Monday, October 19, 2009

1 Corinthians 6:14

And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power (KJV)

Then: God's power? Yes, Corinthians knew about it and would agree that he's in charge of the spiritual world and all of creation. They knew the truth of Paul's statement, but they missed the question of how that related to their sexual behaviors. They needed an explanation about the Christian belief in resurrection of the body, not just salvation of the spirit (Hayes p. 104). If the entire physical body belongs to the Lord, then all actions pertaining to it, require extreme care. Commitment to and becoming one with the Lord is sacred and more intense than earthly, sexual bonding. Paul spends no time discussing these specific immoralities because it's more important to understand the first commandment "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

Now: We recognize, but don't spend much time thinking about Paul's three main points. Because the body is resurrected, because the body is a temple for the Holy Spirit, and because the body belongs to the Lord, sexual immoralities count as a betrayal of the Truth (Hayes, p. 107). We are often like the Corinthians who didn't clearly understand the implications of sexual immoralities. We fall prey to that same fuzziness which leaves believers unprepared to choose God's way rather than the way of temptation. And then, like the Corinthians, we need to know "the only restorative for a guilty conscience is a sight of Jesus suffering on the cross" (Spurgeon).

Extra Source: First Corinthians by Richard B. Hayes (John Knox Press, 1997) on line at http://books.google.com/books?id=M_PC0PAs3VYC&dq=1+Corinthians+and+Richard+B.+Hays&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=2oPcStDCIIvf8Aaq0Ki3BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=11&ved=0CCMQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=1%20Corinthians%20and%20Richard%20B.%20Hays&f=false
February 2nd, Morning; Morning and Evening Daily Readings by Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) on line at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/spurgeon/morneve.d0202am.html

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