Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Corinthians 6:18
Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.
18. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body ] That is, every other sinful act which affects the body approaches it from without and affects particular members. But this sin takes the body itself as a whole and makes it an instrument of sin. For it is a violation of the fundamental law impressed upon man from the beginning, whereby it is decreed that a man shall cleave to his wife, and to her alone, and they twain shall be, or rather, become one flesh, Gen 2:24. This view is confirmed by the fact that the word here translated sinneth, means “to go astray,” “to miss the mark;” so that the words ‘ sinneth against his own body ’ imply the running counter to the objects for which the body is created. If this be the correct interpretation of the passage, the practice of polygamy is here condemned.
sinneth against his own body ] Cf. Rom 1:24.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Flee fornication – A solemn command of God – as explicit as any that thundered from Mount Sinai. None can disregard it with impunity – none can violate it without being exposed to the awful vengeance of the Almighty. There is force and emphasis in the word flee pheugate. Man should escape from it; he should not stay to reason about it; to debate the matter; or even to contend with his propensities, and to try the strength of his virtue. There are some sins which a man can resist; some about which he can reason without danger of pollution. But this is a sin where a man is safe only when he flies; free from pollution only when he refuses to entertain a thought of it; secure when he seeks a victory by flight, and a conquest by retreat. Let a man turn away from it without reflection on it and he is safe. Let him think, and reason, and he may be ruined. The very passage of an impure thought through the mind leaves pollution behind it. An argument on the subject often leaves pollution; a description ruins; and even the presentation of motives against it may often fix the mind with dangerous inclination on the crime. There is no way of avoiding the pollution but in the manner prescribed by Paul; there is no man safe who will not follow his direction. How many a young man would be saved from poverty, want, disease, curses, tears, and hell, could these two words be made to blaze before him like the writing before the astonished eyes of Belshazzar Dan. 5, and could they terrify him from even the momentary contemplation of the crime.
Every sin … – This is to be taken comparatively. Sins in general; the common sins which people commit do not immediately and directly affect the body, or waste its energies, and destroy life. Such is the case with falsehood, theft, malice, dishonesty, pride, ambition, etc. They do not immediately and directly impair the constitution amid waste its energies.
Is without the body – Does not immediately and directly affect the body. The more immediate effect is on the mind; but the sin under consideration produces an immediate and direct effect on the body itself.
Sinneth against his own body – This is the FourTH argument against indulgence in this vice; and it is more striking and forcible. The sense is, It wastes the bodily energies; produces feebleness, weakness, and disease; it impairs the strength, enervates the man, and shortens life. Were it proper, this might be proveD to the satisfaction of every man by an examination of the effects of licentious indulgence. Those who wish to see the effects stated may find them in Dr. Rush on the Diseases of the Mind. Perhaps no single sin has done so much to produce the most painful and dreadful diseases, to weaken the constitution, and to shorten life as this. Other vices, as gluttony and drunkenness, do this also, and all sin has some effect in destroying the body, but it is true of this sin in an eminent degree.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 18. Flee fornication.] Abominate, detest, and escape from every kind of uncleanness. Some sins, or solicitations to sin, may be reasoned with; in the above cases, if you parley you are undone; reason not, but FLY!
