Against a Life of Bodily Indulgence: the Body Is for the Lord (1 Corinthians 6:12–19)

Having driven away evident sins by fear of the loss of the kingdom and by the remembrance of the great gifts of grace in Christ, stirring up zeal for inner purity, or abstinence from all pleasure of the flesh, holy Paul now turns to building purity in their hearts, drawing them away from sympathy with such deeds in which fleshly indulgence is most manifest, namely—a) toward gluttony, and b) toward fornication.

1 Cor. 6:12. All things are lawful to me, but not all things are profitable: all things are lawful to me, but I will not be enslaved by anything.

“All things are lawful to me.” Judging from what is said in the next verse, which is directly connected to this one, concerning food, it seems that in the words “all things are lawful to me,” the meaning is: I am permitted to eat every kind of food. But one can understand here generally the gratification of all the senses—sight, hearing, smell and touch, and the satisfaction of all bodily needs, besides food—such as sleep, rest, cooling, and washing, in general all comforts of the flesh. The Apostle presents here someone who, having surveyed all these comforts, says: “all things are lawful to me.” That is, I can freely use all this. Perhaps such language was borrowed from the very lips of the Apostle himself, who abandoned the Law that bound: “do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” and proclaimed to all complete freedom in this regard. But whereas Saint Paul added at the same time: “only see that this freedom does not become a stumbling-block to the flesh” (Gal. 5:13), others forgot this limitation and dwelt more on freedom and lack of restraint, and perhaps indeed restrained themselves in nothing—not only by the Law, but even by a measure of prudence. Since such freedom is very dangerous, because in developing the sensual life, it thereby diminishes and altogether extinguishes the spiritual life, and especially because it prepares lustful stirrings and exposes one to the danger of falling into fornication, in which is death, Saint Paul hastens to bring such people to their senses. He takes the saying of each such person: “all things are lawful to me,” and says as it were: yes, “all things are lawful to me, but not all things are profitable; all things are lawful to me, but I will not be enslaved by anything.” He lays two limitations on the freedom to use all things: the first—profit, the second—that I be enslaved by nothing.

God gave you a body and placed in it needs necessary for the sustaining of its life, and scattered abroad in nature goods by which these needs are satisfied. Use all. The blessing of God is spoken in the very fact that all this was created, and created for you. But use it only within the bounds of profit. If we had only a bodily life, one could interpret this thus: within the bounds of profit for the body. But since we are not body only, but also soul, it is necessary to add: within the bounds of profit for the soul as well. And the first already greatly limits much, both with regard to kinds of pleasure and with regard to their measure and other characteristics. But when we add the second, it will exclude very much from the list of what seemed “lawful.” And this is in the natural order of life. But if we take into account the order of grace-filled life, which begins precisely with self-denial and is conducted entirely with a view to seeking the things above, minding heavenly things and not earthly, then there will remain only what is essentially necessary; everything else will be reckoned as not profitable and consequently excluded from what is lawful, though at the beginning it might not have been so. Thus it is evident that the Apostle does not bind those already bound: he does not lay external bonds of the Law, but establishes a commandment of strict self-limitation.

The second limitation: “I will not be enslaved by anything.” In our body there lies a certain law of habit, by which a pleasure now tasted will be sought again by the body tomorrow at the same hour. If satisfied tomorrow, the demand will repeat itself on the third day with greater force. Further and further, finally a habit forms—a need to satisfy the body in a certain way and to a certain measure, which replaces the simple natural need. Habit is a bond. Whereas a natural need only demands and does not bind, habit binds, designating the object, the time, and the measure. The more habits, the more bonds and chains. One can attach several habits to every simple need and be thereby bound hand and foot. This is the same as, dreaming of freedom, to be in shameful slavery to one’s sensuality. This is incomparably worse than slavery to the Law. For “do not touch, do not taste, do not handle”—all this had good moral aims. Against this the Apostle warns: let all things be lawful to you; but do not bind yourself to anything. Be like a bird, freely soaring in the spaces of air. But this leads to the same result as the limitation by profit. In order not to bind yourself with sensual habits, you must deny yourself sensual pleasures, allowing only what is essentially necessary.

