1 Corinthians 4

Chapter 4. The Purity of the ChurchIf anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple. (1 Corinthians 3:17)Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)Corinth, we have already seen, was at the center of both the world’s culture and moral and social corruption. The very name Corinth became the synonym of social dishonor. It was inevitable, therefore, that the Church of Christ should be in danger of contamination from the prevailing influences; and it is not surprising to find that, at a very early stage, gross and grievous instances of unholy practices reached the apostle’s ear. Among them was a common report of an incestuous marriage among members of the church, and, what was much more serious, the toleration of this abuse by the public sentiment of the church itself. Therefore he proceeds in the early chapters of this epistle to deal with this question in no compromising way. First, he reasserts in most emphatic language the absolute necessity of personal holiness on the part of all disciples of Christ, and the high standard of discipline in the fellowship of believers as a whole. He makes special provision for the extreme case which had risen among them. He gives explicit directions that the offending members be solemnly and publicly excommunicated from the Church of Christ, and handed over in the name of the Lord Jesus to the judgment of God, through Satanic power, even to the extent of the death of the offender, if necessary, in order that he may be brought to repentance even at the last moment, and his spirit saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. Church discipline is here recognized as a very solemn thing, and something which is sure to bring, if properly exercised with due regard to the authority and will of God, the interposing hand of God Himself and the judgment from which no excuse or evasion can protect the false and daring offender. How salutary it would be if this simple apostolic precedent should be more commonly followed and more divinely efficient than it is in the lax religions of this compromising age. Still further in the same chapter, this apostle directs that they are to withdraw their fellowship at the Lord’s table and in the communion of the saints from every brother who is licentious, covetous, idolatrous, a railer, a drunkard or an extortioner. It is not possible to separate ourselves from business correspondence or worldly association with ungodly men, but in the fellowship of the Church of Christ the atmosphere of His sacred sanctuary must be kept unsullied and heavenly (1 Corinthians 5:1-6, 1 Corinthians 5:11-12). Having thus provided for the public discipline of obdurate and inconsistent members of the church, Paul proceeds to emphasize the necessity of personal holiness on the part of individual members by a series of vivid illustrations and impressive appeals. The Feast of the Passover

1. He shows the importance of holiness on the part of the people of God by a forcible illustration, the Feast of the Passover, and its typical significance. He asks, Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Corinthians 5:6-8) The Paschal feast was the first of the annual ceremonial rites of the Jews, and was especially suggestive of the fellowship of Christ’s redeemed people in all future ages. One of the most marked features of that great rite was the inexorable exclusion of all leaven from the feast and the household. Prior to the celebration of the Passover it was customary for the father, with lighted candle, to pass through the house, inspecting every chamber, even looking under every bed, chair, sofa and article of furniture, and then solemnly declaring that there was no leaven in any portion of the house or member of the household. Leaven has, therefore, always stood in the Word of God as the symbol of corruption. In our Lord’s great parable in the 13th chapter of Matthew, it represents the introduction of impurity into the Church of Christ, until the whole house became saturated with the unholy elements of fleshly corruption. One of the very first questions of the apostle in his great treatise on salvation is, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” And his unqualified answer is, “By no means!” (Romans 6:1-2). “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness” (2 Timothy 2:19), is the very inscription we read stamped upon the cornerstone of the Church of Jesus Christ. He can save the sinner, but the sin must be utterly renounced and laid over upon the Lord Jesus Christ for crucifixion and eternal separation. Purge out the old leaven, the flesh, the carnal life, the whole of the old creation, and reckon yourself dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. We are to be a new lump and God recognizes us as unleavened. Then we are to carefully watch against the introduction of the new leaven, the leaven of malice and wickedness, every form of evil and sin, and to present to God the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth—truth representing God’s revealed truth without alloy, and sincerity representing our honest, upright heart holding the truth in righteousness, and obeying it in singleness of purpose. The Sanctuary and Temple
2. His next illustration and incentive to holiness is drawn from the ancient sanctuary and temple of God. “You yourselves are God’s temple” (1 Corinthians 3:16), he says, holy, sacred, and therefore we must keep it pure, for “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him” (1 Corinthians 3:17). With the utmost sacredness God has always guarded the holy sanctuary of His manifested Presence. When He came down on Sinai, the mountain was fenced and isolated from any unhallowed touch. Into His ancient shrine no man could pass till he had offered his sacrifice on the altar, and washed his hands and feet in the laver of cleansing. Into the innermost sanctuary of His presence but one could pass, and he only once a year, with spotless garments and sprinkled blood. When Uzzah presumed with reckless hands to touch the sacred symbol of God’s sanctuary he was smitten with instant death (see 2 Samuel 6:6-7). When the rash Uzzah tried to offer sacrifices unauthorized, he felt the instant touch of leprosy upon his brow, and hastened out to hide himself from the awful token of his judgment and his shame (see 2 Chronicles 26:16-20). Not less sacred is the presence of the Holy One even amid the larger mercy of the New Testament age. Well may the apostle ask if anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy…. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? (Hebrews 10:28-29) In the mind of God, and in the judgment of the Holy Scriptures, the heart of the believer is a more sacred shrine than the ark or the sanctuary of old. God would have us look upon ourselves as His temples with the same sacredness, and guard our inmost thought and being from the profaning touch or the faintest shadow of evil, either in imagination or word or deed. We should walk softly through the world as though we were sons of Levi bearing the ark of God, and having enthroned within us His majestic Presence, before whom angels veil their faces with their wings, and cry, “Holy, holy, holy” (Revelation 4:8). This divine self-respect, this holy consciousness of God, will lift us above the approach of temptation and toleration of sin. Past Experience