Sinneth against his own body.] Though sin of every species has a tendency to destroy life, yet none are so mortal as those to which the apostle refers; they strike immediately at the basis of the constitution. By the just judgment of God, all these irregular and sinful connections are married to death. Neither prostitutes, whoremongers, nor unclean persons of any description, can live out half their days. It would be easy to show, and prove also, how the end of these things, even with respect to the body, is death; but I forbear, and shall finish the subject with the words of the prophet: The show of their countenance doth witness against them, and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not; wo unto their soul, for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The apostle cometh to a new argument, by which he presseth them to flee the sin of uncleanness. It is observed by some, that this sin is peculiarly to be resisted, not so much by resisting it, and pondering arguments against it, as by flying from it, avoiding all occasions of it, and not suffering our thoughts to feed upon it; but the apostles argument is, because other sins are
without the body, that is, the body hath not such a blemish and note or mark of infamy laid upon it by any other sin as by this: in drunkenness the liquor, in gluttony the meat, in other sins something without a mans self is that which is abused, but the body itself is the thing which is abused in this filthy sin. So he that is guilty of it,
sinneth not only against his wife, with whom he is one flesh, but against his body, which he abuseth in this vile and sinful act, and upon which he imprints a mark of infamy and disgrace, a blot not to be washed out but with the blood of Christ. So as though by other sins men may sin against their own bodies, yet by no sin so eminently as by this sin. Other sins have their seat in the mind and soul; the body, and commonly some particular member of the body, is but the servant of the soul in the execution and committing of them; but lust, though indeed it ariseth from the heart, yet it is committed more in the body than any other sin is.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
18. FleeThe only safety insuch temptations is flight (Gen 39:12;Job 31:1).
Every sinThe Greekis forcible. “Every sin whatsoever that a man doeth.”Every other sin; even gluttony, drunkenness, and self-murderare “without,” that is, comparatively external to the body(Mr 7:18; compare Pr6:30-32). He certainly injures, but he does not alienate the bodyitself; the sin is not terminated in the body; he rather sins againstthe perishing accidents of the body (as the “belly,” andthe body’s present temporary organization), and against the soul thanagainst the body in its permanent essence, designed “for theLord.” “But” the fornicator alienates that body whichis the Lord’s, and makes it one with a harlot’s body, and so “sinnethagainst his own body,” that is, against the verity andnature of his body; not a mere effect on the body fromwithout, but a contradiction of the truth of the body, wroughtwithin itself [ALFORD].
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Flee fornication,…. As that which is hurtful, scandalous, and unbecoming Christians; avoid it, and all the occasions of it, that may lead unto it, and be incentives of it:
every sin that a man doth is without the body not but that other sins are committed by the body, and by the members of it as instruments; they are generally committed by the abuse of other things that are without, and do not belong to the body; and so do not bring that hurt unto and reproach upon the body, as fornication does:
but he that committeth fornication, sinneth against his own body; not meaning his wife, which is as his own body; but his proper natural body, which is not only the instrument by which this sin is committed, but the object against which it is committed; and which is defiled and dishonoured by it; and sometimes its strength and health are impaired, and it is filled with nauseous diseases hereby.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Flee (). Present imperative. Have the habit of fleeing without delay or parley. Note abruptness of the asyndeton with no connectives. Fornication violates Christ’s rights in our bodies (verses 13-17) and also ruins the body itself.
Without the body ( ). Even gluttony and drunkenness and the use of dope are sins wrought on the body, not “within the body” ( ) in the same sense as fornication. Perhaps the dominant idea of Paul is that fornication, as already shown, breaks the mystic bond between the body and Christ and hence the fornicator ( )
sins against his own body ( ) in a sense not true of other dreadful sins. The fornicator takes his body which belongs to Christ and unites it with a harlot. In fornication the body is the instrument of sin and becomes the subject of the damage wrought. In another sense fornication brings on one’s own body the two most terrible bodily diseases that are still incurable (gonorrhea and syphilis) that curse one’s own body and transmit the curse to the third and fourth generation. Apart from the high view given here by Paul of the relation of the body to the Lord no possible father or mother has the right to lay the hand of such terrible diseases and disaster on their children and children’s children. The moral and physical rottenness wrought by immorality defy one’s imagination.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Flee. See Gen 39:12. Socrates, in Plato’s “Republic,” relates how the poet Sophocles, in answer to the question “How does love suit with are?” replied : “Most gladly have I escaped that, and I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master” (329).
Sin [] . See on Rom 3:25.
Without the body [ ] . Lit., outside. The body is not the instrument, but the subject. But in fornication the body is the instrument of the sin, and “inwardly as well as outwardly is made over to another.”
