The Invisible Man
Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. 1 Corinthians 6:18 NASB
Flee– Paul is quite direct in his instructions to believers when it comes to the sexual atmosphere in ancient Corinth. Run away! Don’t try to take a stand for what is right. Don’t try to fight for upholding the Torah. Don’t think you can handle this. Run as if your life depended on it.
Why? It might seem obvious to us. Sex is just too powerful for human beings to handle. At least that’s what we usually think. It’s too overwhelming to properly control. It’s too intimate to maintain perspective. And once it gets started, it’s like trying to put out a forest fire with a glass of water. No, better to run.
But Paul’s reasoning doesn’t seem to follow this line of thought. He tells us that the reason we need to run is because this sin is different from all other sins. How is it different? It is a sin against my own body. Now that sounds reasonable since sex is very much a bodily action, but if you think about it, so is eating, sleeping, drinking, touching, smelling, seeing. Wouldn’t it be right to say, “Run away from over-eating because over-eating is a sin against one’s own body”? Couldn’t we say the same thing about alcohol? Isn’t drinking too much a body-sin? What about taking drugs? That clearly alters the body. In fact, any addictive kind of behavior is first and foremost an internal collapse and typically has consequences for the body. So why does Paul say that this particular sin is a sin against the body but all the rest aren’t? The answer is in the word Paul chooses for “immoral man.”
First we need some cultural background. The Greek word “immoral man” is porneuōn. Literally, it means, “prostitute” or “commit fornication” (sexual intercourse between people not married to each other). In the culture of Corinth, this involved temple sexual worship. The ancient Greek culture did not have the same ethical stance that the modern West espouses. “. . . since intercourse is regarded as just as natural as eating and drinking, extramarital affairs are permitted for husbands. Yet excess is censured, and Plato defends intercourse with harlots only as long as it is secret and causes no offense. Sparta maintains stronger sexual discipline but is also the home of homosexuality.”[1] This general attitude was combined with acceptable sexual intercourse with prostitutes in pagan temples for fertility worship. This is the culture Paul must address.
Secondly, Paul knows Israel’s history. The sexual overtones of the covenant are clear. Cultic prostitution was always associated with idolatry and the prophets portray unfaithfulness to God as an act of adultery. God’s relationship to His people is like a marriage. Sexual promiscuity is a sin that affects all the community, both horizontally and vertically. Furthermore, the history of Israel demonstrates the power of sexual misconduct in stories from the Genesis saga. Far too often sex plays a role in the generational dysfunction of Israel’s forefathers. Maybe Paul is overly forceful in his admonition because his own people have such a tainted and dismal history of failure when it comes to sex.
Finally, like drinking and eating, sex is a “built-in” disaster zone. I don’t have to take drugs (at least behaviorally I am not forced to). I don’t have to gamble, or shop, or over work, or get angry. But I have to eat. I have to drink. And, yes, in at least one sense, sex is essential. The race goes extinct without it. But it isn’t instinctual propagation that gives sex its power. Sex is a part of self-identity. Perhaps that’s why Paul considers it an internal sin, a body-sin. How we handle this insistent force really determines who we are. In some ways, sex defines us. That might be what Paul has in mind since his audience in Corinth was saturated with the Greek “natural” view of human beings slightly above animal desires. Paul’s Hebraic view of what it means to be human starts from a completely different place—a little less than angels, not a little more than apes.
Topical Index: sex, immorality, flee, Corinth, 1 Corinthians 6:18
[1]Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament(918). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
Thank you for continuing tp share your teachings with us.
Well said, thank you.
There is the “Oneness” factor of sex that is not involved in any other sin that my pre-coffee mind can think of. “Fleeing” was Joseph’s solution with Mrs. Potiphar.
“…Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk upon hot coals, and his feet not be scorched?…”
Sex is where we were designed to “join flesh” by also joining our minds and spirits – which is the alignment of our will – with another. I think no other sin aligns us so completely with another human being: not even cultic alignment: not even associations where blood oaths are pledged and even lives are pledged to the conjoined will of the whole (for example, the Jesuit order pledges to “be as dead” in order the carry out the will of the order). I think this is because, as a triune being – a nephesh – we are consigned to follow the alignment of one dimension with the other dimensions that we are.
