Sexual Desires- Whats our body for
1 COR. 6:12-20
sexual Desires: What’s Our Body For?
I. Intro:
II. Sexual Sin Is Not Profitable
III. Sexual Sin Should Not Control
IV. Sexual Sin Is Not God’s Plan For Our Body
1. The Body is for the Lord
2. The Body is a Member of Christ
3. The Body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit
V. invite:
1. While grace has freed me from the law, I will not do anything except what builds me up to serve Jesus as my master.
2. The body appears to have nothing to do with the spirit, and to be made for sexual use, but that is not its main purpose.
3. He will raise not just our spirits, but our bodies.
4. The body itself is meant for Christ, and is a part of Christ’s body
5. Should I take the holy body of Christ and join it and thus Him to a prostitute? Uhhh… NO!
6. Even sex with a hooker makes the two one flesh. A partial marriage is in mind here, as the quote Genesis 2:24 makes clear.
7. The other half of marriage is leaving one family to form another in a way that is recognizable be the culture as marriage.
8. This is why adultery is one of only two Biblical grounds for divorce. The adulterous partner, is partially “married” to another. The first spouse is under no obligation to be a bigamist and may choose to leave or allow the offending spouse to “divorce” the lover and recommit to the former partner.
9. The other Biblical grounds for divorce is when an unbelieving spouse wants out of a marriage. We will talk more about this in a couple of weeks.
10. WHAT DOES SIN AGAINST HIS OWN BODY MEAN?
11. He also lives within our bodies making them a holy place. That temple was purchased at the price of the blood of Jesus, God’s only Son, so…
12. He OWNS it. Therefore we must honor him in the use of our eternal bodies.
13. The focus here is on the real “natural” use of the body, showing why it is not sex.
14. Newspaper article.
15. Fleeing from wild dogs.
16. Everybody’s doing it.
17.
All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food; but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord; and the Lord is for the body. Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her? For He says, “The two will become one flesh.” But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. (6:12–20)
Freedom in Christ was a truth Paul never tired of emphasizing. We are not saved by works or kept saved by works. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast” (Eph. 2:8–9; Rom. 3:20). “Now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter” (Rom. 7:6). A Christian can commit no sin that can forfeit his salvation. God is the highest court, and He has declared that believers are righteous. There is no higher appeal.
The Corinthian church was using this as a theological excuse for sin. They ignored the truth, “only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh” (Gal. 5:13. When Paul spoke of Christian freedom it was always in relation to freedom from works righteousness
They may have had a philosophical argument for their sin as well, perhaps implied in 6:13, “Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food.” Much Greek philosophy considered everything physical, including the body, to be basically evil and therefore of no value. What was done with or to the body did not matter. Sex was just a biological function to be used to satisfy their appetites. The argument sounds remarkably modern.
In 6:12–20 Paul shows three of the evils of sexual sin: it is harmful to everyone involved; it gains control over those who indulge in it; and it perverts God’s purpose for the body.
Sexual Sin Harms
All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. (6:12a)
The statement, All things are lawful may have been a common Corinthian. Every sin a Christian commits is forgiven in Jesus Christ. But no sin is ever profitable. The price for doing some things is terribly high, terribly unprofitable. Sin always brings loss.
Proverbs. “The lips of an adulteress drip honey, and smoother than oil is her speech” (Prov. 5:3). Sexual allurement is extremely enticing and powerful. It promises nothing but pleasure and satisfaction. But what it ends up giving “is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two–edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of Sheol. She does not ponder the path of life; her ways are unstable, she does not know it” (vv. 4–6). The first characteristic of sexual sin is deceit. It never delivers what it promises. Illicit sexual relationships are always “unstable.” Nothing binds those involved except the temporary and impersonal gratification of physical impulses. That is poor cement.
Those who consider all sex to be basically evil, however, are as far from the truth as those who consider all sex to be basically good and permissible. God is not against sex. He created and blessed it. When used exclusively within marriage, as the Lord intends, sex is beautiful, satisfying, and stabilizing. Scripture says, “rejoice in t/wife of your youth. … Be exhilarated always w/her love” (Prov. 5:18–19).
