The Lord Is For The Body

I’ve found myself bumping into 1 Corinthians 6:13 with some frequency of late.

“‘Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food,’ and God will do away with both of them. However, the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” (CSB)

There is a lot that is worth considering in this passage, but as I reflected on it, my attention kept returning to this phrase: “and the Lord for the body.” Considered as a parallel to the Corinthians’ statement, this seems confusing. To the say that food is for the stomach and that the stomach is for food means that food is made to be eaten and the stomach is made to receive food. While we could certainly say that the body is for the Lord in this way – it is indeed intended to be used for and by the Lord! – we would not want to say that the Lord exists for us in the same way, let alone for our bodies specifically. The attribute of aseity (self-existence) belongs solely to God, so he doesn’t exist “for” anyone or anything in the way that created objects do, ourselves included. How then can God be “for the body” in a parallel way?

As I was studying this passage, I was surprised by Gordon Fee’s response in the NICNT commentary. On this phrase he says, “The statement itself was purposely created out of their slogan; it was therefore never intended to be pressed in detail. This is not to say that it is not true, but that it is not precise.”¹ Relying on v.14, he loosely connects the ending of v.13 to the resurrection, saying, “Probably it means that the body belongs to the Lord because in his death and resurrection he has given himself for the body as part of that redemptive work […] it anticipates the more detailed argument at the end of the letter.”² Anthony Thiselton appears to take a similar approach, relying heavily on the reference to resurrection in v.14 to make sense of v.13b.³

I certainly don’t want to deny the importance of the resurrection here. My impression is that Paul added v.14 primarily to counter where the Corinthians might go after reading v.13a (“God will do away with both of them”), and a theology of the bodily resurrection is important to the implications of this chapter. As Thiselton puts it, “the soma [body] is not to be equated with the koilia [stomach].”⁴ God is going to raise this body in the future and transform it into something glorious and eternal, so we should not use it for base things like sexual immorality in the present.

While that is undoubtedly true, I think v.13b makes more sense if understood through the lens of what he says after v.14. Consider how he continues his reasoning in vv.15-20:

“15 Don’t you know that your bodies are a part of Christ’s body? So should I take a part of Christ’s body and make it part of a prostitute? Absolutely not! 16 Don’t you know that anyone joined to a prostitute is one body with her? For Scripture says, ‘The two will become one flesh.’ 17 But anyone joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. 18 Flee sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body. 19 Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.” (CSB)

Let’s back up for a moment and consider what it means to say something is for something else. What we mean by that word is that there is some kind of intentionality at play. In the case of food and the stomach, God’s intention is for food to be consumed by stomachs, and for stomachs to consume food. In the case of the body and the Lord, it is not only that the body is intended to be used to serve the Lord (though this is obviously true); the body is also “for the Lord” in the sense that God intended it to be joined to the Lord (v.15). So in what sense did God intend for himself to be “for” the body? I think it is in the sense that v.19 suggests – he intended for the body to be the place where he dwells by his Spirit. So to summarize: God intends the body to be joined to him in the Spirit through Jesus, and he intends for himself to be joined to our bodies in and through the same. This is what Paul means by saying the the body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body.

I think this interpretation adds a helpful understanding to the theology and practice Paul is teaching here. As Christians, our bodies are temples of God himself by the Spirit. By the same Spirit, we are destined for resurrection with Jesus (Romans 8:11), so this connection is not only for now, but for all eternity. All of this being true, how can we then take our bodies and use them for base, profane activities? If God himself dwells in us, if he has seen fit to consider our bodies his very temple, and if through Christ we are united with him and he with us, how can we then take his temple and use it for activities that do not honor him? Indeed, the sexual connection between man and wife is ultimately a shadow of what is to come in the new creation (Ephesians 5:29-32), so when we take part in sexual activities outside of that unique bond, we are treating that sacred union with the Lord as though it were nothing.

So often we treat sexual immorality as simply a matter of rule breaking. Perhaps we might take it a step further and say sexual immorality does not lead to our flourishing. Certainly these are both true as far as they go, but they do not go far enough. They do not take us to the deeper spiritual realities that are at play in our lives in Christ. In Christ, we are a new creation, a temple of God himself – a personal a dwelling of the personal God who is himself the source and ground of all being and goodness and love. To the extent we understand this, we will love our bodies immensely. We will cherish our bodies in a way similar to how we cherish a precious heirloom handed down to us from a grandparent. We will give our bodies a place of honor, and not use them as mere play things.

I have often thought that the temptation of sexual immorality comes from loving the body too much. But I think Paul is telling us it is in fact the opposite – in sexual immorality, we do not love our bodies enough. We treat them as base things intended for and identified primarily by sexual urges. That is to say, we judge the intention, the goal, the telos of our bodies by sexual desire. But the body is for the Lord and the Lord is for the body. Sex in its most beautiful iterations is only a glimpse at what God intends for us in Christ – to be deeply unified with him in the Spirit through Jesus Christ. So let us judge our bodies by this much greater purpose, and treat them accordingly.

1. Gordon Fee, NICNT Commentary: 1 Corinthians; Olive Tree Bible Version (on v.13ff)
2. ibid
3. Anthony Thiselton, New International Greek Testament Commentary: 1 Corinthians; Olive Tree Bible Version (vv.12-20)
4. ibid

[Image: Ary Scheffer – Francesca da Rimini]