Embracing purity

Theme: Biblical Purity

Scriptures: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 and Romans 12:1-2

Objectives (from the D6 Sunday School Guide)

Know: The Scriptures indicate that what the Christian does with his or her body involves Christ.

Think: Be conscious that real intimacy is more spiritual than physical.

Do: Flee from sexual sin and commit to honoring God with a pure lifestyle.

Notes and questions:

B1 Introduction

• The Corinthian church had many problems.
• Paul was a faithful servant of Jesus Christ and as an Apostle sought to correct attitudes and lifestyle issues.
• Corinth
• Major city
• Commercial
• Religious
• Most famous god was Aphrodite
• Most well known worship was sex
• Church was mostly Gentile converts
• Church too often brought and kept cultural aspects of Corinth into the church.
• Paul needed to teach and discipline them to know and do God’s way, not Aphrodite’s and/or Corinth’s way.
• See Acts 18:1-18 for some of Paul’s experiences in Corinth.
• Paul was there teaching for about 1.5 years

B2 Our passage mainly deals with the sins of the flesh

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are: adultery, fornication, immorality, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envies, murders, drinking bouts, revelries, and the like; which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:19-21 EMTV)

B3 Outline

• Permissible--some unimportant things as foods 1 Corinthians 6:12
• Not permissible--sexual sins 1 Corinthians 6:13-20

B4 Physical relationship

• Permissible--what God wants humans to do
• Not permissible--what human’s evil flesh wants to do

B5 True love, spiritual, emotional, and physical, are not known without God’s revelation of it.

B6 Song of Solomon is our source of God’s description of proper physical love.

B7 What is permissible? (Physical love only between DNA male and female who are married). What is not permissible? (Anything else).

B8 Someone will say, “I am allowed to do anything.” Yes; but not everything is good for you. I could say that I am allowed to do anything, but I am not going to let anything make me its slave. Someone else will say, “Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food.” Yes; but God will put an end to both. The body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord; and the Lord provides for the body. God raised the Lord from death, and he will also raise us by his power. You know that your bodies are parts of the body of Christ. Shall I take a part of Christ's body and make it part of the body of a prostitute? Impossible! Or perhaps you don't know that the man who joins his body to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? The scripture says quite plainly, “The two will become one body.” But he who joins himself to the Lord becomes spiritually one with him. Avoid immorality. Any other sin a man commits does not affect his body; but the man who is guilty of sexual immorality sins against his own body. Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God's glory. (1 Corinthians 6:12-20, GNB92)

B9 The word for prostitute is πόρνη porne.

• It means [Source: Mickelson's Enhanced Strong's Dictionaries of the Greek and Hebrew Testaments]
• a prostitute
• a sex worker (by extension)
• one who deliberately stimulates or fulfills unwedded sexual desire by dress, speech or conduct (figuratively) an idolater
• Question
• Why use the word prostitute? (Corinth was famous for its temple prostitutes).
• Why use the wording “temple of the Holy Spirit?” (The false temple of a false god versus the true temple of the living God. This temple to us Christians is our body).
• Is porn allowed? (No, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:27-28, WPNT)

B10 What does it mean when Paul says that everything is lawful?

B11 What is the meaning of the words not brought under the power of any?

B12 How are our bodies members of Christ?

• Temple of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:30)
• Since His Body is holy, He wants us to be holy.

B13 How does the previous question apply to sexual sins?

• Using our body in ways God does NOT want
• Makes our body unholy
• The only acceptable joining is ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife,  (Mark 10:7, NKJV)
• Consider
• I speak in human [terms] because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members [as] slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness [leading] to [more] lawlessness, so now present your members [as] slaves [of] righteousness for holiness. (Romans 6:19, NKJV)
• Utley in his commentary on this verse writes: My colleague at East Texas Baptist University, Dr. Bruce Tankersley, reminded me that in cultic prostitution the prostitute is a surrogate for the deity. Therefore, sexual relations were not only immoral, but idolatrous.

B14 What type of temple did the Jews have? What is the Christian temple?

B15 What was the price that we were bought with? 1 Peter 1:19

B16 According to 1 Corinthians 6:20, what are we to be doing with our bodies? Name some practical examples.

B17 The words and in your spirit, which are God’s are not in most translations. Wilbur Pickering writes: The eclectic Greek text currently in vogue omits, “and in your spirit, which are God’s”, following 3.7% of the Greek manuscripts—this includes the earliest ones, that are of objectively inferior quality (it is followed by NIV, NASB, LB, TEV, etc.).

B18 Romans 12:1-2

• Why does Paul beg of us by the mercies of God?
• How do Christians sacrifice our living body?
• For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be [in the likeness] of [His] resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with [Him,] that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For [the death] that He died, He died to sin once for all; but [the life] that He lives, He lives to God. (Romans 6:5-10, NKJV)
• How do Christians conform to this world?
• How was our mind renewed? What can we do to maintain this renewal?
• He saved us—not because of righteous deeds that we ourselves had done but according to His mercy, by means of the bath of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit, (Titus 3:5, WPNT)
• as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, (1 Peter 2:2, NKJV)
• All Scripture [is] given by inspiration of God, and [is] profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17, NKJV)
• Ironside in his commentary writes: We are not to suppose that non-conformity to the world necessarily involves awkwardness of behavior, peculiarity of dress, or boorishness in manner. But the entire world system is summed up in three terms: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life, or the ostentation of living. Therefore non-conformity to the world implies holding the body and its appetites in subjection to the Spirit of God, subjecting the imagination to the mind of Christ, and walking in lowliness of spirit through a scene where self-confidence and boasting are the order of the day.
• The word prove means to test, examine. How are we to examine ourselves and the actions we might do?
• There are different wills in the world. Which one do we choose and why?

B19 Next week

• On Guard
• Theme: Guard Your Heart
• Scriptures
• Philippians 4:7-8
• 2 Corinthians 10:1-6
• 1 Corinthians 16:13