Yeshua says that if we just imagine ourselves doing a sin, we have already sinned: our spirits have already willed it and our bodies have already adjusted to that new reality. I think nowhere do we see this alignment better than with porn (sex without God), where the mind drags the spirit along and submits it to the will of an ‘other’ – even the digital or mental manifestation of another – without the blessing (love) of God, and the body adjusts to the mind and spirit accordingly. Death – fracture from real relationship – accomplished in the entire nephesh.
I think sex outside of real marriage (which is the union of two persons with God), leaves out the third Person, which invalidates it as true love, for to have true love, the lovers must be hooked up to the love supply line: the third Person Who sanctions, or, allows, the other two to be together, and gives them the love – the connection – necessary for them to actually be together. Sex without God is like drinking from a glass without water. We fooled the nephesh into thinking we have loved and are loved without the love, and in the process, we ‘used up’ all the resources we were given to love with, leaving us drained of what we need for a real encounter. I have thought that in no other action do we so completely waste our entire nephesh in the process of looking for love in all the wrong places, so sex outside marriage represents the biggest resource dump of all: mentally, spiritually as well as physically.
We were given a measure of mind, spirit and body to glorify God with. Sin is a wasting of that inheritance. I believe sex can dump the entire load more effectively than any other sin because it involves all aspects of our image of God. I have thought that sex erases that image more completely than anything else, for it mimics relationship better than anything else, and so, I think it can be more addictive – more entrapping – than anything else, too. When we go looking for love in all the wrong places, I think sex feels like the best substitute: we get all the advantages of submission on a mental, spiritual and physical level without having to actually covenant with the other two legs of the love trifecta – God and another person. I think sex has all the action of covenant – and enjoys all the advantages of covenant – without actually having to covenant (which is to submit ourselves to another, with a ‘witness’ – a third validating party – to legalize it), but I think we are just fooling ourselves into believing that those others showed up and handed over their ‘goods’ – into believing that God handed over His blessing of love, and another person(s) handed over themselves, too. In the end, only we showed up – alone in this little sex crowd – and handed over our own ‘goods’ all by ourselves, and went away empty again, too, “having spent our entire inheritance”.
I think sex without God is where everyone involved shows up: identity as the image of love – of God – in hand: and simultaneously throws those images away – bodies included – for without God, no exchange – no beneficial life – really occurred. In the end, sex without God leaves everyone just as thirsty – no, more thirsty – than when they arrived, for part of the essential self just got dumped. Now we get to live in real estate that even we forsook: that we failed to nurture and have nurtured. I think sex without God empties us of all we were given to image Him with; leaving us nothing in the love department to work with: no ‘trade goods’: leaving us like an abandoned woman – a “harlot” – for we abandoned ourselves.
Many times in Scripture, Jezebel The Mastermind, attempts to seduce God’s Powerhouse Prophets, to w e a k e n d, actually Jezebel had a master. Ahab. May we be reminded of The Showdown on Mount Carmel, the prophets of Baal were Jezebel’s Prophets, and they were openly humiliated. And Elijah said to Israel let God be God. Why do you waver between two opinions. Would this not parallel with Yeshua saying, get off the fence either be with me or against me. It is not so much a sexual desire which is in my opinion the most powerful appearance of Jezebel. Always in secret. Once exposed then anger. Sin is crouching at the door. Genesis 4:7. If you do what is right will you not be accepted? But if you do what is right sin is crouching at your door it desires to have you but you must rule over it.. we have mentioned a little bit about the two powerful forces one is more powerful than the other. The more we lean toward one it has power over us. Temptation missing the mark, sinning is exposed so that we can know what our own weaknesses are. We actually hurt ourselves when we sin due to the fact that it leads us away from what God has for us through his love, singing is not accepting God’s love and Power.. I learned a powerful word picture. Romans 6:14 for sin shall not have Master over you because you are not under the law oh, but you are under grace. We are encouraged not only to flee from sin but to have sinned obey us, the picture is a warrior with one foot on the chest of the adversary, in his sword to his throat. Very similar to David and Goliath. It’s about who is in control.