3. He next appeals to their past experience and their escape from evil through their conversion and consecration to God. “And,” he says, “that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Is it not enough that you have once escaped this slough of sin? Can you bear to think of again being involved in the slime? Is not the very memory hideous enough to fill your soul with horror? Can you ever look upon it again with toleration or indulgence? And yet, alas, how many, even after their salvation as brands from the burning, and their sanctification from the power of corruption, have allowed themselves, like Lot’s wife, to look back to Sodom until they have gradually become accustomed to the vision of sin, and the picture has insensibly lost its terrors and the old sin begins to reassert its power. Before long it is true of them, as the apostle expresses it so sadly, they have forgotten that they were purged from their old sins; and, it is still more sadly true, they return like the dog to his nauseating feast and the swine to her wallowing in the mire, and their last state is worse than the first. Members of His Body
4. He next appeals to them by their union with the Lord Jesus Christ as members of His body, and bound by every tie of love and loyalty, to be separated unto Him, and true to the sacred bond of that heavenly marriage with which He has honored His Bride. The apostle uses very strong figurative language in this passage, and describes our union with Christ under the image of the perfect oneness of the marriage bond. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body…. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?… He who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. (1 Corinthians 6:13, 1 Corinthians 6:15, 1 Corinthians 6:17) It is not only in the public and collective capacity of the Church that we are thus wedded to our heavenly Bridegroom, but individually we are here thus represented as personally united to Him. And our very body is in some sense specially constituted to be the recipient of His life, while His body is constituted also to be the Head and Fountain of our life physically as well as spiritually. This holy mystery the divine Spirit alone can teach. It is hardly necessary to say that it must be guarded from every possible touch of materialism and coarseness. It is as unutterably pure as the heaven of heavens, and high above the faintest suggestion of earthly passion or sentimental love, but it is none the less vital, real and unspeakably sacred. This should keep us pure even as the wife is kept pure, not by the restraints of law, not by confinement or force, but by the choice of an exclusive affection, that by its very nature shuts out others from her heart and makes her the property of one alone. By this holy sanction He bids us keep our purity unspotted for the day of His glorious coming and the consummation of our perfect union. “Listen, O daughter, consider and give ear,” He says to His Bride; “Forget your people and your father’s house. The king is enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for he is your lord” (Psalms 45:10-11). By and by the message will follow, “In embroidered garments she is led to the king” (Psalms 45:14). Redemption and Divine Ownership
5. Our redemption and divine ownership are urged as the ground of a watchful and wholehearted sanctity and consecration. “You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Not only are we united to our Lord by this intimate and exquisite bond, but we are owned by Him by virtue of His redeeming purchase and precious blood. He has bought us, and we have no right to let another control us, or even hold ourselves for ourselves apart from Him. In the old slave times there were two mulatto slaves who had grown up on the same plantation, the one a beautiful quadroon girl, and the other a young man of bright and handsome person. Both had become fondly attached through their frequent association. This young fellow had labored long and hard with the double object of purchasing, at once, her liberty and his, and then making her his wife. But hard times came upon their old master, and he was obliged to sell his slaves. The occasion was announced, and on that terrible block stood this beautiful trembling girl. In the foreground was a coarse, brutal planter from the Mississippi, who had determined to buy her for the basest of reasons. In the background stood the young mulatto watching the sale, because he had determined to buy her, if he could, and set her free. Up went the figures while his heart beat fast as they rose very near his limited sum of $1,000. Then, at last, with a gulp in his throat, he made his bid of $1,000, while everybody wondered. The planter looked at him with a leer for a moment, and then he bid $50 more. The poor mulatto sank back. The hammer fell, and the girl was sold to her brutal owner. With heart nearly broken the young man hastened to his master, and asked him if he would take a thousand and let him buy himself. The kind master consented and the young slave was free. Then he went to this Mississippi planter and asked him to look at him and examine him. Said he, “Would you be willing to exchange me for the girl you bought yesterday? I am free, but will sell myself to you as a slave if you will set her free and take me as her substitute.” There was a brief conflict between the base passions of this selfish man, but finally greed prevailed. He knew the man was worth much more than the woman and he consented, hoping, doubtless, to be able after a little to get them both. Papers were made out, and the joyful slave went to tell his loved one that she was free by the cost of his own liberty and life, and then he added, with touching simplicity, “Be good, for my sake, and always remember that you belong to me.” And so they parted, but the vessel in which he sailed was burned and he lost his life. Then this brutal man came back and tried to force her to give herself up, as he had lost her substitute. But she held firmly to her rights and papers of liberty, and the law sustained her. Then he tried to cajole her and bribe her, but her noble and simple answer was, as temptations came again and again, “He bought me, I belong to him.” Oh, that this divine incentive might bind our hearts to Him, and make the watchword against temptation and the pledge of sacrifice and service, “I belong to Him!” The Sacredness of the Body
6. Finally, the sacredness of the body is the last incentive to which the apostle appeals for our purity of life. This material form is as sacred and as holy as the spirit which dwells within it. God has honored it by giving it in some sense a likeness to Himself and making it the incarnation of His own blessed and glorious Son. Some day it will sit upon the throne of the universe, and be the most glorious object in the eternal ages. Oh, let us keep it pure. Let us consecrate it to its highest possible employ, and let Him fill it now with His holiness, His health and all the enduements and possibilities of His Holy Spirit, and fit it for the highest usefulness below and the noblest destiny above. 1 he old version has wrongly read this passage. It exclusively applies to the body. The true reading is, “Honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20). So let us present our bodies a living sacrifice, a reasonable service, holy and acceptable unto God.