A Call to Sexual Purity
We, as the church, are living through a perilous time of unprecedented sexual immorality on a scale scarcely ever imagined. We are at war with an enemy and a culture bent on sexual perversion, and we are clearly losing. We need only look to the last few years and see how many prominent church leaders have disqualified themselves from ministry due to sexual immorality. Dozens of ministries on a national, even global scale have been devastated and countless disillusioned because of sexual impropriety. If there is a generation to whom scriptural exhortations to sexual purity are relevant and imperative it is most certainly ours.
One such scriptural exhortation was given to the church at Corinth. Like us, the Corinthian church struggled mightily with sexual immorality. Even a cursory overview of the 1 Corinthian epistle makes this plain. There was a man in the congregation having sexual relations with his stepmother (1 Corinthians 5). This was not the only sexually immoral person in the congregation the Corinthians were tolerating and their association with the sexually immoral was apparently a longstanding issue (1 Corinthians 5:9). Some even seemed to have thought it permissible to engage in sexual relations with a prostitute as a Christian (1 Corinthians 6:15-16). Not for nothing, but of the list Paul gave as a reminder to the Corinthian believers of those unrighteous who would not inherit the kingdom of God in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, the sexually immoral topped the list.
It is to this congregation that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 6:20. Paul wrote this, “For you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” In this, Paul gave a single exhortation and two justifications for why they must comply. This is a message for us in our time just as much as it was for them in theirs. Perhaps more so. Because I do believe we are at an inflection point in our history and what we do with this exhortation will determine where we go from here. And so we will look first at Paul’s exhortation to “glorify God in your body.” Then we will look at the two reasons Paul gave for why we must comply.
The Exhortation
We look first at Paul’s exhortation in 1 Corinthians 6:20 to “glorify God in your body.” What does this mean? What does it mean to “glorify God in your body?”
It means to be sexually pure.
How do we know this? If we look at the immediate context, we notice that the exhortation is located within the larger pericope of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 and verse 20 effectively serves as the summation of a broader passage that is entirely about sexual purity. In 1 Corinthians 6:13, Paul declares, “the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord.” Notice how Paul utilizes a contrast between the negative and the positive – what the body is not for versus what the body is for – to serve what is in essence his singular and overarching exhortation to sexual purity in this pericope. And verse 13 is not the only time he does this.
In 1 Corinthians 6:18 and 1 Corinthians 6:20 he does the same thing. The imperative “Flee from sexual immorality” is found in verse 18. The imperative “glorify God in your body” appears in verse 20. I would submit to you that verses 18-20 form a single thought where verse 18 and verse 20 are parallels utilized by Paul again for the sake of contrast, but where the core of the message is the same. The imperative in verse 18 is the negative side of the imperative in verse 20, but the exhortation of Paul is singular – it is to sexual purity. So in this context, what does it mean to glorify God in our bodies? It means to be sexually pure. It means to flee sexual immorality.
What is sexual immorality? Sexual immorality is the Greek word porneia which has a fairly wide semantic range. It can mean “unlawful sexual intercourse, prostitution, unchastity, fornication,” “participation in prohibited degrees of marriage,” and “immorality of a transcendent nature.” Porneia also includes adultery. Christ’s recalibration of adultery in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:28) then takes porneia to an entirely different level and makes it expansive enough to include even lustful thoughts. All of this is what we are to flee from.
A further point needs to be made here. It is important to know what Paul is exhorting the Corinthian believers to do in verse 20, but just as important is how he is exhorting them to do it. When Paul writes “glorify God in your body” he employs the constative aorist imperative the significance of which is this – it is a solemn and categorical command. Paul here is not stressing the beginning of an action or even the continuation of an action, his operative emphasis is on the solemnity, the priority and the urgency of the action. In other words, he is not merely telling the Corinthians to start glorifying God with their bodies, nor is he emphasizing they continue to do so. He is exhorting the Corinthians to make sexual purity their top priority and he is telling them to do it now. And so it is with us.
As believers and especially as Christians living in the last days we have to be sexually pure and we have to do it now and we have to make it our top priority. I do not know what that exactly means for us. For some of us this may mean we cancel our internet service or throw away our phones and computers. Short of this, some of us may have to buy the most encrypted, secure and unbreakable content blocking software available on the market and install it on all of our devices. For others of us, who may be in relationships where boundaries have been crossed either physically or even emotionally to the extent that some lines have blurred, we have to reinstitute those boundaries and reset the standard or end the relationship entirely. For still others, this may mean we cancel our streaming subscriptions, cut the cord, put a hammer through our television sets. Whatever it is. We do whatever it takes.
