by Phil Johnson
t the heart of all the problems in the church at Corinth was a tendency to let the values of that debauched culture seep into the church. That's something for missional Christians to consider today: cultural assimilation as a strategy for church growth in a pagan culture is fraught with serious dangers. Especially in a city filled with both temples and brothels—where fornication was literally deemed a religious rite—the worst thing the church could do would be to take a lax attitude toward sexual sin.The vast majority of the Jewish community in Corinth had rejected the gospel (Acts 18:6). So the church was made up of mostly Gentiles who, of course, came from a culture that was not inclined to see sexual sin as unspiritual. Just the opposite. Most of the "religion" in Corinth involved temple prostitution and debauched sexual behavior.
That may explain somewhat why the Corinthian church would receive into their membership a man who was fornicating with his father's wife (1 Corinthians 5:1). Perhaps they thought they could connect with their culture better if they casually accepted the man's sin without flinching. In fact, it seems clear that some of the people in the Corinthian church did indeed wear extreme tolerance like a badge of honor. First Corinthians 5:2 says people in the Corinthian assembly were puffed up. They actually took some sort of perverse pride in their liberality towards such a grossly immoral act.
Not only was this guy's incest a supremely immoral and deeply shameful sin; it wasn't really impressing even the most immoral people in the Corinthian culture. Incest was a sin that even shocked the grossest pagans of Corinth (v. 1).
Paul wasn't gentle in his rebuke. He ordered the Corinthians to excommunicate the man (vv. 7, 13).
Notice: Paul wasn't impressed with how sophisticated and missional the Corinthians were. In fact (this can hardly be stressed enough) Paul never encouraged the Corinthians to blend into their culture by adopting an easygoing familiarity with or an extra-tolerant attitude toward the distinctive sins of that culture. On the contrary, he stressed the importance of avoiding the sins associated with Corinthian paganism.No, I take it back. "Avoiding" is too mild in light of what Paul actually told them: "Flee from sexual immorality" (1 Corinthians 6:18).
But first he hammers them with several these reasons why fornication is such an unholy, degrading, defiling sin. He gives several reasons:
First Corinthians 6:13: It dishonors the purpose for which God made our bodies. "The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord." Fornication takes that which ought to be holy—that which was made uniquely in the image of God (with the express purpose of honoring Him)—and puts it to an unholy use instead. That's wrong because (he says) "the body is . . . for the Lord." That is the main thought and the central thread of 1 Corinthians 613-20. But there's more.
In verses 15-17, he gives a second reason why fornication is such a serious sin: it defiles our spiritual union with Christ. "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, "The two will become one flesh." But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him."
Do the math, he says. If you are one with Christ in an intimate spiritual union, and then through an act of fornication you become one flesh with a harlot in an intimate fleshly union, you have in effect defiled the body of Christ.
A couple of things to notice about this: First, our union with Christ is so perfect and so complete that it encompasses our whole person. It's not limited to our spirit only apart from our flesh. The whole person, both body and spirit, are Christ's by virtue of our spiritual union with Him.
Paul here stands in contrast to certain pseudo-Christian proto-Gnostics who taught that spirit is good and matter is evil. They taught that our spirit is redeemed, and made holy, and united with Christ, but the body is unredeemed and completely unholy and fit only for ultimate destruction. They said you could sin in the body without defiling your spirit.
Here Paul teaches otherwise. Notice that he doesn't say the body is evil. Just the opposite. His whole point is that the body is made for a holy purpose: to glorify God. Verse 14: "God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power." Christ rose bodily, and our bodies will also be raised and glorified in physical form. So there's nothing inherently unholy about the body.
On the contrary, "the body is . . . for the Lord; and the Lord for the body." God is not against the body; he is for it. He created it; and He is the one who made our bodies so that they are capable of enjoying pleasure. There's nothing wrong with that pleasure. It's a holy pleasure—as long as it is a fulfillment of, and not a corruption of, God's purposes.
In fact, in verse 16, Paul is alluding to Genesis 2:24, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." That is God's purpose for men and women. Sex in the context of lifelong marriage—the union of two partners devoted to one another above all others—is a holy pleasure. God designed it for our pleasure. It's holy and honorable within the marriage relationship, and according to Hebrews 13:4, "the marriage bed [is] undefiled."
But that same verse in Hebrews 13 says, "God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous." Paul says the same thing in verses 9-10 of 1 Corinthians 6. Neither "fornicators . . . nor adulterers . . . shall inherit the kingdom of God." And those who defile their union with Christ by committing sins of sexual immorality are guilty of an abominable offense against Christ and (v. 18) "against his own body." In other words, fornication is a unique and especially unholy sin, because it defiles our union with Christ.
But Paul is not finished. In verse 19 (this is where our passage starts) he says such sins of the body also desecrate the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Your body is the dwelling-place of the Spirit of God, and therefore for a Christian to debase the body is to profane a holy temple.