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) Flee fornication. (pheugete ten porneian). Flee or run from fornication. The command concerns 1) first, flesh fornication of such as the young man of 1 Corinthians Chapter 5 was guilty and 2) second, even selfish conduct of a worldly, unspiritual nature, such as going to civil law with ones own church brother over domestic or commercial differences.
2) Every sin that a man doeth is without the body. (panhamartema ho ean poiese anthropos ektos tou somatos estin). Every or each sin which a person may do is outside of the physical body.
3) But he that committeth fornication. (ho de pronoun). But the one engaging in or participating in flesh fornication, or committing the act of sexual fornication, Deu 5:21
4) Sinneth against his own body. (eis to idion soma hamartane) with reference to or against his own body he sins or misses the mark of Godly conduct, Mat 5:48; Heb 12:14.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
18. Flee fornication Every sin, etc. Having set before us honorable conduct, he now shows how much we ought to abhor fornication, setting before us the enormity of its wickedness and baseness. Now he shows its greatness by comparison — that this sin alone, of all sins, puts a brand of disgrace upon the body. The body, it is true, is defiled also by theft, and murder, and drunkenness, in accordance with those statements —
Your hands are defiled with blood. (Isa 1:15.)
You have yielded your members instruments of iniquity unto sin, (Rom 6:19,)
and the like. Hence some, in order to avoid this inconsistency, understand the words rendered against his own body, as meaning against us, as being connected with Christ; but this appears to me to be more ingenious than solid. Besides, they do not escape even in this way, because that same thing, too, might be affirmed of idolatry equally with fornication. For he who prostrates himself before an idol, sins against connection with Christ. Hence I explain it in this way, that he does not altogether deny that there are other vices, in like manner, by which our body is dishonored and disgraced, but that his meaning is simply this — that defilement does not attach itself to our body from other vices in the same way (361) as it does from fornication My hand, it is true, is defiled by theft or murder, my tongue by evil speaking, or perjury, (362) and the whole body by drunkenness; but fornication leaves a stain impressed upon the body, such as is not impressed upon it from other sins. According to this comparison, or, in other words, in the sense of less and more, other sins are said to be without the body — not, however, as though they do not at all affect the body, viewing each one by itself.
(361) “ N’en demeure point tellement imprimee en nostre corps;” — “Does not remain impressed upon our body in the same way.”
(362) “ Par mesdisance, detraction, et periure;” — “By evil-speaking, detraction, and perjury.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(18) Flee fornication.These last three verses of the chapter contain a solemn exhortation to purity, arising out of the previous argument.
Without the body.The word body is still to be understood as used of the whole human nature, which is spoken of in 1Co. 6:19 as the temple of the Holy Ghost. Other sins may profane only outer courts of the temple; this sin penetrates with its deadly foulness into the very holy of holies
It hardens a within, and petrifies the feelings.
There is a deep significance and profound truth in the solemn words of the Litany, From fornication, and all other deadly sin, good Lord, deliver us.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
18. The apostle now breaks out in direct address, Flee, O ye Corinthians, your destroying vice, fornication.
Flee As Joseph fled from the wife of his master; for, as St. Anselm says, “other vices are best conquered by fighting, this by running away.”
Without the body Extra of the body. That is, every sin is really committed by the soul, through the will, and the body is only the instrument.
Against Rather, into. Fornication differs not from other sins touching its being committed by the soul; but pre-eminently of all it pours the sin into and throughout the body. And this striking of this sin through the whole body consists not merely in its withering, and wasting, and destroying power upon the body, but in something deeper, more awful, and more truly eternal. As the whole being is satanically unified with the harlot, so the whole body becomes, in its uncleanness, the perfect opposite of the pure person of Jesus the pure. How awfully incapable, then, of coming into mystic oneness with him. And from these views it would seem to follow that lawless love is really more truly opposite to Christ than even lawless hate. Our Corinthians may now infer how detestable is that religion with which their city so abounded, and of which debauchery was one of the consecrated rites.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘Flee fornication. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits fornication sins against his own body.’
