1 Corinthians 6

7. Christ our passover. The gospel passover commemorates a deliverance from spiritual thraldom, of which the release of the Jews from the Egyptian yoke affords but a faint and imperfect emblem. In those complicated sufferings which were the price of our redemption, we not only discover the unsearchable riches of divine love, but we likewise behold the full demerit of sin, and all the horrors of that misery into which we had plunged ourselves by our fatal apostasy; so that our triumph in the great salvation, by recalling to our minds the helpless state in which mercy found us, gives check to every self-exalting thought, and constrains us to ascribe to the free, unmerited favor of God the sole, the undivided praise of all that we have or hope to enjoy. R. W.

8. The words, “let us keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,” look very like words suggested by the Passover season; at least they have, upon that supposition, a force and significance which do not belong to them upon any other; and it is not a little remarkable that the hints casually dropped in the Epistle, concerning particular parts of the year, should coincide with this supposition. Paley.

9-11. Many Corinthian Christians were addicted to those sins of impurity which they had practiced in the days of their heathenism, and which disgraced their native city even among the heathen. We can not wonder if it proved most difficult to root out immorality from the rising Church. The offenders against Christian chastity were exceedingly numerous at this period; and it was especially with the object of attempting to reform them, and to check the growing mischief, that Paul now determined to visit Corinth. He has himself described this visit as a painful one; he went in sorrow at the tidings he had received, and when he arrived he found the state of things even worse than he had expected; he tells us that it was a time of personal humiliation to himself, occasioned by the flagrant sins of so many of his own converts; he reminds the Corinthians afterward how he had “mourned” over those who had dishonored the name of Christ by “the uncleanness and fornication and wantonness which they had committed.” H.

10. The Greeks and Romans, before the time of Christianity, had no idea, or even the faintest vestige of an idea, of what in the Scriptural system is called sin; and the idea was utterly and exquisitely inappreciable by pagan Greece and Rome. De Quincey.

1. DARE any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not

2 before the saints? Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the

3 world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye

4 not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life? If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least

5 esteemed in the church. I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man

6 among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? But brother

7 goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take

8 wrong? Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.

9. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves

10 with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall

11 inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

12. All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for

13 me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication,

14 but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord, and

15 will also raise up us by his own power. Know ye not that your bodies are the members of

Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? 16 God forbid. What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, 17 saith he, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication. 18 tion sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of 19 the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

Redeemed, and yet owing service—this describes the disciple of Christ; redeemed, but just on that account bound to a walk hallowed of God. And who does not feel on reflection how much is here expressed to us in few words? “Ye are bought with a price”; inexhaustible declaration, well deserving to be written in indelible characters in the deepest recesses of the heart! Bought, ransomed, from what else than from the deadly power of sin, which, without Christ, held us as in iron fetters, and made us guilty before the face of spotless holiness! For how much ransomed? For a price not to be fully estimated even by angels, a price only within the reach of almighty power; by holiness demanded, by mercy paid, and through grace offered even to the chief of sinners: the blood of God’s incarnate son, the sacrifice of his divine yet human life, through the act of highest love, and yet of absolute obedience. And whereunto redeemed, if not in order “that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life”? “Therefore glorify God,” writes the apostle, and thus binds together in the most beautiful manner grace and duty. This is the great principle of action for every really Christian life. “Glorify God,” in the inner chamber, in the home circle, in society, under the father’s roof, and far from the mother’s eye; “glorify God,” if thou wilt not that thy life should be useless, unhappy—nay, even lost. Glorify him “in your body,” as in the temple in which you are the appointed priests, and this through all your members; and in his power keep yourselves pure. Glorify him “in your spirit,” by directing all its powers and energies to the one grand aim, that God really may receive full honor from the work of his hands. Yea, verily, here is a task—an enjoyment for two lives; and the heart in which the work of sanctification has begun may thrill as with a blessed anticipation of what it shall be when the God of his salvation shall be perfectly glorified. Van O.

THIS Epistle deals with a large variety of isolated questions which the Corinthian Church had put to him on some previous occasion. Hence the Epistle is one of Christian casuistry—an application of Christian principles to the various circumstances and cases of conscience which arise continually in the daily life of a highly civilized and highly artificial community. This chapter contains the apostle’s judgment on two such questions: 1. The manner of deciding Christian quarrels (vs. 1-11). 2. The character of Christian liberty, what is meant by it, and how it is limited (vs. 12-20).

1,2. It appears from this account that questions arose among the Corinthian Christians which needed litigation: questions of wrongs done to persons or to property. These wrongs they carried to the heathen courts of judicature for redress. For this the apostle reproves them severely. F. W. R.—It should be remembered that the law gave its sanction to the decision pronounced in a litigated case by arbitrators privately chosen, so that the Christians might obtain a just decision of their mutual differences without resorting to the heathen tribunals. C.

