NOTES for Co1 6:12-20
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).