them a message of liberty. This message became a ruling motto for the Corinthian church. It was a very simple teaching, just two words in the original language. In Greek, it was "pas existi," which means "all lawful." We could boil it down to just one word: liberty. We have liberty in Christ, and the church at Corinth embraced that wholeheartedly.

So what was the problem? The Galatians had shackled themselves to a set of rules to maintain their position in Christ, and Paul had to exhort them that this was not necessary. He wanted them instead to maintain their liberty in Christ.

Galatians chapter 5, verse 1, in the Phillips translation of the Bible, says, "Plant your feet firmly, therefore, within the freedom that Christ has won for us. Hold on to that freedom that we have, and do not let yourselves be caught again in the shackles of slavery." The Galatian church needed to hear that message, but the Corinthians had quite a different problem.

You see, they had taken Paul's teaching about liberty and misapplied it to every virtue and vice, every sort of thing that you could imagine. They were saying, "Well, we're free in Christ." The context, as we'll see in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 12 through 20, reveals that one of the things they were engaging in was sexual immorality, which was rampant in the city of Corinth. They claimed, "Paul said everything is lawful. We're free in Christ." However, that was clearly not what Paul meant, and so he had to correct this misapplication.

Both the Galatians and the Corinthians ultimately had the same problem, which was one of extremism. When we are taught about the gracious gift of Christ and the liberty we have in Him because of that grace, believers often take one of two positions. They either adopt the legalist position, like those in Galatia, which asserts that God's grace is great, but we need to ensure that people don't abuse it. This leads to a list of rules that must be kept.

The other group is the liberalist, who sees such restrictions and says, "Don't you dare restrict my liberty. I'm free in Christ," using God's grace as a license for sin. Thus, we have these two extremes: one group insisting on following rules to maintain righteousness, and another claiming they can do whatever they want, disregarding the consequences.

So, what is this all about, Christian liberty? It is something that still, 20 centuries later, comes up quite a bit. What are we free in Christ to do? What does it mean that everything is lawful?

For one, it means that the Christian is free to worship God on any or every day. They don't have to worship in a specific place or at a specific time. The Christian has the liberty to eat with thanksgiving whatever is set before them. He or she is loosed from daily offering sacrifices to maintain their right standing with God.

They are free to come before God directly. They do not need the service of a priest to appear before Him. You can come before Him at any time, anywhere, and in any place. The Christian has no need for circumcision or any other external rite for the privilege of fellowship. These are the things that we have as freedom in Christ.

But what does it not mean? The Corinthians had taken Paul's teaching to mean that anything was fair game. Their mindset was, "We are free to do whatever we please." They believed they could do anything and everything because Christ has made them free. However, as Paul will reveal in this passage, Christian liberty does not mean that we can exercise our passions to satisfy our appetites in any way that we desire.

That's what was taking place in the city of Corinth, and that's why Paul challenges them here in this passage. He says, "Yes, all things are lawful." That was the teaching he had brought to them. However, he adds, "All things are not expedient." We read already in 1 Corinthians 6, verses 9-11, a whole list of things that are incompatible with Christianity. Paul states that it's a fact: adulterers, fornicators, drunkards, extortioners, and the like will not inherit the kingdom of God.

If it is true that those who walk in such things—fornication, adultery, drunkenness, and so on—will not inherit the kingdom of God, then it clearly follows that we do not have liberty in Christ to walk in that way without consequence. There will be a consequence.

Some people in the church at Corinth were saying, "Hey man, I have liberty in Christ. It's okay for me to partake of the prostitution of Corinth. I have liberty in Christ; you can't rain on my parade. I can do whatever I want to. I'm free." But to simply say, "I have liberty in Christ," does not mean that we can mix sin with Christianity.

The Greek word that is translated as "expedient," when Paul says not all things are expedient, has the same root word in Greek as the word from which we get our English word "symphony." How many of you have ever been to a symphony and heard the full orchestra playing a beautiful musical number?

