Do ye not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then, taking the members of the Christ, make [them] members of a harlot? Far be the thought.
Paul has just told the Corinthians that the body was never made for immorality but for the Lord. Now he presses the point with a question. If your body belongs to Christ as one of His members, what happens when you join it to a prostitute?
The question is not asking for information. It is a rebuke, and by now Paul has used it again and again.
And further than this, they were proclaiming their own ignorance. Verse 2 begins with, "Do you not know?" Five times before the chapter ends we meet that question again. Like many other carnal believers the Corinthians did not know nearly as much as they thought they did. If truth governs US, we really know it. Mere intellectual knowledge does not count.
Paul does not say your spirit is a member of Christ. He says your body is.
It is not merely that our spirits go to be with the Lord in heaven; our bodies shall be raised like His at His coming... Not our souls but our bodies are declared to be members of Christ. Those who talk only of the soul may claim higher ground. But it is never really so in practice or in theory. On the contrary, the immortality of the soul is easily twisted to feed man's pride. The resurrection is not like that. It exalts God and humbles man. Where it is held in faith, it also delivers us from present ease and indulgence. Of this the Holy Spirit is the pledge, who joins us to the Lord and makes our bodies members of Christ. So we can see how monstrous sexual immorality is.
The body is not yet what it will be. Yet Paul speaks of it in the present tense. A Christian cannot split himself into a holy soul and a free body.
What they will be in their final transformation they already are in truth. They should have known this also. For the faith which unites us to the living and ascended Lord does not separate us from ourselves. If we are redeemed, our bodies belong to our Redeemer as surely as our souls do, even though they are not yet shaped into what they will be... It was, then, a foolish idea to suppose that the soul and body could be under different rules. Both are the Lord's, though each has its proper functions and its own relation to the other... So the apostle, who stood jealously on the honour of his position as a man in Christ, exclaims, "Shall I then take the members of Christ...?" — and answers his own question with an instant and forceful denial.
Paul does not answer with a rule. He answers by naming what the believer now is to Christ.
The relationship the Christian now has with Christ settles the question at once. "Do you not know," says the apostle, "that your bodies are members of Christ?" This determines the whole matter. Once you see what the believer has become through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, it becomes obvious how unfitting it is to use the body to indulge lusts. For "he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him" (1 Cor. 6:15-17).
The man writing had once persecuted Christians. What the Lord said to him then is the truth he now applies to purity.
Moreover, our bodies are members of Christ, and he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. The Apostle learned something of this great truth at his conversion. The Lord said to him, "Why are you persecuting Me?" To touch the bodies of the saints was to touch Christ. All sin is solemn. But sin against the body is especially solemn, for the Holy Spirit lives in that body, and it belongs to God.
Paul's horror at the thought is not the end. It turns into a positive instruction.
Now note what these facts imply. How can we make the members of Christ the members of a prostitute? Again, how can I treat my body as if it were only my own? We are not our own. We belong to Another, spirit and soul and body. So "glorify God in your body" is the word for us. The whole idea of the unconverted is to gratify and glorify themselves in and through their bodies. Let it be ours to gratify and glorify God.
- Known — the repeated "do you not know" is a reproach. The Corinthians held the truth in their heads, but it did not govern them.
- Joined — the Holy Spirit joins the believer to the Lord as one spirit, and makes the body itself a member of Christ.
- Claimed — what the body will be at the resurrection, it already is now. A redeemed man cannot run his soul by one rule and his body by another.
- Personal — at his conversion Paul learned that to touch the bodies of the saints is to touch Christ. So impurity is not just dirty; it is disloyal.
- Glorify — the conclusion is not just "keep away." Those who are not converted use their bodies to glorify themselves; the believer uses his to glorify God.
Do ye not know that he [that is] joined to the harlot is one body? for the two, he says, shall be one flesh.
Paul answers the Corinthians' loose living with a question, not a lecture. Do they not already know what joining a body to a prostitute does — and what the words God spoke at creation say about it?
Paul does not argue the point so much as recall it. He asks whether they have forgotten what was true of man and woman from the beginning — and forgetting it costs a Christian double.
Had they forgotten that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female? He did it so that by a natural union they, though two, might be one only in His eyes. Sexual immorality is nature without God. It is therefore sin, like every other act of self-willed forgetfulness of God. But in a Christian it is doubly sin; for what he does, he does as a member of Christ's mystic body.
No promise and no intention are needed for this union. The joining is physical, and God's word at creation says what it makes.
How terribly wrong to take the members of Christ and make them the members of a prostitute! In practice it denies what is true. In practice the joining of two bodies together makes them one, as God declared when He created the woman for the man.
Paul quotes the words God spoke over the first marriage. He does not cancel them. He uses them to show where they belong, and what a believer's body has cost.
The union of bodies is shameful outside marriage. Inside marriage God would have it honourable — honourable in all things (Heb. 13:4). Scripture urges even the married seriously, as it warns the immoral solemnly. But God uses that union, and means it, to remind the Christian of his own blessed privilege: he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him — not one flesh. This is so because he has received the Holy Spirit. So impurity is a sin not only against his own body, but against the Trinity and the price paid.
The shock of the verse depends on what the body is. Paul has just said it belongs to Christ, and the city he wrote to made the warning urgent.
