Your Body is a Temple...

1 Corinthians 5-6

I think that those words have begun more Pharisaical attacks than perhaps any other. Whether it is over-eating, or smoking, or drinking, or just being a couch potato, it seems that nothing is off-limits to the body-is-a-temple police in trying to guilt someone into doing better. Mind you, I think that any of those activities can be sinful if they take us away from God. I like how Susanna Wesley put it:

"Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."

But using 1 Corinthians 6:19 to condemn any of these things is clearly a case of eisegesis. A simple examination of the text will show this to be true. Going back to verse 12 Paul says that everything is permissible for him (i.e. not sin)... but not everything is beneficial or profitable. He even specifically mentions food. BUT, there is something that is NEVER okay... sexual immorality. Why? All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. It is right here that Paul says that our bodies are temples. He is very clearly calling out sexual sin as different from other sin, because sex unites bodies, and to unite God with an immoral act is always sin. So by all means, let us treat our bodies as temples of the Lord where the Holy Spirit dwells.