Imagine, if you will, that you go to the symphony. As the orchestra gets ready to play, they all start playing a different piece of music at a different tempo. Each individual musician is playing something different; one person is playing at 180 beats per minute, another at 60 beats per minute. One person is playing in the key of G, while another is playing in the key of F. It would be absolute discord, and no one would enjoy it. Perhaps the post-modern lost artist of our day might say, "Man, that was very existential." However, there is not a single conductor who would want their name attached to that symphony, because it would be full of absolute discord and unbearable to listen to.

The Corinthian church was not all playing the same tune. Because of sin and the issues happening in their midst, there were people doing their own thing while trying to represent Christ to the world. It simply was not working. To say that one has liberty in Christ and therefore it is okay to have sex outside of marriage or to get drunk from time to time is folly. It is foolishness, and such thinking does not fit the Christian life.

In Proverbs chapter 23, Solomon speaks about this foolishness in verse 21, saying, "The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty." In Galatians chapter 6, after Paul gives a list similar to the one in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 about those who will not inherit the kingdom of God, he states in Galatians 6 verse 7, "Be not deceived, God is not mocked; whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap." For he that sows to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption or destruction.

Paul tells the church in Corinth, "All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient." Not all things play well together, and you cannot mix sin with Christ. He also says, "I will not be brought under the power of any." Mixing that which is clearly defined as sin by the Scriptures with Christianity is not acceptable.

Justifying sin under the guise of liberty is not only foolish; it's dangerous. In Romans chapter 6, Paul makes it very clear that when we do so, we enslave ourselves once again to sin and death. Before we were saved, before we were redeemed by Christ, we lived as those who were slaves to sin and death. Christ has set us free. He has given us liberty. Far be it, God forbid, that we should ever use that liberty and allow ourselves to become burdened and bonded to sin once again, having now received grace.

Listen to this if you will. You can turn there if you'd like. Romans chapter 6, verse 15 states, "What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid." Do you not know? This is the same question we see six times in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Do you not know that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are whom you obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness? Do you want to make yourself a slave of sin once again? But God be thanked that you were, in past times, the servants of sin, but you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which has delivered you.

Church, we have been set free. We have been delivered. We no longer need to live as slaves of sin. Prior to our salvation, we could not not sin because we were slaves of sin. But we have been set free.

I love the story that we find in John chapter 5. You may even remember it when Jesus met the lame man at the pool of Bethesda. How many of you have read that passage before? Jesus comes upon the pool of Bethesda, which was a very interesting scene just north of the Temple Mount. It was a pool in the city of Jerusalem surrounded by five different porticos or covered patio areas. In those porches were all kinds of sick and diseased people, watching intently the water of the pool because there was a fable among the Jews that at a certain time an angel would come down and stir up the water, and whoever was the first person in would be healed.

Now, I have to admit, there is some comedy there, but it's also a pretty devastatingly sad scene. All these people waiting for the moving of the water, for the chance of being healed. Well, Jesus went there.

He finds a man who was lame for 38 years, longer than Jesus had been alive. You remember this story. If you've read it, Jesus heals the man, and he rises up, takes up his bed, and walks off. In John 5, verse 14, Jesus meets the man once again. He finds him in the temple there in Jerusalem and says to him, "Behold, you are made whole. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you."

That's a very interesting thing for Jesus to have said to the man. "You've been made whole. Don't sin anymore, lest a worse thing come upon you." What did He mean by that? For 38 years, the man had been in bondage to his infirmity. Sure, he could imagine certain sins, and he could sin in his heart and in his mind, but Jesus had given this man a liberty that he had never known. He could use that liberty to go and sin if he wanted to. He could now walk, he could now run, he could go to the tavern and become a drunkard, or he could go and find himself a prostitute and live in fornication and immorality. He had liberty to sin.

What does Jesus basically say to him when He meets him? "Do not use your liberty as an opportunity to sin, or something far worse than your 38-year infirmity will come upon you." Now, I am so thankful that in John 5, verse 14, He found him in the temple. Where did the man go when he was set free? He went to worship God, to use his liberty to glorify God. And that's what we need to do as well: use the liberty that we've been given to glorify our God.

We have to ask the question, what are we doing with our liberty? We've been set free by Christ. Are we mastered by Him? Is He our Lord, or are we mastered by sin? One or the other, you're going to serve one or the other. You're going to serve the Lord Christ to the glorification of God, or you're going to serve yourself and sin to destruction.

