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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - 1 Corinthians 6:18 - 6:18
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Flee (pheugete). Present imperative. Have the habit of fleeing without delay or parley. Note abruptness of the asyndeton with no connectives. Fornication violates Christ’s rights in our bodies (1Co 6:13-17) and also ruins the body itself.
Without the body (ektos tou sōmatos). Even gluttony and drunkenness and the use of dope are sins wrought on the body, not “within the body” (entos tou sōmatos) in the same sense as fornication. Perhaps the dominant idea of Paul is that fornication, as already shown, breaks the mystic bond between the body and Christ and hence the fornicator (ho porneuōn) sins against his own body (eis to idion sōma hamartanei) in a sense not true of other dreadful sins. The fornicator takes his body which belongs to Christ and unites it with a harlot. In fornication the body is the instrument of sin and becomes the subject of the damage wrought. In another sense fornication brings on one’s own body the two most terrible bodily diseases that are still incurable (gonorrhea and syphilis) that curse one’s own body and transmit the curse to the third and fourth generation. Apart from the high view given here by Paul of the relation of the body to the Lord no possible father or mother has the right to lay the hand of such terrible diseases and disaster on their children and children’s children. The moral and physical rottenness wrought by immorality defy one’s imagination.