Now, put all this together. You want to know why fornication has always been regarded as a particularly heinous sin? Because it involves personal and direct transgressions against each Member of the Trinity. It debases and dishonors the body, which (v. 13) is "for the Lord." God created it for His purposes. To use it for any other purpose—especially a purpose as evil as an act of fornication—is a sin against God the Father. It's a sin against Christ as well (v. 15), because it takes our members, which are Christ's by union with Him, and joins them to a harlot, defiling our holy union with Christ. And it's a sin against the Holy Spirit (v. 19), because it desecrates the temple in which He dwells.And notice Paul's counsel to the Corinthians. He doesn't urge them to get into a recovery program for sexual addicts. He doesn't suggest that they get therapy. He just tells them to stop it.
No, again. It's more urgent than that (v. 18): "Flee fornication." Run from it. Avoid any and all temptations to it. Direct your feet, and your eyes, and your ears, and your thoughts to other things. This is a sin to flee. "Other vices may be conquered in fight; this one can be conquered only by flight."
In Solomon's words (Proverbs 5:8), "Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house." Scripture says we should flee even the thought of adultery. Second Timothy 2:22: "Flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart." First Peter 2:11 says "fleshly lusts . . . [wage] war against the soul." Flee them. Abstain from them completely.
And notice: Paul finds the highest reason to avoid fornication in the atonement: "You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body" (v. 20).
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t is a remarkable fact that all the heresies which have arisen in the Christian Church have had a decided tendency to dishonor God and to flatter man. They have always had for their covert, if not for their open aim, the exaltation of human nature, and the casting down of the sovereignty of divine grace.
Back when I was in college, I almost got roped into applying to an MFA program for creative writing. I bring it up because it was my first exposure to what was then an odd phenomenon. To get into the program, you had to have a published book of writing, and some works published in literary journals. I knew I could probably get something published in a journal of poetry if I worked a full year on the objective, but a real book? How was I supposed to get a book of anything published?
See: as part of the culture I am decrying here, you think that the world is bifurcated into to venn diagram circles labeled “orthodox” and “heresy” which cannot overlap (true enough), but that no other categories exist. So if I am not saying, “Mike Horton is an icon of pure orthodoxy with no admixture of any error,” then I must be saying (which is clearly your perception), “Mike Horton is guilty of theological treason, so let’s get out the posse and the noose before someone says something reasonable to change our minds.” What if I am instead saying, “You know: is it possible to say what any Reformed confession says and take it too far, so that the balance of teaching is off the center mark and it causes people to make mistakes?”
So to that end, let me thank you for decades of brilliant dialogue and broadcast content regarding true orthodoxy and the centrality of the Gospel as the defining matter of the Christian faith. There are a lot of allegedly-apologetic radio shows and podcasts, but none of them frankly affect as many people as deeply and drastically as the conversation which is known as the White Horse Inn has affected conscientious, conservative people since its first broadcasting 1990. WHI has been talking seriously and soberly about the faith longer than I have been a Christian, so when I come to it I come with respect and admiration.
Now: why bring it up? I actually have three reasons. 
ne of the most commonly-asked questions I get about Spurgeon is from readers who want to know his position on divorce. In deference to Victorian sensibilities, Spurgeon had little to say on the subject, and when he brought it up, it was usually only to decry the evil effects of divorce in families, in society, and across the generations. He rightly deplored divorce and never encouraged it.
The 
ear brethren, you and I believe in the doctrines of the gospel. We have received the certainties of revealed truth. These are things which are verily believed among us. We do not bow down before men's theories of truth, nor do we admit that theology consists in "views" and "opinions." We declare that there are certain verities, essential, abiding, eternal, from which it is ruinous to swerve.
The law makes sin appear exceedingly sinful; the gospel makes sin feel exceedingly painful.
You know: because comparing "anti-homosexual organizations" with "terrorists" and "racists" is utterly objective language -- just statements of fact which we should take as passe news reporting. One has to wonder what it would take to see something you say in this vein get labelled as "digital stoning" by the Christian tone police if this sort of rhetoric gets a pass, as it did 5 years ago.
Third on my list of items for writing to you today is that if you want to go the route of L. Ron Hubbard and start your own religion, I offer you that as a clear and cogent solution to the many problems you face right now. You've written a few manifestos, and a few books, and you have a legion of followers who are spiritual but not religious, and you also have experience with trying to make a conversation into something more -- and to paraphrase Edison, at least you now know one way in which establishing a new religion will not work. If you want to establish a religion in which there is no ethical or moral difference between heterosexual unions and homosexual unions, I say swing for the wall. Please establish that religion -- but please stop trying to make this into an issue about what Jesus would "really" do.
I bring this up because I think it is an utterly-valid objection to the apparent selectivity of some forms of church speech and culture. For example, fat people are not called to repent nearly as seriously as atheists -- even though they are both serving idols, and in some sense, their bellies. Greedy people are not called to repent with any vigor -- there are in fact television networks devoted to promoting the idea that only the Christian faith makes one healthy and wealthy, and the coalition to call these people out to repentance is pretty loose and thin. Murderers are not called out by the church, Brian: if we can agree that killing babies is the worst form of rampant oppression on the face of the globe today, doctors who kill babies in the womb can find refuge in churches all over the place and proudly say they are doing good humanitarian work.
