Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.” But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honour God with your body.
1 Cor 6:15-20
We Christians are united to Christ so it is abominable to take the members of Christ and subject them to pollution and sin. Christ was pure – wholly pure. If we are united in him we need to be committed to be pure. Shall that which is pure be prostituted with impure and unholy? It is clear that to lie with another human being in an act of love making unites us physically in ways that are deeper than we can know. When we become one body with another there is something mystical and deep about the union. It was created by God to be like that to express the oneness and commitment to the other person. Sexual love ought to be reserved for the deepest possible relationships. Just like we can have few deep relationships and many shallow ones, so too we can have only one total relationship. Paul is saying how then can a man become one body with a prostitute? Something happens inside of us when we have sexual union with someone. There is a total act of sharing that has taken place. Or at least ought to be. But if nothing else, soul ties or emotional bonds are formed which are hard if not impossible to break.
All sin has consequences, but sexual sin brings especially damaging results. Here are some of the consequences of sexual sin:
- We grieve God
- We quench the Holy Spirit’s activity in our life
- Our relationship with our spouse (current or future) is damaged
- Our memory is filled with sexual images for future temptation
- We may contract a sexually transmitted disease or AIDS
- Emotional confusion takes place.
- Distorted understanding of true love (corrupted by lust or other selfishness)
- Increased promiscuity, in attempt to find true intimacy and love
Sexual memories are created in our brains by special hormones released during sexual arousal. These memories keep us in bondage to lust. A whole lot more goes on than ever we imagine. Who would ever have thought we would have the problems of AIDs which we have world wide because of sexual freedom? Could it be that God knew there would be consequences far beyond our imaginations and warned us of this fact way back when? Yes sexual sin is a sin against our own bodies – way more than we will ever know.
Primarily Paul is trying to demonstrate the abhorrence of mixing Christ with sin, especially sexual sin. Imagine taking something so holy and mixing it with something so unholy. Paul is trying to shock the Corinthians into abstaining from the temple practices. But his argument runs far deeper than that; probably far deeper than ever Paul himself realised because it was God who was inspiring him to write about matters for which he did not have full comprehension.
To defeat temptation you must first recognize how it happens.
Anon
Don’t let the sadness of your past and the fear of your future ruin the happiness of your present.
Linnea Sinclair