Scripture calls our bodies, not our souls, members of Christ… The Holy Spirit is the pledge of this. He joins us to the Lord and makes our bodies members of Christ. So we see how monstrous sexual immorality is. What a shameful contradiction of such closeness — indeed union — is impurity with a prostitute! It was all the more necessary to press this on a city known above every other for loose living. Beyond that, the pagan world in general treated sexual immorality as a neutral act like eating, not as a sin in itself.
This verse and the next stand as a pair. Together they give Scripture's own definition of union.
The Word explains what union with Christ is: "He who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her. For, as it is written, 'The two will become one flesh.' But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him" (1 Cor. 6:16-17). In Scripture, union is the making of two into one. Two pictures from ordinary life teach us union with Christ: marriage and the human body.
Commentators differ over how far to press the passage. One writer holds that union is not the subject here at all. For him the point is "the Spirit as the source and character and power of our connection with Christ, in contrast with 'two shall be one flesh'" (J. A. Trench).
Because the bond is real, no one can walk away as though nothing had happened. Paul's principle brings a lasting obligation, and it limits what human law can settle for a believer.
But a man cannot sin lightly and then act as if he had not sinned, especially in the way mentioned here. So he took on the duty of paying her bride price and taking her as his wife. Paul lays down the principle: "Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, 'The two will become one flesh.'"… We are bound to obey the governing authorities where they do not conflict with the authority of God. Even so, the law of the land cannot guide the conscience of the believer or of the church.
- Joined. Scripture's own word for union is "joined." Union means the making of two into one. That is why a passing act never stays in the past.
- One flesh. God said it at creation. The joining of two bodies makes them one, whether anyone intends it or not.
- One spirit. The believer is already joined to the Lord — one spirit with Him, because he has received the Holy Spirit. Impurity contradicts that.
- Not yours. Your body is a member of Christ, and a price has been paid for it. So impurity sins against God Himself, not only against your own body.
- No excuse. A culture may treat it as neutral, and the law may permit it. Neither settles the conscience of a Christian.
But he that [is] joined to the Lord is one Spirit.
Paul answers sexual sin not with a rule but with a fact about who the believer now is. The verse just before speaks of a union of bodies; against it he sets a closer union — one spirit.
One writer sets two statements side by side, as two announcements from the same God:
God long ago said, "The two shall become one flesh." Now He makes a second declaration: the spiritual oneness of the Lord and His redeemed. Creation and its ordinances are a standing picture of grace. The woman is both from the man and for the man. The believer is both from the Lord and for the Lord.
Another writer notes the change of word. Marriage supplies the pattern, and the pattern points higher:
That union serves to remind the Christian of his own blessed privilege: he who is joined to the Lord is not one flesh, but one spirit. This is so because he has received the Holy Spirit. So this shows that impurity is a sin not only against his own body, but against the Trinity and against the price paid. "So glorify God in your body."
One writer names the bond itself, and what it makes of the body:
Our bodies are the members of Christ. Here is another truth of great importance. If union in the flesh made two people one body, then the one united to the Lord is one spirit. The Spirit whose fullness is in Christ is the same Spirit who dwells in me and unites me to Him. Our bodies are His temples. What a mighty truth when we think of it!
One writer draws a conclusion from this. A phrase many people use turns out to be missing from Scripture:
Union with Christ comes by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. You may search Scripture for the common thought "united to Christ by faith," but you will not find it. There is no such thought there. "He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him"; and "your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God."
Which Christ is the believer joined to? One writer answers: not Christ as He was here on earth.
It is not a question of joining Him in flesh when He was here below. No doubt He took flesh and blood, but this is not the link of union. As long as Christ was here, there could not be union. Something might point forward to this high privilege, but God could not yet give it righteously. Now He can, and He has brought us into it. That is why the Holy Spirit is connected with it. It is not merely by faith, but by the Holy Spirit.
Such closeness invites a wrong conclusion, and one writer marks the limit. He also points out that the verse sets "spirit" against the "body" of the verse before:
The previous verse shows that this does not point exactly to the Holy Spirit, since the term "one spirit" stands in contrast to "one body." Of course, it is by the Holy Spirit that we are one spirit with the Lord. Adopt the idea put forward in such teaching, and how close one comes to deifying the saints!
One writer points to the moment Paul himself learned this. At his conversion he found that attacking Christians was attacking Christ:
Our bodies are members of Christ, and he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. The Apostle learned something of this great truth at his conversion. The Lord said to him, "Why are you persecuting me?" To touch the bodies of the saints was to touch Christ. All sin is serious. But sin against the body is especially serious, for the Holy Spirit lives in that body, and it belongs to God.
- Joined — the contrast. The same God who said the two become one flesh now says something closer: joined to the Lord, one spirit. Marriage is the picture; this is the reality it pictured.
- Joined — by whom. The bond is the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit whose fullness is in Christ now dwelling in the believer.
- Joined — when. While Christ was here on earth, this union could not exist. Now God gives it righteously, and He gives it by the Spirit.
- Joined — how far. The union is real, but it does not blur creature into Creator. "One spirit" answers to "one body." Push it further and you end up making saints into gods.
- Joined — so what. Because the body is a member of Christ, impurity touches Christ Himself. The chapter's answer to lust is not a rule but an identity: glorify God in your body.