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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - 1 Corinthians 6:13 - 6:13
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13. τὰ βρώματα τῇ κοιλίᾳ καὶ ἡ κοιλία τοῖς βρώμασιν. Foods for the belly and the belly for foods. St Paul here points out that the view of these questions taken by himself is the very reverse of that taken by the Corinthians. To them fornication is a light matter, and the question of food offered to idols of supreme importance. To him fornication is a violation of the first principles of human society, the eating or refraining from certain kinds of food a thing in itself entirely indifferent.
ὁ δὲ θεὸς καὶ ταύτην καὶ ταῦτα καταργήσει. Both foods and that which digests them are perishable things. They therefore shall one day become useless, and therefore cease to be. For καταργήσει see notes on ch. 1Co 1:28, 1Co 13:8.
τό δὲ σῶμα οὐ τῇ πορνείᾳ. St Paul is led, by the importance he attaches to this point, to treat it first. The abominable licentiousness of heathen cities in general, and of Corinth in particular (see Dean Stanley’s note on 1Co 6:12) had led to a general conviction that the body was for fornication. St Paul contradicts this, and most emphatically proclaims that what was always permitted among heathens, and even in some cases enjoined as a religious rite, was distinctly in itself an unlawful act, not excusable on the plea of necessity, which he had admitted in the case of meats, nor, like them, a question of ‘nicely calculated less or more,’ but contrary to the laws laid down by God for man, and calculated to deprive men of the blessings of the Resurrection.
ἀλλὰ τῷ κυρίῳ. It is noteworthy that St Paul does not say that the body will be brought to nought. There is a sense in which it will, but (see ch. 15) another and more important sense in which it will not.
καὶ ὁ κύριος τῷ σώματι. It was to save the body originally designed for Him, that Christ came. See Rom 7:11; Eph 5:23; Php 3:21. Also 1Co 6:20, ch. 1Co 15:36-44, and the article in the Apostles’ Creed, ‘I believe in the Resurrection of the Body.’