Second Sunday after Epiphany: Epistle, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20             

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

Paul is a great teacher. The apostle Paul, I mean. One of the elements that fostered his gifting was that Paul had run the gamut from devout believer of the Old Covenant and its God to fierce disciple of Jesus. Law and Gospel. And Paul had endured his own struggle to see those two as distinct (under both old and new covenants) and yet both serving God’s great and grand purpose: the drawing together into one, all the peoples of the world under the banner of God’s great Son.

Paul loved and honored God’s law. All through his life. But Paul, after a behind-bruising fall and conversion to Jesus the Messiah, came to see the Law in its correct place and function. Luther would elucidate those into what he termed “the three uses of the Law.” The curb, the mirror, and the guide. The curb to mold human behavior, though fallen, away from its worst expressions. The mirror, to accurately reflect the heart condition of every person. And the guide as the express direction for the life of God’s Christians in His blood-bought family. In our reading for this week Paul declares “All things are lawful for me,” but then sets limits on the “all,” not by legalistic boundaries, but by a change of heart. A thoroughly supernatural state of life. Paul goes on to say that the transformation worked by the risen Christ is so encompassing that he throws two of our strongest drives into the mix to portray what new life and relationship to God’s law looks like.

Paul talks about the drives of food and sex. One is necessary for our own survival and one for the race’s. But Paul uses as examples what our spiritual enemy so easily perverts. Paul points to needs of the body to remind us that God creates, loves and saves our bodies as well as our souls. And then reminds us that we are actually joined to His body in a way that makes all pollution of that bond unthinkable. 

This reading and writing brings a shaking where God grabs the shoulders and says, “Yes, it’s right there in black and white. Read deeply and prayerfully.” Well, perhaps those aren’t God’s words, but how I think He might approach us if we were sitting in His classroom. And we are.