Thus picture now widens. What Paul is saying not only applies to consorting with a prostitute, it applies to all sexual misbehaviour. So there is only one thing to do with such desires of the flesh and that is, not to stand and fight them, but to flee (compare 2Ti 2:22). The man who would avoid the fornication or sexual misbehaviour which he is tempted to, must remove himself from the place of temptation and make his plans so that he is not put in that position again. And it is important to do so, for of all sins this is the only one that is actually a sin against the body itself, which has permanent effects within the body and the psyche, and which defiles as no other. And this the body which is one with Christ’s body and a temple of the Holy Spirit. It is thus a direct sin against Christ to defile it by degrading contacts.
‘Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits fornication sins against his own body.’ The context has stressed that the Christian has become one body with Christ’s body. In the redemptive purposes of God he is one with Christ. When a man sins it reveals what is still within him, but it occurs outside the ‘body of Christ’. He does not make Christ and His body sin. But when a man commits a sexual misdemeanour his sin is actually affecting the whole body. He is uniting the body with a prostitute or fornicator. This is a heinous sin. He does not, of course, make Christ sin, but he produces an unacceptable situation in that part of him is united with Christ and part with a fornicator. He, as it were, tears apart the body of Christ.
Another way of looking at it is that, as with the previous verse Paul has to use a phrase that distinguishes one fact from another. In 1Co 6:17 he has had to temporarily drop for that purpose the picture of uniting with Christ’s body, and speak of uniting in spirit, for that experience could in no way be paralleled with physical union with a prostitute.
Here he has to distinguish between sexual sin and all other sin. But Jesus had made clear that all sin comes from within, out of the heart of man (Mar 7:20-23). Sin results from contamination of the inner person. Paul is not denying that. He is not saying that sin is outside the heart of man, he is saying that while it comes from the heart of man its effects are outside the body. In other words it does not directly affect the physical body in its connection with the body of Christ in the way that sexual sin does. Sexual sin introduces sin into the man’s body. All sin contaminates the heart, but it is effectually and clearly worked out outside the body. On the other hand sexual sin, he says, uniquely contaminates the body and all that that signifies. Its effects thus go even deeper. The man’s body is contaminated and defiled. That defilement cannot, of course, enter Christ’s body. Man can only be united with Christ once purified. He thus tears himself apart and robs Christ of what is His.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
1Co 6:18. Every sin, &c.“Every other sin which a man practises is without the body; its effects fall not so directly upon the body, but often more immediately upon the mind; but he that committeth fornication or any kind of lewdness, sinneth particularlyagainst his own body; not only pollutingand debasing it, by making it one with so infamous a creature, but perhaps infecting and enfeebling, wasting, and consuming it,which these vices, when grown habitual and frequent, have an apparent tendency to effect.” It would be unreasonable to insist on the most rigorous interpretation of the words, Every sin that a man doth, &c. but the general sense is plain and true; and probably, on the whole, there is no other sin by which the body receives equal detriment, considering not only its nature, but how much it has prevailed. See Doddridge, Raphelius, and Grotius.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
1Co 6:18 . .] Inferred from the foregoing verses (13 17), but expressed in all the more lively way from not being linked to them by any connective particle. “Severitas cum fastidio,” Bengel.
