1 Corinthians 6:12-20

IV. Impurity. 6:12-20.

It has sometimes been imagined that the apostle was here resuming the subject of chap. 5, from which he had allowed himself to be diverted by the question of lawsuits. But we have seen that the subject of chap. 5 was not impurity at all, but discipline, treated in connection with a case of impurity. Lawsuits followed, by a transition which we have explained (1 Corinthians 6:1). And now Paul continues to treat of the moral disorders which he knows to exist in the Church. If the manner in which he enters on the subject in 1 Corinthians 6:12 has been thought somewhat abrupt, it is because account has not been taken of the connection between the maxim: All things are lawful to me, and the warning of 1 Corinthians 6:9: Be not deceived. It is perfectly obvious that some at Corinth were indulging in strange illusions as to the consequences of salvation by grace, and even went the length of putting the practice of vice under the patronage of the principle of Christian liberty.

Neander has thought that in beginning as he does in 1 Corinthians 6:12, the apostle proposed immediately to treat the subject of meats consecrated to idols, a subject in connection with which he repeats (1 Corinthians 10:23) the same maxim, and that he was led away from the second part of 1 Corinthians 6:13 to deal with impurity, to resume the subject of offered meats later (chaps. 8-10). The truth involved in this view is, that from this point the idea of Christian liberty is that which prevails to the close of chap. 10; comp. Holsten, Ev. des Paulus, p. 293. But the order in which the subjects are linked to one another in this Epistle is the fruit of too serious reflection to allow us to hold such an interruption. And the relation which we have just pointed out between 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, where impurity holds the first rank in the enumeration of the vices mentioned, shows clearly that the apostle knew the goal at which he was aiming.