Adult Christian Life: 3rd Quarter 2014

By Wardine Winfrey-Couch

Adult Christian Life contains Sunday school material for people ages 25 and older. The exposition of the Scripture, with life-centered insights, is preceded by an introduction to the lesson designed to help learners gain a greater understanding of the text under discussion relative to context, content, and meaning for life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R.H. Boyd Publishing Corporation
• Release date: Apr 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781589428348

Book preview

DO NO HARM

Unifying Topic: Glorify God with Your Body

1 CORINTHIANS 6:12-20

BACKGROUND SCRIPTURES: 1 CORINTHIANS 6:12—7:9

The New National Baptist Hymnal, 21st Century Edition, #315 (NNBH #365); God’s Promises Bible, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; Boyd’s Commentary for the Sunday School

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

MAIN THOUGHT: What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? (1 Corinthians 6:19, KJV)

LESSON SETTING

Paul resided in Corinth for approximately eighteen months. It was during this time that he established the Corinthian church (see Acts 18:1-11). Corinth was located along a prominent east-west trade route. As such, it attracted all sorts of people: Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, and Syrians. Being an important city for trade, Corinth was a good place to spread the Gospel. Merchants and travelers could hear the message and take it with them. But Corinth’s prosperity also meant that it was a materialistic and morally corrupt city. The temple of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, was well-known, and thousands of prostitutes were in the city, many of whom worked in this temple. The fact that much of the city’s population was transient also contributed to a spirit of revelling and immoral living. The circumstances of today’s lesson are as follows: After Paul left the city of Corinth, division beset the church. While in Ephesus, Paul received news about the troubles in the church. The Corinthians had written Paul a letter seeking his advice about various problems. What we call the book of 1 Corinthians is Paul’s letter in reply to them.

EXPOSITION

Paul wrote to the church in Corinth in order to call them to unity in Christ. The church was severely divided, plagued by feuding, arguing, and cliques. Paul also wrote to deal with moral laxity in the church and to answer certain questions the members had concerning marriage, public worship, spiritual gifts, resurrection from the dead, and other issues.

I.    THE BODY BELONGS TO GOD (1 Corinthians 6:12-14)

It was widely believed in Paul’s day that the spirit alone was of value, while the body was not important. Because of this, many people believed they had the freedom to behave in any way they chose. To many people, it was as natural to satisfy their sexual desires as it was to eat. This permissive thinking found its way into the church in Corinth. When it was coupled with Paul’s teaching that Christians are free from the Law’s demands, grave consequences followed. Many believers, for example, took Paul’s teaching out of context and continued to visit prostitutes after their baptism.

Paul reminded the Corinthians that Christian freedom does not mean that Christians are free to sin. Freedom from the Law does not give anyone an excuse to disregard the Law. Rather, it allows Christians to freely exercise their liberty within the scope of the Law. Paul emphasizes to the Corinthians that it is wrong to be enslaved to their former ways of life. Christians are not at liberty to do their own thing. Their bodies belong to God, and He desires to redeem them. Just as God raised Jesus from the dead, He will also raise both a Christian’s spirit and body from the dead (see 1 Cor. 6:14).

Some of the Corinthians taught that ‘all things [were] lawful’ for them (v. 12, NRSV). They were partially correct. It is true that God made both humanity and the body. He made everything in the world, and all of it is good. All good things are lawful for Christians to partake of. But as Paul says, Not all things are beneficial (ibid.). For example, it is beneficial to eat fruit, but it is not so beneficial to eat poison berries. It is advisable to rest for the sake of the body, but it is harmful to lie around and be continually inactive. Thus not all permissible actions are beneficial.

LAWFUL

(Greek: EXESTIN)

(1 Corinthians 6:12)

The Corinthians believed they were liberated from the Law and could do whatever they pleased—even to the point of committing fornication. Paul taught that Christians’ bodies belong to Christ. To fornicate is to sin against Christ who purchased their bodies with His own blood. True liberty is to live in submission to God’s will.

Any good thing can be turned toward bad ends. The simple fact is that some good things can enslave us and hinder our growth in holiness. To make this point, Paul reworks the Corinthians’ slogan: ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything (ibid.). We should not be enslaved to anything on earth whether it be food, drink, sexual urges, money, or anything else. Paul focuses in particular on fornication and sexual immorality, which were especially common in his day—so much that this type of behavior was carried on even among Christians. Those who defended the practice argued that just as the body desires food and must have food for normal functioning, so the body desires sex and must have sex for normal functioning. The desires of the body, they claimed, were normal and natural. There was no way that it could be wrong to satisfy those