1 Corinthians 6:12-20

March 25, 2018

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 14:45 in the audio file.

Or, Glorify God with Your Heart and Parts

The first question and answer to the Westminster Shorter Catechism is huge if true (and it is). “What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” That’s monumental.

Even better, though not as short, is the first Q&A in the Heidelberg Catechism, affectionately referred to as Heidelberg 1.

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

“I am not my own.” This is not the greatest let down to self-esteem, the greatest pride-balloon pop, or the greatest discouraging word, though our humanistic culture might disagree. It is the greatest comfort. This is not merely Calvinism in the classroom, this is Calvinism as a soul-fortress. I am not my own because I have been created, and my Creator is God. I am not my own because I have been purchased, and my Savior is Lord. My body and breath are not my own, they are a gift from the will of God. And as one who has sinned and deserves death and the brutal accusations of Satan, my sins are forgiven and I have been freed from guilt and eternal punishment because of His definite atonement.

This is comfort for soul and body. Not a hair can fall from my head apart from the Father’s will. This is also motivation for righteousness for soul and body. Every hair on my head can be combed for the Father’s will.

The Heidelberg answer, “I am not my own,” is 1 Corinthians 6:19 first-personalized. While Paul has given warnings along the way, he has been driving to this all along. He has been asking the Corinthians to remember their doctrine and the implications of those truths for sake of their sexual morality.

The final part of verses 12-20 ask three “Do you not know?” questions. In verse 15, don’t they know that they are members of Christ’s body? In verses 16-18, don’t they know that they are one-d with Christ. And in verses 19-20, don’t they know that they are owned by Christ?

We finished near the end of Paul’s thoughts on being one-d with Christ last Lord’s Day. He told them that they should flee sexual immorality, which is an urgent and serious exhortation that applies to more than intercourse outside of the one man-one woman one-fleshedness in marriage. We saw an illustration (Joseph with Potiphar’s wife) and similar instruction (Solomon to his sons in Proverbs) from the Old Testament that sex sins are not sins to fight but to flee.

There is a reason given in the last part of verse 18. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body; but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

Someone might ask how suicide is not a sin against one’s own body. Gluttony and drunkenness also appear to cause self-fleshly inflicted wounds. But there is something in our image-bearing nature, something in our relation-reflecting being, that causes sexual immorality to hurt us in a way that other sins don’t. Sexual sins are selfish sins, but they aren’t solitary sins; it takes two to make a thing go wrong. The physical union could result in a new life, so a third person is permanently involved.

There are sexually transmitted diseases, yes (MacArthur concludes that the ver[...]