. . [997] ] asyndetic corroboration of the preceding prohibition. Paul does not say anything here incapable of being maintained in its full stringency of meaning (Rckert, de Wette), nor is there any reason for taking , with Michaelis, Flatt, Pott, and others, in a popular sense, as equivalent to almost all (comp Theodore of Mopsuestia and Melanchthon: “cum quodam candore accipiatur de iis, quae saepius accidunt”); but the truth of his words is based on the fact that every other sinful act ( ), if it has to do at all with the body, works upon it from without, and consequently holds a position in reference to the body external to the same. The sinner makes that which is not of the body, but outside of it, as e.g. food and drink, to be the instrument of his immoral act, whereby the , viewed in its relation to the body, comes to stand , and has there the sphere of its occurrence and consummation. This holds true even in the case of the suicide, whose act is in fact a sinful use of external things, the instance of a man’s voluntarily starving himself not excepted (against Hofmann’s objection), for this is accomplished by the abuse of abstinence from food (which is equally an external relationship), and therefore . How entirely different from the case of all such other sinful acts stands the state of things with unchasteness, where there is sin, not . , but ! See below. In connection with this passage, expositors indulge in many arbitrary and sometimes very odd interpretations [999] and saving clauses. Among these must be reckoned the exposition of Calvin and others, by way of comparison : “secundum plus et minus.” Neander, too, imports a meaning which is not in the words, that fornication desecrates the body in its very highest and most enduring significance (namely, as the sum of the personality ). According to Chr. F. Fritzsche ( Nova Opusc. p. 249 f.), what is meant is that all other sins do not separate the body of the Christian from the body of Christ, this taking place only through fornication (1Co 6:15 ). But the general and local expression . does not correspond with this special and ethical reference, nor are we warranted in attributing to one of such ethical strictness as the apostle the conception that no other sin separates from the body of Christ, 1Co 6:9 f.; Rom 8:9 , al [1000]
. . [1001] ] which in any case whatever (Hermann, a [1002] Viger. p. 819) a man shall have committed. Respecting , instead of , after relatives, see Winer, p. 291 [E. T. 390].
. . ] inasmuch as the sinful deed done has been one brought about outside of the body .
] For his own bodily frame is the immediate object which he affects in a sinful way , whose moral purity and honour he hurts and wounds by his action. Comp on , Luk 15:18 . He dishonours his own body, which is the organ and object of his sin. Comp Beza. The apostle says nothing at all here of the weakening effect upon the body itself (Athanasius in Oecumenius, and others).
[997] . . . .
[999] Chrysostom, Theophylact, Erasmus, al. , single out as the characteristic point contrary to the literal tenor of the passage the defilement of the whole body by fornication, on which ground a bath is taken subsequently. This latter point Theodoret also lays stress upon, explaining, however, the expression by the fact that the man who commits other sins , while the profligate, on the other hand, . Chrysostom’s interpretation of the whole body has been taken up again by Baur (in the theol. Jahrb. 1852, p. 540 f.). The body in its totality , he holds, is meant, inasmuch as it is one body with the harlot, and in virtue of this unity the fornicator has the object of his sin not without himself, but in himself, and sins against the body identified with his own self. But all this is not in the text , and no reader could read it into the text. Hofmann, too, imports what is neither expressed in the words themselves nor suggested by the antithesis, the obscure notion, namely, that, as in the case of the glutton, after completing the deed “ the thing of his sin does not remain with him ” (?)
[1000] l. and others; and other passages; and other editions.
[1001] . . . .
[1002] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
1Co 6:18-20 . Direct prohibition of fornication, strengthened by description of it as a sin against one’s own body, which is in fact the temple of the Holy Spirit, etc.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
18 Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.
Ver. 18. Flee fornication ] . With post haste flee it.
” Laeta venire Venus, tristis abire solet. “
Be not of those men that are called Borboritae of their miry filthiness, whom Epiphanius and Oecumenius speak of.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
18 20 .] Direct prohibition of fornication, and its grounds .
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
18. ] might be followed by , but is more forcible in this disconnected form.