In 1 Corinthians 6, verse 12, Paul questions them about their liberty. In verses 13 and 14, he questions them about their logic. Verse 13 states, "Meats for the belly and the belly for meats, but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." God has both raised up the Lord.

And will raise us up by His own power. After clarifying what Paul truly meant regarding his teaching of liberty, Paul now turns to correct the illogical thinking of his brothers and sisters at Corinth. They were not thinking correctly.

The ancient Greeks and the Romans after them believed that a man was a dichotomous being, meaning that he had both a body and a soul. The Greeks believed that these two things were completely separate, and whatever was done with the body would in no way taint or defile the soul. One day, your body would die, but your soul perhaps would continue on. Therefore, it really didn't matter because the two were separate. You could do whatever you wanted with the body.

Not only that, many of the Greeks, in fact most of the Greeks, held what was called an Epicurean worldview. There were the Stoics, who were into denial of self, but far greater than the Stoics were the Epicureans, who said that if your body has a hunger for something, if it has a desire for something, it would be unhealthy to deny that desire and not fill it. So, if you're hungry for food, you might as well go and eat. The Greeks and the Romans were quite adept at this whole idea of eating, especially the elite among them.

In the Roman and Greek arenas of the time, they actually had a place called the Vomitory. After you would go indulge yourself greatly, you would go to the Vomitory to, shall we say, evacuate, and then you'd go do it again. Gluttony was rampant, and they were given to it. If the body has a desire, in their mindset, it was unhealthy to deny that appetite. Fill it up.

This sort of thinking was very common among the Corinthians, as illustrated by the maxim that we see here in verse 13. The first part of verse 13 reflects a common statement among the Corinthians of Paul's day: "Meats for the belly and the belly for meats." What does he mean by that? Well, the mindset of the Greeks there in Corinth was this: food is made for the belly, and the belly is made for food. Life is good; eat it up. But the implication of that went further than just eating.

Because their mindset also went to this: the body was made for sex, and sex is made for the body. Live it up. That was the way they saw the world. Do not deny yourself. Apparently, that kind of thinking came into the church as well. There were men in the body of Christ in Corinth who were partaking in the rampant prostitution of the city and justifying it with Paul's teaching. They were saying, "Well, Paul said all things are lawful. I guess it's okay."

Can you imagine how Paul must have reacted when he heard that they were using his teaching to justify this? To correct their illogical thinking, he tells them in this passage that the body is not for fornication. Their logic is lacking. Yes, we do have hunger pains, and those hunger pains are satisfied by food. If we are to live, then we ought to eat. But we ought not live to eat.

Paul says that the body and foods will one day be destroyed, and that will be by the Lord. There is coming a day when we will no longer have this body. When we come into the next life in the resurrection, it seems that we will not need to eat to live as we do here and now. We will not have to eat in order to live in the resurrection. The stomach was made to consume foods, but the body, Paul says, was not created to gratify itself.

Yes, just like we have hunger pains and appetites for food, we have a sexual appetite as well. God created that; it's not a bad thing in and of itself. He made that, and He also created the bodies that we have. So we have an appetite, a sexual appetite, and we have this tool, you might say, that God has given to us. We have a way to gratify the appetite that we have, which is called sex.

However, just because we have an appetite, a tool, and a way to gratify that appetite does not mean that we were created to do that. In actuality, Paul reveals that we were created to glorify God.

We are not created to gratify ourselves. That's our purpose. Well, why then do we have an appetite for sexual things? It's very simple. It makes perfect sense when you consider it this way: for the body to live, we must eat. Therefore, God gave us hunger pains and made eating a pleasurable experience so that we would be motivated to eat and survive.

For our race to survive, God has given us sex for procreation. Of course, I recognize that this is not the only reason for sex, but that's a topic for another study. God has given us a sex drive and made sex pleasurable to encourage us to desire and engage in it for the survival of our race. We must eat and engage in procreative activities to survive, both individually and as a group.

