NOTES for Co1 6:17-20

Much has been said and written about spiritual life in general and Christian spiritual life in particular. But what, after all, is the spiritual life of a Christian? It is at times very hard for us to answer this question, perhaps also because today spiritual life is often taken to mean many things that have no direct relation to it: theology, morality, religion itself, mystical experiences, and much else that, while connected with spiritual life and born from it, is still not identical with it. After all, by spiritual life it is most natural to mean the life of our spiritual "I," which in biblical language is usually called the heart; and it shows itself first of all as will and relationship. And our spiritual life is, above all, the relationships that bind us to God and to our neighbors. That is where the most interesting part begins.

The point is that, judging by numerous biblical witnesses, God agrees to build relationships with us only on His own terms. He imposes nothing on us; He only offers us Himself, but at the same time He requires that we let Him into our life unconditionally and absolutely. He is not satisfied with less. Then it turns out that, if we want to have normal, full relationships with God, we will have to give up belonging to ourselves. And if we dare to do this, our heart and our whole life, inward and outward, will be filled with the breath of God, that breath of the Kingdom about which the apostle writes. And then God Himself will return to us the life that we dared to give Him. He will return it in a fullness we would never have found without Him, without His help and without His participation.

In reflecting on the role of the body in spiritual life and on what later came to be called sins of the flesh, Paul is very far from the notion, quite widespread in Christian circles during the Middle Ages, that corporeality is in itself a source of sin. For the Apostle, on the contrary, the body is a temple, a dwelling place of the Spirit of God, and sexual immorality, being a sin against one’s own body, is thereby also a sin against God (vv. 18–20). Paul evidently distinguishes two kinds of bodily life. Some of its forms are confined to physiology alone and do not affect spiritual life as such. They remain an element of our world, not yet fully transformed, until the very end of its history, being transformed in the same way as all the rest of animal nature and together with it (v. 13). The day of complete transformation will come, and bodily life in this present form will disappear without in itself creating any obstacles on a person’s path into the Kingdom. It does not “possess” a person or hinder him on this path (v. 12).

But there are comparatively few such spiritually neutral bodily phenomena in human life, at least if we speak of corporeality over which fallen human beings retain even relative control. Far more often, something that appears to be a purely physiological act is at the same time a spiritual act as well, as is characteristic, for example, of the sexual sphere.

The Apostle understands perfectly well that there are no nonspiritual actions here, regardless of whether the person performing them thinks about the spiritual component or not. Spiritual relations are established even with a prostitute, although the person who goes to her may have wanted nothing of the kind. Both will carry these relations with them into eternity, regardless of whether at the moment of intercourse they remembered eternity or thought only of momentary pleasure (vv. 15–16). If a Christian chooses sexual immorality, he not only violates the Torah and destroys his own relationship with God; he also binds himself to other people through relations that are utterly incompatible with life in the Kingdom. If this happens, the person seeking the Kingdom will somehow have to resolve the problems arising from these relations before his breath can merge with that divine breath which pervades the Kingdom (v. 17).

Paul describes quite fully what we would call today the ascetic component of Christian life. However, today many people associate asceticism with "mortification of the flesh," with a struggle against one's own body, and sometimes even against one's own nature in general. The apostle understands asceticism in its original sense, as the ordering of one's spiritual life and life as a whole around that spiritual core which in his time was called the inner Torah. And one of the problems of every ascetic practice in every age has been the problem of ungoverned human intentions.

What is an intention? It is a will whose source is the person's spiritual "I," called the heart in the Bible, joined to the object toward which it is directed. Not one action, not one decision, not even a simple glance cast at something exists without the act of will that accompanies it. It is impossible not only to decide something or choose something, but even simply to see or hear something, or someone, without a particular act of will each time. Yet it often happens that the one who is looking or hearing, for example, identifies himself with what he sees or hears.

In the same way, a person experiencing one or another spiritual or psychological state can identify himself with it, as often happens in cases of intense emotion. And then it is no longer the person's will that directs him, but that with which the person identifies himself. The person himself gives his will, and therefore himself, into captivity to what is only a part of his own nature, and he loses his true self, that genuine "I" which is the source of every act of will and of all life.

Paul understands perfectly: the issue is not what a Christian may or may not see, hear, eat, or drink, but whether he becomes the spiritual prisoner of what he has seen, heard, eaten, or drunk. Whether he identifies himself with all this or remains inwardly free, able at any moment to stop doing what can hinder him on the spiritual path. Sexual immorality, the violation of the seventh commandment, turns out to be especially dangerous spiritually. And the issue here is not some special defectiveness of sexual life as such, but the fact that for a human being, unlike an animal, "pure sex" is impossible.

For a human being, it can only be part of those relationships that connect him with a sexual partner in all fullness and depth, so that even with a prostitute, in a relationship that by definition lasts no longer than one night, a person becomes one whole, and this unity remains forever, for all eternity. Here there is either the fullness of relationship and marriage in the fullness of life, or the fullness of mutual destruction and death. That is why the apostle gives so much attention to this topic: this is not moralizing, but a conversation about the Kingdom, about salvation, about life and death.