1 Corinthians 6 (WEB)
Some believers in Corinth had not forsaken pagan, immoral practices from the past, particularly going to the temple prostitutes at the Temple of Aphrodite on the Acrocorinth. Paul rebukes such practices in 1 Cor 6:15-17.
I'm standing in the Acrocorinth, high above lower Corinth below, large mountain with a temple to Aphrodite that once stood here.
This temple at one time employed a thousand prostitutes that worked for it, plying their trade of worship in an immoral sense for the various sailors and others who came to this place in worship of the goddess of love, as she was called in Greek mythology.
Right now, we had a Byzantine church built on it and then a mosque that we see, but there are telltale signs of there being early Greek here with some of the entrances to the monastery.
There were stones used again in the entrance, and some of the various stones around that are clearly earlier Greek.
And Paul speaks about this particular place where Christians even would come and be involved with prostitutes.
And Paul said, can you really make Christ one with a prostitute by coming here, involving yourself in this early form of Greek pagan immoral worship?
And of course the answer is no. Those that join themselves to a prostitute become one with her, and you cannot bring Christ, who dwells in you, to become members of a prostitute.
1 Corinthians 6 makes that very plain.
So here we are at Ephesus talking about former days in which the Corinthians were involving themselves in all sorts of pagan practices, bringing them into the church.
And Paul spent much of 1 Corinthians trying to correct their doctrinal and moral failures.
1Dare any of you, having a matter against his neighbor, go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? 2Don’t you know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? 3Don’t you know that we will judge angels? How much more, things that pertain to this life? 4If then you have to judge things pertaining to this life, do you set them to judge who are of no account in the assembly? 5I say this to move you to shame. Isn’t there even one wise man among you who would be able to decide between his brothers? 6But brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers! 7Therefore it is already altogether a defect in you that you have lawsuits one with another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? 8No, but you yourselves do wrong and defraud, and that against your brothers.
9Or don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s Kingdom? Don’t be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexuals, 10nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor extortionists, will inherit God’s Kingdom. 11Some of you were such, but you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the Spirit of our God.
12“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are expedient. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be brought under the power of anything. 13“Foods for the belly, and the belly for foods,” but God will bring to nothing both it and them. But the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14Now God raised up the Lord, and will also raise us up by his power. 15Don’t you know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! 16Or don’t you know that he who is joined to a prostitute is one body? For, “The two”, he says, “will become one flesh.” 17But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. 18Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin that a man does is outside the body,” but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. 19Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20for you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.