That said, we are not created simply to eat and have sex, even though fallen man might wish it were that simple. We are created ultimately for the Lord, as Paul says, and the Lord is for us. We are here to glorify Him, and He came for us so that we would glorify Him both here and in eternity. The Phillips translation of verse 13 reads, "Our body was made for God, and God is the answer to our deepest longings." Those of you who have sought satisfaction in the things of this world have found that it does not work; it creates an insatiable appetite. Our true longings are only met when we glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

Paul also states in verse 14 that God has both raised up our Lord and will also raise us up by His own power. Our ultimate purpose is not eating and engaging in sex; our ultimate purpose is to glorify God as the bride of Christ forever. He will raise us up after we die physically so that we can fulfill that purpose. When we die, we will no longer engage in sex, nor will we need food to survive. In eternity, we will glorify God, and that is our chief end.

So, Paul says your logic is wrong, and I want you to recognize what it is that God has ultimately called you to.

In verse 12, Paul talks about their liberty. In verses 13 and 14, he discusses their logic. Now, in verse 15, he gives a lesson. "Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid!"

This is the fourth time in chapter 6 that Paul uses this rhetorical question: "Do you not know this?" His implication is that they should know this, and if they don't, they need to. When they recognize this truth—that their bodies are members of Christ—it ought to change their behavioral reality. It should change the way they think and, therefore, the way they act.

When we recognize this truth, our bodies are the Lord's, and we are a part of Christ. That's why the church is called numerous times in the New Testament the body of Christ. If the world is going to see Christ, they will see Christ in us. Since we are members of Christ, we are part of Him, and He is part of us. Whatever we do, we engage Him in that activity. Therefore, if we engage in immoral fornication, we are mixing Christ up with all of that.

What is Paul's reaction to that? He says, "God forbid." It's actually just one two-letter word in Greek, and it has an absolute, simple, categorical no. "May it never be," Paul says.

In verse 16, he asks, "What? Know ye not that that which is joined to a harlot is one body? For two, says he, shall be one flesh; but he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit." Again, for the fifth time, he asks, "What? Don't you know that when you engage in sexual activity, you are becoming one with the individual you engage with?" This is the way that God created it.

In the beginning, God created man in His image. He created one man, and from that man, He made woman. He made two from one for the intended purpose that in marriage they would come together and become one once again. That's God's design. That's what He did. Through that marriage relationship and the joining together of those two, God would be honored and glorified. Man would see in the marriage relationship an illustration of what God desires to have with us: a oneness relationship.

with man. Beautifully illustrated in marriage. Can you not see why the enemy, our adversary the devil, is so intent upon destroying marriage? It is the most perfect illustration of the relationship God desires to have with His creation, with man.

So Paul says there is no such thing as casual sexual encounters because, in that sexual encounter, two individuals become one, and that is to be reserved only for marriage. As has been said many times, fire in the fireplace is wonderful, but fire in the living room is bad. Sex within marriage is glorious, as God intended it, as God created it. Outside of marriage, it has devastating effects.

Therefore, what is Paul's exhortation? Look at verse 18: "Flee fornication." Every sin that a man does is without his body or outside of his body, but he that commits fornication sins against his own body. Paul's exhortation is clear: flee fornication. Flee sexual immorality.

Don't try to be brave and stand against it. Don't try to determine with your immeasurable wisdom where the line is so you can get as close to it without crossing into immorality. Don't think that you're so spiritual that you can handle the temptation. The spiritual thing to do is not to handle it in your strength; it's to run the other way. It's to flee.

The word "flee" here, in the original language, can be defined as seeking safety by flight. Just get out. Just leave. Don't mess around with it. The most beautiful illustration of this in the Bible is in Genesis chapter 39, where we read about Joseph, one of the descendants of Israel. When he was in Egypt, he was overseeing the household affairs of a man by the name of Potiphar. Joseph was given authority over everything that was in Potiphar's house. There was only one thing that Potiphar kept back from Joseph: his wife.

But his wife had eyes for Joseph. She said, "That Hebrew guy is kind of cute." She kept enticing him, saying, "Come, lie with me." And he said, "Far be it from me. How could I sin?"