Theodoret seems to understand in this place a limitation of sensual pleasures in general; while Saint Chrysostom—a limitation regarding food alone. Here are his words: “Here the Apostle speaks against gluttons. Intending presently to condemn fornication and knowing that this sin comes from excess and intemperance, he strikes hard against this passion. One can, he says, eat and drink, but it is not profitable to eat and drink immoderately. He turns them from this, first, as unprofitable: ‘not all things are profitable,’ and secondly, as leading to its opposite: ‘but I will not be enslaved by anything.’ The meaning of his words is this: you are master of eating; preserve then your mastery and see that you do not become a slave to this desire. Whoever uses it properly is master of it; but whoever indulges immoderately has no power, but becomes enslaved to immoderation. If you are not temperate, then you do not have power over your belly, but it has power over you.”

1 Cor. 6:13. Food for the belly and the belly for food; but God will bring to nothing both the one and the other.

“If you wish to use freedom in this (that is, in food), then use it, because food was created for the belly. But you ought to know that there will be an end to this, for beyond the grave food is superfluous for people, and the future life has nothing of the sort; in it, according to the word of the Lord, just as ‘they neither marry nor are given in marriage’ (Matt. 22:30), so neither do they eat nor drink. The word ‘will bring to nothing,’ the Apostle uses prophetically” (Theodoret). This same thought is also in Saint Chrysostom. Here are the words of Photius in Oecumenius: “If we simply take food in the sense of nourishment and belly in the sense of a receptacle of food, then the words that follow are better taken as a prophecy about the state in the age to come: ‘God will bring to nothing both the one and the other,’—as if to say: but both of them will be done away with after the resurrection, as unnecessary; for then God will transform us into incorruption, so that we will have need neither of food nor of a receptacle for food—the belly. The meaning of the words: ‘food for the belly and the belly for food’ will be this: they provoke and excite each other and seek each other. The appetite of the belly seeks food, and food in turn excites and stimulates the appetite. But God after the resurrection will make them unnecessary. Therefore, we should not be overly concerned with what is destined to be done away with.” Previously the use of fleshly pleasures, including food, was limited by the Apostle to profit and to not allowing oneself to be enslaved by them. Here, placing our present state before the face of the future, he draws from this a new incentive to temperance and moderation. In the age to come, he says, there will be neither food nor belly; therefore one must take care to root out every gluttony and attachment to food from the soul through strict abstinence, otherwise the soul, passing into the age to come with these attachments and finding nothing there to satisfy them, will languish and carry hell within itself. If there will be no belly or food there at all, then in preparing for that life, one must in this life reduce them to the smallest possible measure. How rationally do the great ascetics act in this regard!

What a view of the future life is revealed in this word of blessed Theodoret! There will be no food, no belly, consequently—no appetites of the belly, consequently—no marriages, consequently—no family relations, consequently—nothing of earthly life. The whole order of life there will be different. If the purpose of this present life is preparation for the future one, then how wisely do those act who separate themselves from all the arrangements of this life, in order to pass into that other life unbound by any ties!

In a few words the Apostle said very much against sensual pleasures in general, especially against gluttony, in order to prepare the way for his word condemning fornication, and to clear the path for the ascetic from sensual delights and gluttony to victory over the movements of fleshly lust.

1 Cor. 6:13. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

Having taught concerning chastity in living, he now begins to teach about chastity of conduct. Incentives to preserve chastity could be drawn from the natural dignity of man; but the Apostle Paul, passing over nature, borrows them from the essence of Christian faith.

“Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” The Lord—the Head, as God and man, consisting of soul and body; we are mysteriously His members, not by the soul alone, but also by the body; consequently, He ought to belong to us and we ought to serve Him both by soul and by body. In consequence of this our body ought also to belong to the Lord and serve Him together with the soul.

But how is “the Lord for the body”? — The Lord became incarnate in order to enter into communion with us, with all our nature received from us. And He is pleased to enter into such communion mysteriously—with the soul by His Godhead and His soul, and with the body by His Godhead and His body. In this respect He is pleased to grant our body to partake of Him, or to be also to the body. This passage is somewhat obscure. To shed some light on it, we should not in our thoughts separate body from soul in ourselves, but in the Lord we should contemplate the entire God-man.

Saint Chrysostom says: “The body was not created so that you would live intemperately and commit adultery; neither was the belly created so that you would give yourself to gluttony; but so that it would serve Christ as the Head, and He would be ‘Lord of the body.’ Let us therefore be ashamed and afraid that we, having been deemed worthy of such honor and become His members, we who are under Him as our head, have dishonored ourselves with such vices.” Theodoret writes: “The Apostle often calls the Lord our Head. Therefore the body is joined to Him as to the head.”

