1 Corinthians 6King James Version
Lawsuits among believers. Why do ye not rather take wrong? Then a list of the unrighteous who shall not inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, ye are sanctified. Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you? Glorify God in your body.
Paul addresses two distinct problems: Corinthian believers suing each other in pagan courts, and sexual immorality. On lawsuits, he argues that the church should handle its own disputes, appealing to its future role in judging the world and angels. On sexual sin, he grounds his argument in theology of the body: the body is for the Lord, it will be raised, and it is a member of Christ and a temple of the Holy Spirit. Sexual sin is uniquely self-destructive.
The body is not a disposable shell. Because Christ redeemed it and the Spirit inhabits it, what you do physically is spiritually significant. Casual sex is not a private matter.
"What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" (6:19) Paul relocates the temple from a building to a body, making personal moral choices a theological rather than merely ethical question.
The courts of Corinth were presided over by Roman magistrates, part of the imperial system. Using them to settle disputes between believers would have meant airing community grievances before pagan officials who had no framework for adjudicating claims rooted in a shared covenant life. Paul sees this as both a public embarrassment and a failure of confidence in the community's own moral resources.
Paul speaks in the second person plural throughout, addressing the community as a whole, not individual sinners. The rhetorical questions pile up rapidly, each beginning with a variation of 'know ye not,' exposing what the Corinthians should already understand. The Holy Spirit appears as the resident of each believer's body.
Corinth's reputation for sexual permissiveness was encoded in the ancient verb 'to corinthianize,' which meant to practice prostitution. The city had a significant commercial sex industry tied partly to its port trade. Against that backdrop, Paul insists that becoming 'one flesh' with a prostitute is spiritually meaningful, not trivially physical. The bodily resurrection makes embodied choices matter eternally.
There is urgency and even alarm in the rapid-fire rhetorical questions. Paul is not lecturing from a comfortable distance. He is trying to break through a casual attitude toward the body that he finds genuinely dangerous for people he cares about.
1Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?
2Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?
3Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?
4If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.
5I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren?
6But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers.
7Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?
8Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.
9Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
10Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
11And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
12All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.
13Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.
14And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power.
15Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.
16What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.
17But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.
18Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.
19What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
20For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.