Paul gives us two reasons why.
Reason #1: We Have Been Purchased
In the first half of 1 Corinthians 6:20 we read, “you were bought with a price.” We have been purchased. We are His rightful possession. The only other time Paul uses this exact language in the epistle “you were bought with a price” is in 1 Corinthians 7:22-23. He writes this, “For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise, he who was free when called is a slave of Christ. You were bought with a price.” The context is clear. It is slavery.
Now, some scholars have interpreted these two passages to mean that what Paul is talking about when he uses the language “you were bought with a price” is manumission for the sake of freedom. This is decidedly not what Paul is saying for three reasons.
First, Paul uses the Greek verb agoradzo in both passages and it means “to buy” and it is the word used to refer to the ordinary sale of a slave by one owner to another. There is an entirely separate Greek word that is most commonly used in contracts involving sacral manumission.
Second, Paul uses the genitive of price or value in the Greek text and so the best rendering of the phrase is “bought for a price” or “bought at a price” and the resulting imagery is that of new ownership. The imagery involves a costly act on the part of the new owner which makes the one who was purchased legitimately and contractually owned by the one who paid the price. Paul is not talking about manumission, he is not talking about freedom, he is talking about a change in ownership.
Third, 1 Corinthians 6:20 is an extension of 1 Corinthians 6:19 where Paul declares “you are not your own.” You belong to a new master to whom you owe your allegiance.
Why is this important? Because although scholarship has largely dismissed this notion that Paul is speaking about freedom, a perverted and twisted sense of this argument lives on and I firmly believe that it is partly responsible for what we are seeing now – the devastation of the church by sexual immorality and the concomitant erosion of her witness.
Is it true that we have freedom in Christ? Yes, but never is it intimated anywhere in the pages of Scripture that we have freedom from Christ to do whatever we want, to live however we see fit in pursuit of an antinomian lifestyle of sinful indulgence. And yet, thousands sit in pews in stadiums across this country and around the world and they are consistently bombarded with the message, stated explicitly or implied strongly through silence, that you owe no allegiance to Christ and it is irrelevant how you choose to live your life because God is infinitely more concerned about your health, wealth and prosperity than He is your holiness and your obedience. Sin and repentance, the Lordship of Christ is seldom ever preached. And Christ has become for far too many a means to an end – a free pass to your best life now and heaven in the hereafter. Sufficient for our time is lipservice to His lordship. But, when obedience is not required, grace becomes cheap – not just available to all, but promiscuously applicable to all.
This is the antithesis of biblical Christianity and the very opposite of what Paul is declaring here. As followers of Christ and those who are genuinely devoted to Him, we have the privilege and the responsibility to not just live out the truths of Scripture, but also to declare them boldly and without equivocation because if Scripture says anything it declares that Jesus Christ is to you both Savior and Lord or He is neither. We are called to a higher standard of sexual purity and holiness because we are not just saved by Christ. We are owned by Him.
Reason #2: We Have Been Purchased at a Profound Price
1 Corinthians 6:20 declares, “you were bought with a price.” We have been purchased at a profound and incalculable price. As Lord, Jesus demands our sexual purity. As Savior, He deserves it.
In 1 Corinthians 5:7, Paul writes about the price that was paid, “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” In this we see the same pattern as in 1 Corinthians 6:20. Paul exhorts the Corinthian church to purity, draws their attention back to the exodus which was an explicit change in ownership in a slavery context, and then he graphically highlights the price that was paid.
We are called to sexual purity and holiness because a change in ownership was effected by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ who is indeed our Passover lamb. Our redemption was purchased with blood. The Eternal One came down from glory and lived a perfect life and died a death that you and I should have died. He was brutalized and tortured and then hung on a tree. As if that were not enough, as horrific as His physical pain and death were, that was not even the worst part. For there was a moment on that cross when He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). And the righteous wrath of God the Father was poured out upon God the Son and in that moment the fellowship and communion Christ had enjoyed for all of eternity with His Father was broken and He cried out in agony and sheer terror, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34).
Grace is free, but it did not come cheap. It cost our Jesus everything. And so we live our lives for His glory, we pursue holiness and sexual purity for His good pleasure out of deep affection and an abiding sense of gratitude to a Savior who is gracious and good beyond measure. For it is through His unfathomable sacrifice that we are not our own we have been bought with a price. So let us glorify God in our bodies.