1 Corinthians 6 · WEB
Lawsuits, Sexual Sin, and the Body
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Summary
Believers are taking each other to pagan court — shameful, since saints will judge the world and even angels. Surely they should be able to settle ordinary disputes among themselves. Better still, why not be wronged or defrauded rather than wrong a brother? Paul then warns: those who continue in unrighteousness — sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, homosexual practice, greed, theft, drunkenness, slander, extortion — will not inherit God's kingdom. "Such were some of you," he says, "but you were washed, sanctified, justified." Paul takes on the Corinthian slogans — "All things are lawful for me" and "Food for the belly" — and corrects them: the body is not for immorality but for the Lord, who will raise it. The believer is joined to Christ — body and spirit. Sexual immorality is uniquely a sin against one's own body. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit; you were bought with a price; glorify God in your body.
Themes
- The church's competence to settle disputes
- Suffering wrong rather than wronging a brother
- The grace that transforms identity ("such were some of you")
- The body as the Lord's, destined for resurrection
- The body as the Spirit's temple
Key verses
- 1 Corinthians 6:11 — “Such were some of you, but you were washed. But you were sanctified. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the Spirit of our God.”
- 1 Corinthians 6:18 — “Flee sexual immorality! Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.”
- 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 — “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit... You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.”
Context & background
Written c. AD 54-55 from Ephesus. Roman society was litigious — lawsuits were a respectable way to display wealth and power, and Corinth had its own *bēma* (judgment seat, where Paul himself had stood, Acts 18:12). Paul's vision of the saints judging the world and angels comes from Daniel 7:22 ("judgment was given to the saints of the Most High") and Jesus' promise (Matthew 19:28). The vice list in vv. 9-10 is one of several in Paul's letters; the words *malakoi* ("male prostitutes") and *arsenokoitai* ("homosexuals") have been intensely debated — the latter is a Pauline coinage drawing on Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 in the Septuagint, referring to men who have sex with men, regardless of the precise contemporary configuration. The verse hinges not on the list as a curse but on v. 11: this was who they were, but they are no longer. The "all things are lawful" slogan (vv. 12-13) was likely a misapplied Pauline catchphrase the Corinthians had turned into license; Paul accepts and limits it. Greco-Roman culture treated sex like food — a bodily appetite to be satisfied — and prostitution was woven into civic and religious life. Paul's insistence that the body belongs to Christ and will be raised utterly subverts that worldview.
Cross-references
- 1 Peter 1:18-19 — "You were redeemed... with the precious blood of Christ" — the "bought with a price" of v. 20.
- Galatians 5:19-21 — Parallel vice list.
- Genesis 2:24 — "The two shall become one flesh" — quoted in v. 16.
- Matthew 5:39-42 — Jesus' "do not resist evil, but turn the other cheek" — the spirit behind vv. 7-8.
- Romans 12:1 — Present your bodies as a living sacrifice — parallel to v. 20.