The Bible’s advice for avoiding sexual involvement outside marriage is simple: stay as far away as possible from the persons and places likely to get you in trouble. “Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house” This is not the time for argument or explanation but for flight. Passion is not rational or sensible, and sexually dangerous situations should be avoided or fled, not debated.
Involvement in illicit sex leads to loss of health, loss of possessions, and loss of honor and respect. Every person who continues in such sins does not necessarily suffer all of those losses, but those are the types of loss that persistent sexual sin produces. The sex indulger will come to discover that he has lost his “years to the cruel one,” that his “hard–earned goods” have gone “to the house of an alien,” and that he will “groan” in his latter years and find his “flesh and [his] body are consumed” (Prov. 5:9–11). The “stolen water” of sexual relations outside of marriage “is sweet; and bread eaten in secret is pleasant”; but “the dead are there” (Prov. 9:17–18). Sexual sin is a “no win” situation. It is never profitable and always harmful.
Sexual Sin Controls
All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. (6:12b)
It is not as easy to be in control of ourselves as we sometimes think. Many people are deceived in thinking they are perfectly in control of their thoughts and actions, simply because they always do what they want. The fact, however, is that their desires and passions are telling them what to do, and they are going along. They are not masters of their desires, but are willing slaves. Their flesh is controlling their minds.
Sexual Sin Perverts
God’s purpose for the bodies of His people is that they be a member of Christ; and the temple of the Holy Spirit.
The Body is for the Lord
Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food; but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord; and the Lord is for the body. Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. (6:13–14)
Food and the stomach relationship were created by God, “but it is also true that that relationship is purely temporal.” Some things are eternal, and have eternal ends… like the body. The body is not for immorality, but for the Lord; and the Lord is for the body. Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. Our bodies are designed not only to serve in this life but in the life to come. They will be changed bodies, resurrected bodies, glorified bodies, heavenly bodies—but they will still be our own bodies.
The Body is a Member of Christ
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her? For He says, “The two will become one flesh.” But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. (6:15–18)
“We, who are many, are one body in Christ” (Rom. 12:5). We are, in this age, the living spiritual temple in which Christ lives. Paul’s next point follows logically. For a Christian to commit sexual immorality is to make the members of Christ … members of a harlot. It is to use a part of Christ’s own body in an act of fornication or adultery. May it never be!
Since we are one with Christ, and the sex sinner is one with his partner, Christ is placed in an unthinkable position in Paul’s reasoning. Christ is not personally tainted with the sin, but He is now in partnership with one in partnership with a prostitute. And “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial a? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God.” 2 Co. 6:14-16a.
Paul’s counsel regarding sexual sin is the same as Solomon’s in the book of Proverbs: Flee immorality. We are not to consider it a spiritual challenge to be met but a spiritual trap to be escaped.
Paul does not elucidate on what he means by Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. However, those early two verses contain phrases that almost all scholars take as sayings from Corinth, and this construction is similar, and the Greek does not contain the word “other.” Thus it is in my judgment, “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body,” but the immoral man sins against his own body.
Some years ago a sixteen–year–old girl came to my office in complete despair. She had committed so many sex sins that she felt utterly worthless. She had not looked in a mirror for months, because she could not stand to look at herself; and to me she looked nearer 40 than 16. She was on the verge of suicide, not wanting to live another day. I had a special joy in leading her to Jesus Christ and seeing the transformation He made in her life. She said, “For the first time in years I feel clean.”
The Body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. (6:19–20)
To commit sexual sin in a church auditorium, disgusting as that would be, would be no worse than committing the sin anywhere else. Offense is made within God’s sanctuary wherever and whenever sexual immorality is committed by believers. Every act of fornication, every act of adultery by Christians, is committed in God’s sanctuary: their own bodies. “For we are the temple of the living God” (2 Cor. 6:16). The fact that Christians are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit is indicated in passages such as John 7:38–39; 20:22; Acts 1:8; Romans 8:9; and 1 Corinthians 12:3. The fact that God sent the Holy Spirit is clear from John 14:16–17; 15:26; & Acts 2:17, 33, 38.