3. We shall judge angels. When Christians are spoken of as kings and priests, it is not meant that they wear a crown or minister at an altar, but rather that in heaven they are exalted and honored like kings and priests on earth. Official relation is not at all designated, merely official dignity. In this way the office of a judge is most appropriately employed to image forth the same elevation. It is one of the most dignified and imposing of human titles. It brings before the mind the picture of venerable wisdom upon its elevated seat, dictating the noblest of sentiments to the noblest of pupils, and receiving the homage of the crowd. What more natural than that the beings, who are figuratively decked with the scepter of royal dignity and the miter of sacerdotal rank, should put on also the vestments of the judicial station. They receive the admiring tribute of the world, and they may be styled the judges of the world. They are in some respects more glorious than the angels of God, and they may be said to judge those angels. The sentiment here taught is that Christians in heaven will in some respects be superior to angels. Homer.

7-11. His argument runs thus: You ask me how the oppressed are to be freed from gross oppressors except by an appeal to legal justice? how flagrant crimes—such as that condemned in the fifth chapter—are to be prevented in Christians? I answer, The Church of Christ does not include such persons in the idea of its existence at all. It only contemplates men “washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” But drunkards, revilers, extortioners, covetous men, gross sensualists—I can not tell you how to legislate for such, for such ought not to be in your society at all. F. W. R.

He gives them a catalogue of the basest sinners that their profligate city or the whole earth could furnish, and then he says to these very men, these men destined for the walls of God’s glorious house, “Such were some of you.” We come then to this conclusion—no meanness, no guilt, will cause God to reject any one of us. An earthly builder is obliged to cast away bad materials, for he can not alter them. God has promised to cast away none that come to him, for he can alter them. He is willing to take the worst, for he is able to transform them and make them the very best. C. B.

11. First of all we are clean as He is clean, then we are set apart as He is set apart, then we are righteous as He is righteous. Cleansed, sanctified, justified—these are the three conditions or privileges into which a believing man is brought from the moment that, by faith, he identifies himself with Christ! All this in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. The name washes, sanctifies, justifies. It is a name of power, containing everything in it that a sinner needs. He who consents to use it gets all that it contains! The Spirit washes, sanctifies, justifies. He has his part to do in all these, and he does it as the Spirit of Omnipotence! Bonar.

12. Men in the Corinthian Church, having heard the apostle teach the law of liberty, pushed that doctrine so far as to make it mean a right to do whatsoever a man wills to do. Accordingly he found himself called on to oppose a system of self-indulgence and sensuality, a gratification of the appetites and the passions taught systematically as Christianity. By these teachers self-gratification was maintained on the ground of the rights of Christian liberty and of the rights of nature. They said, We may eat what we will. We are free from the observance of days. All things are lawful. That which is done by a child of God ceases to be sin. Paul met this exaggeration by declaring that Christian liberty is limited, first, by Christian expediency, “All things are lawful”—yes, “but all things are not expedient”; and secondly, by its own nature, “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” F. W. R.

Take the various forms of worldly amusement. So far as they are really amusements and not labor and sorrow (which in fact many of them are, dreadfully fully jading the body and mind, and exhausting the energies), and so far as no breach of God’s moral law is involved in them, they are innocent and lawful. But does any one find by experience that some worldly amusement, though innocent in itself, and very possibly innocent for others, yet has a tendency to influence his passions, to set up his vanity, and to brush rudely from his mind the thought of God’s presence? Then let there be no compromise. Or should he experience no evil spiritual effect from the indulgence, or at least none of which he is conscious, may he abandon himself without restriction to the amusement in question, live in it, sacrifice a considerable amount of money, leisure, time to it? Surely not. To live in any amusement is to be the slave of it. And the Christian should spurn any such dependence. The tone which he takes up toward all innocent enjoyments and recreations should be just that of the apostle, “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” Besides, the Christian dares not give himself full latitude in this respect. With an insidious heart, with crafty, spiritual foes watching for his halting, with that awful warning respecting the straitness of the gate and the narrowness of the way ringing in his ear, it would not be safe to do so. He sports not within a very wide margin of the precipice’s edge. E. M. G.

13. The second plea of the teachers Paul is here condemning, is the rights of Nature. There is some difficulty in the exposition of this chapter, because the apostle mixes together the pleas of his opponents with his own answers to those pleas—states them himself, in order that he may reply to them. The first part of the thirteenth verse contains two of these pleas; the second part of this verse, with the fourteenth, contains his reply. 1. “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats”—a natural correspondence. Here are appetites, and things made on purpose to satisfy appetites. “Therefore,” said they, “Nature herself says, ‘Enjoy!’” 2. The transitoriness of this enjoyment furnishes an argument for the enjoyment. “God shall bring to an end both it and them.” That is, the body will perish, so will the food and the enjoyments—they do not belong to eternity, therefore indulgence is a matter of indifference. It is foolish ignorance to think that these are sins any more than the appetites of brutes which perish. To the argument about correspondence of appetites with the gratifications provided for them, he replies thus: “The body is not for self-indulgence but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” In other words, he tells of a more exact mutual correspondence. He reveals a true and higher nature. F. W. R.—The body is for the Lord Jesus, to be consecrated by his indwelling to his service; and the Lord Jesus is for the body, to consecrate it by dwelling therein in the person of his Spirit.