Against the Lord, how could one do this wickedness? He recognized that it was not just a sin against Potiphar; it was a sin against God. Paul reveals in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 that not only is it a sin against God, but it is also a sin against our own body. Unique among all sins, sexual immorality has a different characteristic than other sins. This does not mean it is worse than other sins; it is simply a sin against your own body. Therefore, he says to flee fornication and flee sexual immorality.

Throughout church history, some have misapplied this verse, claiming that Christians are to flee not only sexual immorality but sex in general. That is not what it says. God gave sex as a precious gift to mankind, using it powerfully to bond a husband and a wife together in a true one-flesh relationship and to illustrate the relationship He desires to have with man. He does not say to flee sex, but He does say to flee sexual immorality because it is a sin against one's own body.

Other sins against the body come from outside, as Paul says, and they are sinful in their excess. What does that mean? The other sins we engage in with the body are only sinful in excess, such as alcohol or gluttony with food. In Ephesians chapter 5, Paul states, "Do not be drunk with wine, which is dissipation or excess." His implication is that you can partake of wine and not sin if you do not get drunk with it. However, as soon as you step into the area of excess, it becomes sin. The same applies to food; you can eat food to live by, as it is necessary and needful. Yet, there is a point where eating in excess leads to gluttony.

Sexual immorality is different. It does not merely have to be done in excess to be considered sin. You just have to engage in it, and it is an internal issue, not just an external one. The word translated as fornication in the King James Bible and sexual immorality in the New King James is the Greek word "porneia." This term not only refers to physical sexually immoral acts but also includes acts done with the mind or the eyes, such as looking upon images, i.e., pornography. Thus, he states that this is a sin against your own body.

What does he mean by that? The Greeks believed that man was a dichotomy, meaning he had a body and a soul. However, the reality is that God created us as a trichotomy.

We have a body, a soul, and a spirit. When you sin in the area of sexual immorality, you are sinning at all three levels: the body, the soul, and the spirit. This sin affects the soul. Every sin causes us to be spiritually separated from God until it is made right through confession, repentance, and forgiveness. However, sexual immorality goes deeper; it impacts the psyche and the soul, remaining with the individual.

Perhaps no single sin has produced as much pain and dreadful diseases, weakened our constitution, and shortened our lives as sexual sin. Other vices, such as gluttony and drunkenness, are also against the body, but sexual sin affects us far more profoundly. It is carried with the individual.

Imagine five years ago, in a moment of weakness, you went to Hometown Buffet after church and engaged in gluttony. You recognized that you had sinned, confessed it, repented, and asked God for His forgiveness. I guarantee that this sin will not nag at you for the rest of your life. However, if ten years ago you engaged in sexual immorality, even after confessing it to the Lord and receiving forgiveness, it may still feel like a wound. Why? Because two became one and were torn apart, not as God intended, which is to take place only within the context of marriage.

A few weeks ago, while teaching at the Bible college, I asked my students what they thought a national revival in America would look like today. The first answer I received was particularly interesting: "We would do away with abortion." Following that, every other answer aligned with similar themes, suggesting various issues we would eliminate. This response stood out to me because, if there were a national revival in America today, we wouldn't need abortion clinics. Why? Because sexual immorality would be addressed, and ultimately, abortion is a result or symptom of that immorality.

The problem of sexual immorality has been a significant issue. Since 1973, with Roe v. Wade, the church has focused so much on the symptom rather than the originating problem. The problem is immorality; the problem is fornication. If we could eliminate that, all the abortion clinics would be gone. We have been fighting the wrong battle in prayer and in our efforts. The focus needs to be on immorality. Our culture is so filled with immorality and so focused on sex that you can't watch TV for five minutes without seeing at least two or three commercials for the blue pill. Clearly, we have a misfocused attention in our nation.

At the beginning of the 19th century, specifically in the 1820s, there was a movement called the Free Love Movement. It rose to its height in the late 1960s. Some of you were a part of that movement. The whole foundation of the Free Love Movement was that love and sex had to be unshackled from the bondage of marriage, religion, and the state. That was their entire focus: to unshackle and set free love and sex from those crazy prudes, religion, and the institution of marriage. They believed that if we could just do that, things would be great.

