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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - 1 Corinthians 6:13 - 6:13
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But God shall bring to nought both it and them (ho de theos kai tautēn kai tauta katargēsei). Another proverb about the adaptation of the belly (koilia) and food (brōmata, not just flesh), which had apparently been used by some in Corinth to justify sexual license (fornication and adultery). These Gentiles mixed up matters not alike at all (questions of food and sensuality). “We have traces of this gross moral confusion in the circumstances which dictated the Apostolic Letter (Act 15:23-29), where things wholly diverse are combined, as directions about meats to be avoided and a prohibition of fornication” (Lightfoot). Both the belly (tautēn) and the foods (tauta) God will bring to an end by death and change.
But the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body (to de sōma ou tēi porneiāi alla tōi kuriōi kai ho kurios tōi sōmati). Paul here boldly shows the fallacy in the parallel about appetite of the belly for food. The human body has a higher mission than the mere gratification of sensual appetite. Sex is of God for the propagation of the race, not for prostitution. Paul had already stated that God dwells in us as the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit (1Co 3:16.). This higher function of the body he here puts forward against the debased Greek philosophy of the time which ignored completely Paul’s idea, “the body for the Lord and the Lord for the body” (dative of personal interest in both cases). “The Lord Jesus and porneia contested for the bodies of Christian men; loyal to him they must renounce that, yielding to that they renounce him” (Findlay).