. ] The assertion, which has surprised many of the Commentators, is nevertheless strictly true . Drunkenness and gluttony, e.g. are sins done in and by the body, and are sins by abuse of the body, but they are still introduced from without , sinful not in their act , but in their effect , which effect it is each man’s duty to foresee and avoid. But fornication is the alienating that body which is the Lord’s, and making it a harlot’s body it is sin against a man’s own body , in its very nature, against the verity and nature of his body; not an effect on the body from participation of things without, but a contradiction of the truth of the body, wrought within itself . When man and wife are one in the Lord, united by His ordinance , no such alienation of the body takes place, and consequently no sin.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
1Co 6:18 . With vehement abruptness P. turns from exposition to exhortation. “ Flee fornication” other sins may be combated; this must be fled , as by Joseph in Potiphar’s house. the opposite of (1Co 6:16 ). The parl [987] . of 1Co 10:14 shows “the connexion in Cor [988] between impurity and idolatry” (Ed [989] : cf. the lists of sins in 1Co 6:9 and 1Co 5:11 .) contradicts Christ’s rights in the body (1Co 6:13-17 ) and severs the committer from Him; P. has now to say that this is a sin against the nature of the human body: “Every act of sin ( ) which a man may possibly do, is outside of the body; but the fornicator ( ) sins against his own body”. The point of this saying lies in the contrasted prepositions and : all bodily sins “defile the flesh” (2Co 7:1 ), but other vices those of the , e.g. look outside the body; this in its whole essence lies within our physical nature, so that, while it appropriates the person of another (1Co 6:16 ), it is a self-violation . Hence transgressions of the Seventh Commandment are “sins of the flesh” and “of the passions” par minence . They engage and debauch the whole person; they “enter into the heart,” for “they proceed out of the heart” and touch the springs of being; in the highest degree they “defile the man” (Mar 7:20 ff.). That inchastity is extreme dishonour is realised in the one sex; Christianity makes it equally so in the other.
[987] parallel.
[988] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.
[989] T. C. Edwards’ Commentary on the First Ep. to the Corinthians . 2
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Every, i.e. every other.
sin. App-128.
man. App-123.
without. Greek. ektos. Occurs: Mat 23:26 (outside). 2Co 12:2, 2Co 12:3 (out of).
sinneth. App-128.
against. App-104.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
18-20.] Direct prohibition of fornication, and its grounds.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
1Co 6:18. , flee fornication) Severity with disgust; flee, for danger is near.- , every sin) even gluttony and drunkenness; comp. 1Co 5:13; even self-murder [even idolatry, however much more grievous the sin may otherwise be.-V. g.] It is a more serious matter to abuse the members of Christ, than food or wine, and the belly: and the body of a fornicator is more debased by the agency of a flagitious deed, than the carcase even of the man who has perished by his own hand. The comparison at Pro 6:30, etc., is not unlike this.-, without) a man indeed sins with the body and by the body, but not against the body; the sin is not terminated in his body; and he certainly injures, but does not alienate the body, he rather sins against the , belly, than against the body, as the apostle makes the distinction. Such moral sentiments are not to be harshly pushed to extremes, nor in their utmost , strictness. The viscera, which stand in a peculiar relation to the animal economy, seem likely to be destroyed permanently, and not to be restored at the resurrection. The Scripture refers much to the bones, as to the solid parts, in respect of good and evil, of punishment and reward; whence it is no vain conjecture, that the most intense pain, and so also the most intense degree of joy and pleasure, will be in the bones.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
1Co 6:18
1Co 6:18
Flee fornication.-In view of the great sin, flee from it, keep out of the way of temptation to commit it.
Every sin that a man doeth is without the body;-Other sins are without or apart from the body. [That is, all other sinful acts which affect the body approach it from without and affect particular members. They require some motive or weapon other than the body. The body is the subject.]