Fornication is understood here not as the natural function of the body, but as a misuse of nature; therefore a sober life in marriage does not make the body not to belong to the Lord, for in marriage it does not go beyond His will and obedience to Him.

1 Cor. 6:14. And God both raised the Lord and will raise us up by His power.

To what is this spoken? — This is, as it were, an answer to the question: how can the body be the Lord’s and the Lord be the body’s when our body dies and decays? The Apostle answers to this: “If our body is a member of Christ, and Christ is risen, then the body also will surely follow its Head” (Saint Chrysostom). “He is raised; so will God who raised Him raise us up by His power” (Theodoret). But at the same time, by rousing the thought of the radiance of the risen body of the Lord, he causes one to imagine in what radiance our body will rise, and in this he prepares the strongest incentive to flee fornication, which darkens the soul and body. The representation of the radiance of the future body served all ascetics as a powerful incentive to refine it as much as possible, and especially not to allow lustful stirrings. When any of them, by the grace of God, was deemed worthy of lust growing faint and dying within them, it was said of them that they had before the universal resurrection tasted the power of it. Some of them, when moved by gracious impulses during prayer, sometimes became entirely radiant; in others the face was illuminated, in others the hands were raised to heaven. These were all tangible signs of their tasting the power of the future resurrection.

The Apostle said that God will raise us up “by His power” in order to “since he mentioned a matter incomprehensible and beyond the grasp of reason’s understanding, by certain might He might shut the mouths of the unbelievers who challenge the Raiser of the resurrection. And do not be troubled that he ascribes the resurrection of Christ to the Father. Such an expression does not mean that Christ is powerless, for He Himself says: ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’ (Jn. 2:19); and again: ‘I have power to lay down My life, and I have power to take it again’ (Jn. 10:18). And Luke in the book of Acts says: ‘He presented Himself alive’ (1 Cor. 1:3). Why then does Paul use such an expression? Because what belongs to the Son is ascribed to the Father, and what belongs to the Father is ascribed to the Son; ‘whatever He does, the Son also does likewise’ (Jn. 5:19)” (Saint Chrysostom).

1 Cor. 6:15. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not!

What he said before: “the body is the Lord’s,” he now says again in the words: “your bodies are members of Christ.” Here he repeats this with greater precision in order to draw out how unseemly is fornication in a Christian, how senseless and terrifying. The very truth that we are members of Christ is proclaimed everywhere by the Apostle. In baptism, renouncing Satan and all his works, we are united to Christ in our entirety. This union is mysterious. It is more tangible in the moral grace-filled order of the Christian spirit, by virtue of which Christians have, let us say, a heartfelt inclination toward the Lord Christ and an awareness that they are His. Thus children always incline toward their father and mother. But we must assume that there is also another union, though not tangible, yet real, into which participation our body also enters. All planets are united with the sun, and the sun with the planets. This is a dynamic union, but the forces uniting them are material; something similar exists between the Lord and the believers. Perhaps this comes about by means of the light-filled, all-penetrating element, to which the glorified body of the Lord is akin, and which is akin to the vital forces of our body, which lighten the soul. If we accept this, then we will to some degree see how indeed our bodies are members of Christ, not only on account of the moral and grace-filled union with the Lord, but also in another way, though not without dependence on that union.

But our explanations add nothing to the certainty of the apostolic position that our bodies are members of Christ. This we must accept with childlike faith, without speculation, and in the meaning that the words give. So take this truth and from it look at what fornication is. Here it is: you take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot. “Nothing can be more terrible than these words. He did not say: taking the members of Christ, I join them with a harlot (once), but what? — ‘make them members of a harlot’ (so they will remain). Such an expression is far more striking” (Saint Chrysostom). “The Apostle greatly heightened the force of the transgression by calling our members the members of Christ. They are no longer yours, he says, but Christ’s, so how do you make them members of a harlot?” (Theodoret). “Who will not be terrified by these words—to take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot?” (Theophylact). The conclusion is thus obvious; it remains to explain how this actually comes to pass with the fornicator, which is what the holy Apostle does, saying:

1 Cor. 6:16. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For, He says, the two shall become one flesh.

“Cleaving to one another, the two can no longer be two, but both become one” (Saint Chrysostom). He who is to be one with Christ is torn away from Christ and becomes one with a harlot. By what law? — By the law of the original institution of marriage. But surely the married man also becomes one with his wife, why is he not rebuked? The married couple both remain in the order of the will of God and of Christ; both are Christ’s. But the harlot is not Christ’s; she is a servant of Satan. He who unites himself with her, though in his action resembles the married, yet in essence is opposite to them, and he tears his body and himself away from Christ and through union with the harlot casts himself into a realm opposed to Him, a Satanic realm. Blessed Theodoret writes: “Not without reason did the Apostle apply what was said of the conjugal union to fornication, because both in essence amount to the same thing; the difference lies only in the lawfulness and unlawfulness of the deed. Therefore he says that he who cleaves to a harlot makes his members ‘members of a harlot,’ while he who unites himself with the Lord makes his members ‘members of Christ.’ So if you have united yourself with the Lord and again go to a harlot, the outrage extends to the very Master, because you give His members to the harlot and make the members of the Master ‘members of a harlot.’”

The Christian body is pure and holy and akin to the body of Christ, being in mysterious union with it. The lustful passion, even as it is born and draws the soul, makes the body dark and foul; but when fornication is actually committed, the darkness becomes impenetrable and the foulness unbearable. But those of the flesh do not see or feel this; it is seen and felt by spiritual people and by angels. There are many accounts of this. If one were to strip the fornicator of the gross covering of the body and leave him as he is in the soul, clothed in the vital force of the body, one would see a figure of impenetrably dark and foul man, emitting unbearable stench. Meanwhile, this very thing, so dark and foul, was radiant and fragrant with the radiance and fragrance of Christ’s body, with which it was in living relation. Being such, it was the Lord’s, appropriated to Himself by Him. When they begin to incline toward fornication, they begin to darken and be torn away from the Lord. Fornication itself completely tears one away from Him, for what is dark and foul cannot be one with the Lord.

1 Cor. 6:17. But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.

They are joined to the Lord by faith, by the mysteries, and by the dedication of their entire life to Him. Whoever is such naturally becomes one spirit with the Lord. What does it mean: “one spirit with the Lord”? — The same as when they say: such people live soul to soul. He who is joined to the Lord abides in the Lord, and the Lord abides in him. Therefore he lives only and entirely for the Lord and in every way strives to enter into the Lord’s intentions, views, and plans, so as to allow nothing contrary to the Lord. Oecumenius writes: “Such a man, though bound in the body, becomes spiritual through the fact that he does nothing fleshly. Or he is such because, being united to Christ through the Holy Spirit, he cleaves to Him through spiritual deeds.” He also cites the words of Photius: “He is united, wholly becomes spiritual through union with the Lord. He is not swept away by fleshly passions, is not divided within himself into a duality, serving both God and mammon, but is wholly unified and wholly spiritual, raised up into unity of spirit.”

Why does the Apostle speak of this? — So that the opposition between the two activities might be more striking—one remaining one spirit with the Lord, while the other unites with a harlot and through her becomes friends with Satan. He speaks as it were: behold the fruits of that; see what this one receives! Look, compare, and choose. The fact that there it says “one body with the harlot” and here “one spirit with the Lord” should not trouble the mind. For even there the body is not without the soul, and here the spirit is not without the body. The Apostle only sets forth the predominantly operative parts of our nature in one case and the other. His purpose is to point to the consequences, to draw away from fornication and to inspire one to remain one with the Lord.

1 Cor. 6:18. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man commits is outside the body, but he who commits fornication sins against his own body.

“He did not say: abstain from fornication, but: ‘flee,’ that is, strive carefully to distance yourselves from this vice. What he sets forth here as an incentive is less important than what was said before; but, speaking of fornicators, he condemns their sin from all sides and shows the importance of their guilt, both great and small; the former was said for the more reverent, and the latter for the weaker. The wisdom of Paul is revealed also in that he instructs by presenting not only what is great, but also what is small, and shameful, and unseemly” (Saint Chrysostom).

