We are bought with a price

This verse is used in the Family as one of the guiding principles for matters that may affect our physical health, for instance healthy eating, exercise, the prohibition of smoking etc. There probably is reasonable justification for this interpretation. Realising that the Holy Spirit dwells in us should give us cause to live in such a way that our physical bodies are well kept. God gave us these bodies, and although they are temporary dwelling places, He expects us to do our best with all that He gives us.

Having said that, it is important to note that the rest of 1 Corinthians 3 is concerned with our spiritual growth, not our physical.

The analogy of the temple begins in verse 9:

1 Cor 3:9 For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building.

Jesus Christ Himself is the foundation, and all Christians build on Him, constructing a living temple with the things we do. The priority is on ‘enduring works’, the things we do that will be eternal. This passage indicates that some people will arrive at ‘the Day’ and shockingly, their life’s work will burn up, and they will enter the Kingdom of heaven with nothing to show for the time God gave them on earth.

1 Cor 3:10-15

10 According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it.

11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

12 Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw,

13 each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is.

14 If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward.

15 If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

If anyone defiles the temple…

Then in verse 17 we read that God is so concerned with the proper development of His temple on earth − the whole church, not merely the unconnected individual believers’ physical bodies − that if someone ‘defiles’ this temple, God will destroy him. This differs noticeably from verse 15, where it states that the works of ‘wood, hay and straw’ will be burned, although the child of God himself will be saved. Here, God actually destroys the defiler. Obviously, defiling the temple of God is far worse than building with wood, hay or straw.

1 Cor 3:16-17

16 Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

17 If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.

The next place we are referred to as the temple of God is in chapter six of the same book.

1 Cor 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?

Having already described the analogy in chapter 3, Paul now gets into greater details about the things that exclude us from the Kingdom of God. In verses 1 to 8 of chapter six, Paul addresses Christians taking each other to court and cheating each other. Then in verses 9 and 10, he makes a very strong statement:

1 Cor 6:9-10

9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites,

10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

Here is a list of God’s undesirables. These people will not inherit the kingdom of God. Does this mean that anyone who has ever committed any of these particular sins will not go to heaven? No, verse 11 says that some of the saved, forgiven Corinthians had been guilty of these things.

1 Cor 6:11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

Verses 9 and 10 refer to those continuing in such practices. Walking in sin means we are walking away from heaven, not closer to it, we are on the broad way leading to destruction, not the straight and narrow path.

Notice that verse 9 very clearly condemns all sexual sin. There is no room for anyone to escape the connotations of this verse. We cannot reclassify any extra-marital sex as not being addressed by this verse. Why not? Because there are no passages anywhere in the Bible that state specifically that any form of extra-marital sex is not sin, with the exception of a woman who is raped. The rapist is guilty of a terrible sin before God, but the woman who is forced, is of course not guilty of sin.

Again, the Bible contains no passage whatsoever that explicitly justifies any form of extra-marital or premarital sex. We cannot point to verses like, “unto the pure, all things are pure” or “all the law is fulfilled in love” because firstly none of these verses specifically condone extra-marital sex and secondly all these ‘permissive’ Scriptures are contained within passages that expressly condemn sexual sin.

In order to justify the Family’s liberal sexual beliefs, we would need to locate verse after verse specifically detailing the concept, in chapter after chapter up and down the whole Bible where it gives precise instructions on the practice. There would need to be hundreds of places where this is explained. Why? Because there is verse after verse specifically condemning any and all forms of extra-marital sex, in chapter after chapter up and down the whole Bible, hundreds of places!

All things are lawful

1 Cor 6:12 All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.

All things are lawful for me?! Couldn’t this include sex outside of marriage? No. Firstly all such sex is clearly and consistently condemned both before and after this verse. Secondly, we need to make a distinction between the things God created and how He says we should use them. A tree by itself is neither good nor evil, but if we take a branch of that tree and fashion it into a club and kill someone with it, does the tree now become evil? No, it is our action that is wrong. Sex by itself is neither good nor evil. However we can’t have sex by ourself, so God made specific laws to show clearly which uses of this act are good and beautiful, and which are evil and ugly.

‘I will not be brought under the power of any’. We are not to let our sexuality rule us. We rule our bodies, they do not rule us. We must not allow ourselves to be enslaved by our lusts.

13 Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

14 And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power.

As believers, Jesus dwells in us. He walks in us, lives in us. All we do is to have Jesus working through us. That’s the purpose of our bodies. Don’t forget that! We were not created for the sole purpose of having sex, but so that we can glorify Jesus by allowing Him to live in us. As pre- and extra-marital sex is sin, we can’t think we can get away with it. When we indulge in something so obviously and repeatedly condemned in the Word of God, we, as a saved believer, drag Jesus with us into our sin. This is true regardless of whether we’re contemplating having sex with our girlfriend, our brother’s wife or a prostitute.

Sex creates a connection

15 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 harlot? Certainly not!

16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.”

17 But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.

Sex creates a connection between the participants on various levels: physical, mental, emotional, hormonal etc. As we are also one spirit with the Lord, we literally force Him into our sin. Can that please Him?

So what is the bottom line? Verse 18 says to run from it!

18 Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.

And now we return to the concept of our bodies being the temple of the Holy Spirit.

19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?

20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

Our bodies belong to God, our spirits belong to Him, and we will one day have to answer to Him for what we have done with His possessions. We were bought with a price. The price was Jesus’ death, the alternative is Hell. Therefore we are to live in such a way so as to glorify God. How do we know what glorifies God? That’s easy! Read the Bible!

Sexual relations within the church

Before we close, let’s make it very clear that the above passage was specifically addressed to Christians regarding their sexual practices among themselves, not only ‘sex with outsiders’, although that of course is also condemned.

The chapter immediately before this passage (same book, same author, same readership, same inspiration) can clarify this point for us:

1 Cor 5:9-13

9 I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people.

10 Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.

11 But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner-- not even to eat with such a person.

12 For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside?

13 But those who are outside God judges. Therefore “put away from yourselves the evil person.”

The King James Version substitutes ‘fornicator’ for someone who is ‘sexually immoral’ throughout the above passage. So, we are instructed not to keep company with any Christian, be they brother or sister, member of the same church, fellow believer etc if they practise any kind of extra-marital sex, We’re not even supposed to have dinner with them!

In conclusion, we are building the temple of God with our daily actions. The ones that glorify Him will remain, the ones that do not glorify Him will be burned. Those are the sins committed when we were led by our desires, ruled by our lusts, controlled by our physical bodies, instead of retaining control in the knowledge that Jesus Christ Himself dwells in us. If we go so far as to defile the temple of God, the consequence is destruction. If we continue in sin, specifically including sexual relations outside of marriage, we will not inherit any part of the Kingdom of God.

The Bible is crystal clear: any form of premarital or extra-marital sex is hurtful to our own bodies and damaging to our spirits, it negates our inheritance in heaven and is a sin against the Lord. We are not our own masters, as Christians we belong to the Lord, and when He commands us to ‘flee fornication’, then flee!

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