Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro:

How do you response to gifts this Christmas?

Thankfulness

Care

How does the giver feel when you don’t take care of the hard earned, well thought out gifts that have been given?

Context: Paul is continuing to address sin in the Corinthian church and he is trying to pastor the hearts of the people in relationship with the culture around them.

The culture is always hammering the church with philosophies and practices that are anti-gospel and anti-god.

Pastors and elders must constantly be aware of the culture influences and be prepared to weigh those influence against the culture so that God’s people continue to walk in holiness.

For the Corinthians, we have already seen how the Greek influences of the lust for knowledge and wisdom had a major impact on the church.

Paul had to address these issues in the first few chapters of first Corinthians in order to apply God's word and lead the people in Corinth to holiness instead of cultural appropriateness.

Now Paul deals with another cultural issue in the church as he continues the subject of sexual sin.

It was common for the Corinthian people to devalue the body, and, therefore think that the body itself made up of them of organic material alone should have its desires met, but those desires did not pose any moral or ethical problem.

An example would be as Paul states that just as food is given to the body for nourishment, so sexual gratification was just another way to satisfy the hunger of the material flesh neither eating, nor in morality were considered a problem since they were just organic issues.

As Paul addresses the sexual sin, in chapter 5, he returns to address the temptation for Christian believers in Corinth to think in similar terms about the body.

It is clear from these verses that these Christians would claim Christian liberty to do whatever pleases them and their bodies, and to justify that action by devaluing the body itself.

Paul wants them to consider the gift that the body is to us all as humans and the purposes that the Lord has for our bodies in the context of marriage and beyond.

Our focus today and next week will be to see how the Lord desires for his people to look at the body differently than the surrounding culture, and Paul’s day and today.

1.

His Purpose

We will spend our time look at verse 12-14 and considering the purposes of the human body that the Lord intended when he made humans from a biological perspective that is related to the spiritual realm.

God did not create humans to be spirits alone.

He also did not just make us a animated matter.

He actually created us with a spirit and with a body, both functioning in unison to make the whole man/woman.

These passages are a clear testament to the importance of the human body and the design of that body that God has gifted each person.

That gift of life and the vessel of the body for that life should be appreciated as a gift from God, used according to His design...which is for the supreme glory of God.

We can understand that man and woman were created by God’s design, in his image, in order to be in relationship with Him and display his glory across the earth.

Adam and Eve were given their bodies and those bodies were initially ordained to have specific function both as serving one another in marriage and serving the Lord by tending the garden and ruling over his created order.

They were called to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and rule over it.(Gen

1:28).

He also placed them in the garden and commanded them to “cultivate the garden and guard it” (Gen 2:15).

Both examples are duties that God placed on mankind that must be accomplished for the glory of God and with the bodies that he designed for us.

All that God made was good and therefore are bodies are equipped to handle that which God called us to accomplish.

However, we must accomplish those bodies goals according to His design, not contrary to it.

The Problem

The culture today is that our bodies are our own possession to do what we wish with them.

We can mutilate them, enhance them, and preserve them by our own design and with our own scientific discoveries but all such acts are contrary to what God designed for us.

Much of our culture today has one of two views about the body: It is our god or it is an obstacle to true fulfillment in life.

The body as god

I touched on this in the last two sermons, but the body is considered a god to many people.

There are great measures taken to look a certain way in order to gain approval in the world.

The fitness industry took a hit in 2020 but quickly rebounded in 2021 to 173 billion dollar industry.

It is expected to grow by 2028 to a staggering 434 billion industry.

Many but not all of those people in the fitness are pushing weight and staying active in order to look a certain way as a means of acceptance and approval in society.

Barry Cooper, who writes for Ligonier Ministries wrote, “we celebrate physical beauty as if it were a moral virtue, and the gym becomes our church.”

The body as evil

On the other hand, the culture around us have adopted a gnostic view of the body.

Gnostics believed that all matter was evil and only the spirit or soul of a man was important.

To shed the physical body was the true goal of one’s life because it was simply an anchor dragging on the bottom of the sea floor of life, holding us back from truly experiencing that to which we were created to be.

Gnostics therefore believed that Jesus only put on a physical body temporarily but shed that body at his death paving the way for all believers in Jesus to follow.

Gnostic theology about the body leads to many crucially evil practices in our culture today.