But what is the meaning: “every sin is outside the body, but he who commits fornication sins against his own body”? — Some say: other sins, though committed by members of the body as instruments, yet the sin itself is outside the body; in fornication, however, the sin itself is in the body. Others say: other sins are committed with one particular member, which is defiled, but fornication defiles the whole body. Still others say: the fornicator sins against his own body because it is depleted by fornication, a part of it is torn away and cast away senseless. We draw from our commentators:

Saint Chrysostom says: “You might say, does not the murderer, the covetous man, and the robber defile their hands? This is known to everyone (that is, that they do defile them). But the Apostle wished to express the thought that there is none worse than the fornicator, and since he did not want to say this directly, he otherwise depicts the seriousness of this sin, explaining that from fornication the whole body becomes unclean; it is defiled as if it had fallen into a dirty vessel filled with filth. Therefore it is our custom that after acts of greed and vengeance no one takes care to wash himself, but goes straight home; but after fornication people go to wash themselves, as if having become wholly unclean; so conscience is ashamed above all of this sin! The gravity of it—both this sin and greed—and both avarice and fornication cast one into hell; but, making every provision, holy Paul shows the seriousness of adultery to all by every means he can.” Theodoret writes almost the same: “Who commits thousands of other sins: breaks oaths, defiles his tongue with blasphemies, appropriates what is in no way his, does not feel the sin so acutely; but he who has become enslaved to depravity, immediately upon committing the sin feels the evil and loathes his very body. Therefore, resorting to bathing, he washes his body with the idea that by this he will cast off some of the foulness.” Oecumenius: “Other sins are born from a passion of the soul, such as vainglory, greed, envy; but in fornication the source of lust comes from the body itself.” He also cites the opinion of Saint Athanasius: “Other sins cause harm to the soul alone; but fornication debases and destroys both soul and body, exhausting the spiritual and vital force”; and Photius: “The fornicator brings evil to this very body and to himself, which does not happen in any other sin. Other sinners bring harm to others, but the fornicator does evil to himself.”

He who is enslaved to this passion soon exhausts the forces of body and soul and goes down to the grave. In this he is much like the drunkard; what could be said of both, the Apostle attributed to the fornicator alone, because it is he who is being discussed. The fornicator thinks that he is gratifying himself, but in reality he is preparing himself a grave.

1 Cor. 6:19. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price (1 Cor. 6:20).

Above he said that the body is the Lord’s and that our bodies are members of Christ; now he says that our bodies are temples of the Spirit. We must assume that our bodies are members of Christ in one way and temples of the Spirit in another way. For Christ is embodied; the Spirit is bodiless. Therefore, though it is incomprehensible to us how, yet it is possible for our body to have a relation to the body of the Lord; but it is possible for the body to have a relation to the Spirit of God not directly, but through the spirit of man. The body is the dwelling-place of the human spirit. The Spirit of God descends into the human spirit and dwells in it, and through it also in the body. — “Whom you have from God.” All Christians are bearers of the Spirit. In chrismation they receive the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit, and from then on they have the anointing from the Holy Spirit. This makes them Christian; in this is the pledge of the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven. So what then? Having said “your bodies are members of Christ,” he drew the conclusion: “shall I take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot?” But what conclusion is to be drawn from the fact that “our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit”? The Apostle is silent about this, leaving it for those who read and will read his epistle to understand. In other places he said: “do not grieve the Holy Spirit, do not quench the Spirit.” Similarly it is to be understood here. Your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit: do not therefore defile them with unclean lusts and shameful deeds, and do not defile your spirit with unclean thoughts and desires, so as not to drive away the Spirit of God, who is most pure. For, as smoke drives away bees, so these impurities drive away the Spirit (Theophylact).

“And you are not your own; for you were bought at a price.” This is yet another incentive to flee fornication. You are not your own; you have been purchased. Consequently, you cannot do with yourselves as you wish. As slaves must obey their masters in all things, so you must be obedient in all things to the Master who bought you and not depart from His will. But it is not pleasing to Him that you commit fornication and do with your body as you see fit. It is His, as is also your soul. Saint Chrysostom says: “‘You are not your own.’ This serves not only to condemn but also to inspire virtue. How, he says, can you do whatever you wish? You have no power over yourself. By saying ‘you are not your own,’ he does not take away freedom, but turns us away from vice and shows the Lord’s care for us. He desires to establish us, so that we do not sin and follow the vile desires of the soul. We have many vile desires, but we must abstain, because we are not our own but ‘bought at a price.’ He reminds us of the greatness of the beneficence and the manner of our salvation, showing that we were redeemed when we were alienated from Him, and not simply, but ‘at a price.’” Clearly, at the price of the blood of the Only-Begotten Son of God. “The blood of the Lord has been poured out for you; you belong to Him and must live according to His laws” (Theodoret). “So dearly have you been redeemed from the domain of Satan; do not cast yourselves back into it through fornication” (Oecumenius).