Marriage, Sex and Sexuality 6 - I Cor.6:9-20
It always makes me laugh when I hear people talk about ‘getting back to the NT Church’, as if it was somehow purer or more ‘sorted’ than it has ever been since. Reading through the NT, I find myself wondering rather if I’d have been willing to go to some of these Churches at all. I suspect that if we had happened upon the congregation(s) meeting in Corinth we would have wondered if it counted as a Church at all.
Even the most cursory reading of I & II Corinthians highlights problems with worship and witness, belief and behaviour. Disunity, conflict, idolatry, abuse of corporate worship, confusion over what spiritual maturity looked like, misunderstanding of core Christian beliefs … and almost inevitably disagreement and divergence on questions about marriage and sexuality. Most of us would likely have felt God was calling us somewhere else.
However, it is remarkable that the one thing Paul doesn’t do is give Christians permission to feel spiritual superiority, or indeed to leave - either to go to another Church somewhere else, or more likely, to start one. In the midst of such an unpromising experience of Christian discipleship, Paul doesn’t lose sight of the genuine work of the Spirit, as He draws people to Christ and slowly conforms them to His image. More than that, Paul rejoices that, while the Corinthians may not yet have achieved a consistently authentic life of discipleship, they were nevertheless ‘washed… sanctified (i.e. set apart for God’s purposes)… justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God’ (6:11). Paul’s call to, and confident anticipation of growth is rooted in God, not the Corinthians. Although they haven’t yet worked out their salvation, it is nonetheless real.
Their growth is hindered by their lack of understanding. Ignorance of large parts of the Apostle’s teaching and illegitimate interpretations and inferences from what they did know meant that – in spite of the richness of their spiritual experience - even the most elementary aspects of holiness lay beyond their grasp.
From what you know of the Church at Corinth, would you have felt comfortable attending? Can you explain your answer?
Do you think the Church in the days of the Apostles is substantially different from the Church today?
In the light of I Cor.6:9-10 how important do you think it is for Christians to live holy lives? How do you reconcile a passage like this to the idea that we are saved by faith?
How do you think the Corinthians ended up with the idea that they had the right to do anything (v.12)? And with the idea that God would destroy both food and stomach (and so presumably it didn’t matter what they did with either)?
What does it mean to say that ‘the body … is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body (v.13)? How should this affect the way Christians treat and use their bodies?
Why does Paul suddenly mention the resurrection (v.14)? Paul revisits this at length in I Cor.15. How does the Corinthians’ wrong thinking about resurrection contribute to their un-Christian lives? Does wrong thinking always lead to wrong living?
As you read through this passage, Paul clearly sees connections between our sexuality and our spirituality. Can you figure out how the two things relate in Christian experience?
Is sexual sin in a different category from other sin? Does that make it worse?
‘You are not your own’. How does that make you feel? How does this simple observation impact our thinking about being a Christian?