15. Paul’s argument here is, that sins of unchastity, though bodily acts, yet injure a part of our nature which will not be destroyed by death, and which is closely connected with our moral well-being. And it is a fact no less certain than mysterious that moral and spiritual ruin is caused by such sins, which human wisdom (when untaught by revelation) held to be as blameless as eating and drinking. C.

Your bodies are the members of Christ. A man who is of a cleanly disposition loves to wear clean garments. The body is the garment of the soul, and a clean heart will preserve a pure body. Remember, Christians, by what hand your bodies were made, by what guest they are inhabited, by what price they are purchased, in what laver they have been washed, and to whose eye they shall hereafter be presented. Jenkyn.

19,20. We hardly know which to admire most in this exhortation, the strength or the grandeur with which it is enforced. It makes duty appear so reasonable that we feel at once condemned if we shrink from it; and yet where in the whole Bible can be found a loftier description of the Christian’s blessedness? And this is Paul’s usual manner. He connects with the duty he inculcates some exalted privilege, and thus ennobles the service to which he calls us; causing us to glory in our work while we are performing it. Here he tells us whose the Christian is—he is God’s; how he became God’s—he has been “bought with a price”; what God makes him—“the temple of the Holy Ghost”; and then, what God expects from him—glory. C. B.

The second great truth peculiar to Spiritual Christianity is that of the sovereign and abiding influence of the Holy Spirit in renovating the soul in each instance in which it is renovated. This doctrine also, like the propitiation effected by the Son of God, while in one view it is an inscrutable mystery, is in another an intelligible truth, which accords at once with our consciousness and with the principles of sound philosophy. The contact of the infinite mind with the finite is indeed a depth; but not so the restoration of the moral faculties as a matter of consciousness. Let it only be granted that true felicity must consist in the predominance of holy affections or of emotions habitually tending toward God, and let it also be granted that no such affections ordinarily belong to us nor spontaneously spring up or grow with our growth, then must we not acknowledge that the doctrine so clearly affirmed in Scripture of the sovereign renovating influences of the Holy Spirit is full of consolation to ourselves, as well as strictly accordant with the best conceptions we can form of the goodness of God? Happy indeed, and ennobling as well as efficacious, is the belief that the body of the Christian is “the temple of the Holy Ghost”—a doctrine this which precludes at once despondency and presumption. For how should we despond, if He who “creates us anew in Christ Jesus” is almighty? or how presume, if we be convinced that, were the sacred energy withdrawn, there “would remain in us no good thing”? I. T.—Happy would it be for us if we could always maintain an unwavering persuasion as to the reality and the greatness of this inhabitation of God through the Spirit. It would confer a dignity, of which we now know too little, upon the whole tenor of a Christian life. Temptation would be disarmed by the sense of such a presence, and we should tremble at the thought of grieving one so great and yet so near. J. W. A.

19. Not your own.** A man does not own himself till God owns him, and that ownership is solemnly acknowledged. He is a slave to his baser nature, even though his chains are inviting as diamond rings and bracelets of gold. While a passion against which reason revolts domineers over him, while a lust which conscience rebukes scoffs at conscience, he is ruled by a tyrant as vile and base as his own deformity. E. H. G.

20. Bought with a price.** A word made us, a Calvary bought us; creation was painless, redemption was a torture. The price paid measures God’s estimate of us. He does not pay a life so dear to him for souls that are insignificant. God paid Christ for them—the gold of his heart. Stand at the cross, and there God shows you and the angels his estimate of souls. That he might win them back, that he might have them again, he paid that price. J. D.—Therefore glorify God. As creatures who derive their being from God, we are bound to serve him to the utmost extent of the powers he hath given us. But his redeeming grace brings us under a new and still more endearing obligation to his service. Surely nothing can appear more just and equitable than that he who bought us should possess us, and that the ransomed should be entirely devoted to their Redeemer. R. W.

Which are God’s. The being that lives continually in God may well be called God’s. The whole man, from center to circumference, the man developed and the man undeveloped, all that lies within these souls in germ, waiting other scenes and other eyes and other influences to bring it out—all, all is God’s. He stamps it his. We are only free when we come into the possession of God. Till then we are bond-servants—free ever after. We lose ourselves in God. When we allow God to call us his, then he allows us to call him ours. He gains a creature and we gain a Creator. He gains a lost sinner and we gain a Redeeming Saviour and an eternal Father and Friend. J. D.