In an article entitled, Biblical Integration in Anatomy and Physiology: A Design Approach, Elizabeth Sled writes

“Contemporary gnostic liberalism provides the foundation for the practices of abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and the use and destruction of human embryos for biomedical stem-cell research.

Furthermore, body-soul dualism has led to the rejection of marriage as a male-female union, the redefinition of marriage, and transgenderism”

https://answersresearchjournal.org/biblical-integration-anatomy-physiology/

But the body is a gift from God, with purposes and design in the body, that is redeemed by Christ in his death and bodily resurrection.

If God gives us bodies to use for his glory, sends his Son as 100% God and 100% bodily male, and raises his Son with a glorified body that walked, and ate food, and had flesh and bones for his disciples to see and touch, then the body is important to God purpose in this world.

Barry Cooper again writes,

"So Christians, unlike Gnostics, believe in feasting and joy.

We don’t view physical things with disapproval.

The senses we have—taste, smell, touch, sight, hearing—and the body itself are not in themselves things that the triune God is embarrassed by or wants us to somehow grow out of.

He made these things and He promises to redeem them.”

https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts/simply-put/gnosticism

Paul writes to the Corinthians to have a proper view of the body that God had given them and to not use their bodies in sinful ways, while claiming to follow and worship Christ in holiness.

Let us look at verses 12-14,

Paul begins with addressing in v 12 a “motto” that had circulated around the church about Christian liberty, “all things are lawful for me.”

In verse 12, he quotes it twice while adding his commentary after both phrases are used.

It is unclear as to where this phrase came from, perhaps in Paul’s other teachings about Christian liberty.

But what it became was Christian’s expressing their liberty in Christ as a license to sin.

Paul responds to these phrases with some clarity about the body and its uses.

All things are lawful for me …but not all things are profitable.

First he addresses the selfishness in this thought process.

These Christians were saying “all things are profitable FOR ME”, notice the emphasis of FOR ME.

They would state that Christ had given them freedom in Him and when you mix up a little gnostic views of the body, then Christian freedom and gnostic bodily devaluation means that immorality of the body does not affect the whole man.

Do what you wish!

Paul responds with “but not all profitable” and he leaves off “for me.”

This points to the truth that while a Christian is free in Christ, his freedom is not freedom to offend those around them.

Kistemaker writes,

“instead of living as forgiven, holy, and righteous believers, they indulged in sexual and social sins.

Instead of submitting to the rule of Christ, they condoned sin in the name of freedom granted to them in Christ.

Instead of serving Christ and their neighbor in genuine Christian love, they served themselves.”

Kistemaker, 1 Cor NTC, pg 193

What we can learn from this is that Christ gives us a body and he was raised with a body to show us that our bodies also serve a purpose in his redemptive plan.

His resurrection proves that our bodies will be redeemed and until then, can still by the power of Christ be used to gratify the desires of our Lord and not our lusts.

To serve our own bodies by gratifying their lusts, without self control is contrary to the Spirit’s work in persons life.

Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit and his body under control is a practice of that spiritual life in Christ.

Not only should self-control be practiced while serving the Lord with our bodies, but serving others should be our main goal because Christ was a servant and not a master to all.

Therefore, Paul states that while we might be granted freedom in Christ, our actions should consider what is beneficial for others more than ourselves.

For example, flowers are beautiful ornaments for the kitchen table and a desire for flowers is strong in our household.

But many of us in the Pellegra family are allergic to those colorful, pollen-infused instruments of torture.

My wife has been gracious to not go and buy flowers to display in our house, as an act of kindness to those she loves.

Even though she appreciates the beauty of flowers and has liberty to buy them, her consideration for others overrules her desire to satisfy herself.

This is true Christian love!

Calvin comments then,

Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (Chapter 6)

every one has liberty inwardly in the sight of God on this condition, that all must restrict the use of their liberty with a view to mutual edification

Paul’s second statement is similar.

Again he quotes the familiar phrase and this time comments,

“ but I will not be mastered by anything.”

Again, Paul is stating this use of Christian freedom in order to sin only shows that these certain persons are mastered by their body instead of free in Christ.

When we celebrate freedom in Christ, we are not celebrating freedom from his Lordship or his commands.

Instead, we find freedom in his commands, in His rule over our lives.

We consider a wild mustang who roams the prairie to have the greatest freedom but his freedom has not afforded him love and care.