Well, what have we learned after almost 200 years of this? We've learned, number one, that it's not free, nor is it freeing, and it cannot be called love.

In verse 19, Paul poses a rhetorical question: "Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own?" For you were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.

Paul's sixth rhetorical question in chapter 6 is similar to one he asks in chapter 3: "Know ye not that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" In chapter 3, verse 16, the context of the passage was aimed at the body of Christ as a whole. "You, church, are the temple of the Holy Spirit." However, in chapter 6, verse 19, the focus is on the individual Christian: "You, Christian."

You are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and God's Spirit dwells in you. You are not your own. Those five words, "you are not your own," seem to be a great stumbling block for our culture. If we are stumbled by that, we have another litmus test in the book of 1 Corinthians to determine whether we are more affected by our culture or more influenced by the values of the Bible.

You are not your own. Why do we have such a strong aversion to this as Americans? I would suggest that it has something to do with our history as it relates to slavery. We want nothing to do with anything that has even a smidge to do with the reality that we belong to somebody else. This is one of the reasons that the free love movement wanted to get rid of marriage. They wanted to completely eliminate the institution of marriage because they see it as a slavery-type idea.

In the Roman Empire, 60% of the population were slaves—millions of them. This line of reasoning that Paul gives in verses 19 and 20 of 1 Corinthians chapter 6 is something that would have resonated perfectly with them. Why are you not your own? Because you've been purchased with a price.

Of course, we look at this as a dreadful thing, and it is. Anytime people are bought and sold as property, it is wrong. The Bible does not endorse it; it only tells us that this was the way it was at one point in time. Every abolitionist movement has always started with the Bible. These people understood the idea of buying and selling people as property. Paul states that you are not your own because you've been bought with a price.

Bought with a price by whom? By God. Well, who did we belong to before? Romans chapter 6 says you were slaves to sin and death. But Jesus came and died on the cross to redeem us, to purchase us, to buy us back—not with corruptible things like silver and gold, but with the precious blood of a lamb without spot or blemish, as Peter says. We were bought with a price.

But here's the interesting, paradoxical thing in verse 20: you, the church, are bought with...

Slavery is a mindset. In the mindset of a slave, if you were bought with a price, you didn't have a choice about whether or not you served your master. But here, God says, "I have redeemed you," and now He is asking us to use our will and make a decision to glorify Him in our bodies and in our spirits. How awesome is that? He has redeemed us and given us free moral agency to choose to honor Him with our bodies and our spirits or to dishonor Him, and therefore also dishonor ourselves.

We have a decision to make. Will we, by the power given to us by the Holy Spirit—because the Holy Spirit dwells in us, and we are the temple of the Holy Spirit—make a decision to renounce all those former things? Will we say, "I'm no longer going to walk in that which was gratifying to my flesh but destructive"? Instead, I will walk in that which honors and glorifies my Master, the one who redeemed me and doesn't treat me like a slave but treats me like a son.

Oh, that we would recognize this! We are not our own, and that realization would transform the way we live. Can you imagine the evangelistic potential of the entire body of Christ living in such a way that we recognize we are God's property? We are to live in a way that glorifies Him. What would that mean to our culture? I don't even know if we can imagine the awesomeness of what would come if we lived in a way that we would lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of us.

That's my prayer in my own life; that's my prayer for this church. I hope we would live in a way that is glorifying to the Lord and honoring to Him, so that our culture, our world around us, would see it. Amen.

Let's stand and pray. Father, we do recognize that we were created for such a higher purpose than that of just beasts of the field, to simply eat and procreate. Lord, You've created us for far more than that—to bring glory to You, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. God, I ask that You would move in our hearts so that we would do just that; we would offer ourselves as living sacrifices.

That are holy and acceptable to You. It's the only right reaction, the only reasonable service, Lord, that we would prove, show, or demonstrate to this world what is perfect, good, and right about Your will and Your way.

Our culture around us would see demonstrated in us Your life and Your grace. Because we belong to You, we know that men will judge You as they look upon us. So, Lord, I pray that we represent You well, and that on the day of Christ Jesus, we hear You say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant."

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.