Lawful yet not mastered; body as temple, not for fornication (1 Cor 6)

of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working? But we have not used this right. Therefore it was permitted to the apostle to do all these things in the places I set out; yet examining them with a view to his own advantage and to the ordering of the church he saw that it is permitted—if he does it, he will not sin—yet he does better by not using the right. And again: every virgin is permitted to marry; but the good and noble woman abstains from marriage not as if marriage were forbidden, but having raised the right higher and wishing to be pure in body and spirit she remains a virgin. And when a husband has died, remarriage is not wholly forbidden: “For if the husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39). But when the good woman hears: “She is more blessed if she remains as she is, according to my judgment” (1 Corinthians 7:40), she does not use the right. “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anyone.” The saying has something higher: for if our wrestling is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities (Ephesians 6:12), when the authority masters me I have been mastered by it; but if I conquer every authority, I will not be mastered by anyone.

Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food—and God will destroy both this and these. But the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us through his power (1 Corinthians 6:13–14).

Do not think that just as the stomach came to be for foods and foods for the stomach, so also the body came to be for intercourse. If you wish to learn the primary reason why it came to be, listen: that it may be a temple for the Lord, and that the soul, being holy and blessed, may become, as it were by serving, a priest of the Holy Spirit within you. For Adam also had a body in paradise, yet in paradise itself Adam did not know Eve his wife, but when he was cast out after the disobedience. I say these things not as marking off marriage; for I know that if anyone is not continent he ought to marry; for it is better to marry than to burn (1 Corinthians 7:9). Yet even if the matter is conceded, it is not primarily but because of weakness. For what is primary is to live in chastity and purity and to have leisure for prayer. For of the one already raised with Christ and made conformed to his resurrection and to the newness of life, the body ought to belong to nothing except the Lord.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? (1 Corinthians 6:15). Human bodies are instruments of the soul; and when the soul rules, the body serves and is used for whatever the soul wishes. But the Word especially wills that our bodies no longer be energized by our own soul but by Christ himself; therefore Paul says: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). They become members of Christ, then, when we move everything according to his word.

Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body (1 Corinthians 6:18). Someone will ask whether every sin is outside the body. For someone will say: Drunkenness is a sin; taking oneself out of life by hanging or by a cliff is a sin; is this sin also outside the body? But one must hear fairly how this was said. We will take a starting point for understanding the place from Leviticus; for there it is said that from the flow his body has wasted. Since therefore the constitution of the body is from seeds, for this reason the one who sins according to the outflow of seeds sins against his own body; and this sin arises from those things from which also the beginning of the body’s constitution comes.

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? And you are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). Well did he, anticipating an objection and guarding against it, say: You are not your own. For someone will say: I sin against my own body; I have authority over my own body. Then he says: Or do you not know that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? We act impiously toward the Holy Spirit, and through him toward Father and Son in whom we have been baptized, if we commit fornication—toward Christ when we make the members of Christ members of a prostitute; toward the Holy Spirit when we