“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
— 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Context & Key Themes
Chapter six continues the moral corrections Paul began in chapter five, but with two distinct problems joined by a single theological thread. First, Paul addresses the fact that Corinthian believers were taking one another to court — airing disputes in front of pagan judges rather than settling them within the church. Second, he returns to sexual ethics, specifically the problem of believers visiting prostitutes, and the theology of the body that makes such behavior incompatible with union with Christ. What holds the two halves together is the question of what it means to belong to Christ. The believer’s body and the believer’s disputes both belong to the Lord they have been joined to. Both therefore need to be handled accordingly.
The chapter also contains one of the most important vice lists in Paul, followed by one of the most important grace declarations. Paul warns that those who practice a catalog of serious sins will not inherit the kingdom of God — and then adds the sentence that has been carrying Christian hope ever since: and such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. The list is not describing the Corinthians as they are. It is describing what they were before Christ.
Summary
Paul opens with a direct challenge. When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life? If you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? Paul’s point is sharp: the eschatological future of the saints — who will share in the judgment of the world and even angels in the age to come — makes it absurd that they cannot handle ordinary civil disputes now.
Paul says this to their shame. Can it be that there is no one among them wise enough to settle a dispute between brothers? Instead, brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers. To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But instead they themselves wrong and defraud, even their own brothers.
From there Paul moves into the vice list. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. The three verbs — washed, sanctified, justified — summarize the whole gospel transaction. The Corinthians did not bring themselves out of that list by their effort. They were brought out by Christ’s work applied to them through the Spirit.
Paul then shifts to the sexual ethics section, quoting what appears to be a Corinthian slogan and correcting it. All things are lawful for me, they were saying — but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me — but he will not be dominated by anything. Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both, they were apparently reasoning, treating sex as morally equivalent to eating, since both were bodily appetites God would eventually do away with. Paul refuses the comparison. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. The body is not disposable. It is destined for resurrection.
Paul then pushes into the heart of the argument. 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 prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. The chapter closes on that command, grounded in the purchase that has already occurred.
Reflection
The lawsuit section of the chapter is often skipped in contemporary reading, but it carries more weight than is usually noticed. Paul is not forbidding Christians from ever using civil courts — he himself appealed to Caesar in Acts — but he is insisting that disputes between believers ought to be handled within the community of faith rather than adjudicated by outsiders. The reason is theological, not merely pragmatic. The church is a community already being formed for the work of judging the world in the age to come. If that future is real, the inability to handle present disputes internally is a deep incongruity. And the posture Paul urges is even more startling — why not rather suffer wrong? The willingness to absorb loss rather than wound the body of Christ is itself evidence that the cross has been understood.
The vice list and its aftermath deserve careful reading. The list is severe, and Paul does not soften it. Certain patterns of life, practiced without repentance and turned into settled identity, are incompatible with inheriting the kingdom. But the sentence that follows — and such were some of you — is the gospel in miniature. The past tense matters. Some of the Corinthians had been defined by these sins. They were not any longer. Not because they had talked themselves out of their pasts, and not because Paul was using euphemism, but because washing, sanctification, and justification had actually occurred. The three verbs name what Christ does for anyone who comes to him from that list or any list like it. No one is trapped in the identity the world assigned them before Christ touched them. That is the letter’s whole pastoral hope in one sentence.
The body-as-temple passage is where Paul’s argument lands with its full weight. Corinth had numerous temples to pagan deities, many of which involved ritual prostitution, and the Corinthian believers had apparently been reasoning that using prostitutes was morally no different than satisfying any other appetite. Paul’s response demolishes the premise by raising the stakes. Sexual union is not a trivial transaction but a one flesh union, and the believer’s body is already in one-spirit union with Christ. Joining the two produces an intolerable contradiction — Christ’s members made members of a prostitute, the temple of the Holy Spirit turned into a venue for what desecrates it. The believer does not have ownership of the body. It has been purchased. The only appropriate use of what belongs to another is to glorify the owner. The body is not yours to use, but it is also not something you are trapped in. It has a destiny — resurrection — and a present vocation, which is to be the temple through which God’s glory shows in the world. The Corinthians had been treating the body as disposable appetite. Paul is handing it back to them as sacred architecture.