Glorifying the Lord in Your Body

Aldous Huxley, author of "Brave New World" and grandson of Thomas Huxley (known as "Darwin's bulldog"), reportedly said, "Chastity is the most unnatural of the sexual perversions." He would have felt quite at home in Corinth, which has been called the "Vanity Fair" of the ancient world. The temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, towered over the city, and in the evening her thousand temple prostitutes plied their trade on the Corinthian streets. Planting a church in Corinth, then, would be somewhat like planting a church in Sodom. Even after exercising faith in Christ, the new believers were so surrounded by temptation, and so troubled by old patterns, that sound instruction in Christian living was desperately needed. It didn't help that the prevailing view of the Greeks was that the body was "the prison of the soul," thus it was commonly believed that what was done in the body (such as consorting with a prostitute) had no ultimate effect upon the soul. In this passage, Paul strongly rebukes such teaching. He writes,"Shall I...take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? God forbid!" In the process, he reminds the Corinthians (and us) not to be brought under the power of anything, even those things that may be morally neutral. This message includes a memorable Stradivarius illustration, the preacher's story of his father and a late night cigarette craving, and the line, "the paradox of my liberty is that it is possible for me to exercise it to the point of losing it." It provides a clear call to sexual purity. and to the wise use of our "liberty in Christ."