Immerse: Messiah - Flipbook - Page 145
6:6–7:2
1 C o ri n thia n s
133
these issues? But instead, one believer sues another—right in front of
unbelievers!
Even to have such lawsuits with one another is a defeat for you. Why
not just accept the injustice and leave it at that? Why not let yourselves
be cheated? Instead, you yourselves are the ones who do wrong and cheat
even your fellow believers.
Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or
who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are
abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God.
Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made
holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for
you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become
a slave to anything. You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the
stomach for food.” (This is true, though someday God will do away with
both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual
immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our
bodies. And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised
our Lord from the dead.
Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should
a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute?
Never! And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he
becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united
into one.” But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.
Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one
does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and
was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought
you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
Now regarding the questions you asked in your letter. Yes, it is good to
abstain from sexual relations. But because there is so much sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman should
have her own husband.