but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.-[Fornication takes the body as a whole and makes it the instrument of sin. It joins the body of sinful union to a body of death, so that it becomes one flesh with the condemned harlot, thereby severing itself from the life in Christ, and thus it strikes directly at the bodys future state. When a man and woman are united in marriage according to Gods law, there is no such alienation from the Lords body, and consequently no sin. This view is confirmed by the fact that the word here translated sinneth means to go astray, to miss the mark; so the words sinneth against his own body imply the running counter to the object for which the body was created.] The oneness of the body of two persons that cohabit is more than a formal union. How much of the real nature and being of a man does a woman partake of in intercourse with him and especially in carrying children begotten by him in her womb with a circulation of blood through her whole body, and how much he is affected by her will likely never be definitely determined, yet there is more in becoming one than we usually think. So a man guilty of fornication sins against his own body.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Flee: Gen 39:12-18, Pro 2:16-19, Pro 5:3-15, Pro 6:24-32, Pro 7:5-23, Pro 7:24-27, Pro 9:16-18, Rom 6:12, Rom 6:13, 2Ti 2:22, Heb 13:4, 1Pe 2:11
sinneth: Rom 1:24, 1Th 4:5
Reciprocal: Gen 34:7 – thing Gen 39:10 – or to be Lev 15:18 – unclean Pro 7:8 – General Mat 15:20 – which Act 15:20 – fornication 1Co 3:17 – any 1Co 5:1 – fornication 1Co 7:2 – to avoid 1Co 10:8 – General Eph 5:3 – fornication Col 3:5 – fornication 1Th 4:4 – should 1Ti 6:11 – flee
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
1Co 6:18. Flee fornication. The prevalence of immorality in Corinth, and its effects on the disciples of Christ, continues to be one of the apostle’s chief concerns. To fee from a thing means more than merely not partaking; it means to run away as from a poisonous adder. Every sin refers to sins of a material or physical nature, not that immorality is the only sin that a man can commit within his own personality, for when he harbors filthy thoughts, that is a sin within his own person. However, they are not bodily sins, while fornication is: it constitutes a sin against his body that was made in the image of God.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
1Co 6:18. Flee fornication. Note the studiously curt and stringent language (as that in 1Co 5:13), and not for nothing is flight here urged. This was what Joseph did (Gen 39:12), and what the great mediaeval schoolman Thomas Aquinas, when a youth, literally did in exactly similar circumstances.
Every sin that a man doeth is without the body. Surfeiting and drunkenness, for example, are produced by the introduction into the body of foreign elements in excess.
but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own bodyagainst its proper nature and use, prostituting it to base and blasting uses. Viewed in this light, that sin is like nothing else. It is a leprosy, which, when systematically practised, renders the body loathsome, enervates and slowly destroys the whole animal nature, and, what is worse, stupefies all the intellectual and moral powers.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Flee fornication.
Note, 1. The apostle’s advice to escape fornication; and that is, to flee it, namely, by shunning all occasions of it, all temptations leading to it, all incentives and provocations of it, not suffering our eye to wander, or our thoughts to muse, much less to dwell, upon any unlawful or ensnaring object.
Flee fornication.
Note, 2. The argument our apostle uses to flee fornication; because other sins are without the body.
Quest. But how is the apostle to be understood when he says, all other sins are without the body?
Ans. Thus, though all other outward sins, as drunkenness, murder, theft, &c. have the body as an instrument for committing them; yet in this sin of uncleanness the body is not only the instrument, but the object also, for the unclean person doth not only sin with his body, but he sins against his body.
Uncleanness leaves that blot and brand of ignominy and baseness upon the body which no other sin doth: degrading it from that excellent honour whereunto God advanced it in its natural condition, by making it the member of an harlot.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Vv. 18. Flee fornication! Every sin that a man doeth is without his body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his body. Anselm has well expressed the meaning of the first sentence of the verse: If we must fight against other sins, we must flee from fornication; witness Joseph’s example.
The asyndeton betrays the apostle’s emotion.
Thus far (1Co 6:13-17) the thought developed by Paul had been that of the dependence arising from impure intercourse: I shall not make myself the slave of anything (1Co 6:12 b). For a man to give to a degraded person a right over him by such a union, is not this to place himself in the most ignoble kind of dependence? From this point Paul passes to the development of the first thought of 1Co 6:12 : All things are not expedient, and he shows the injury which the fornicator inflicts on his own body.
He here enunciates a distinction between fornication and other sins, which it is difficult to understand. How are passion, falsehood, intemperance, suicide, sins committed without the body, while fornication is one in the body? Rckert and de Wette acknowledge their inability to find a meaning for this contrast; Calvin and Neander see in it no other idea than that of the greater guiltiness which attaches to the sin of fornication. According to Meyer, Paul means that in other sins some external matter is necessary, while fornication proceeds entirely from within. Hofmann, after criticising those different explanations, gives one which is stranger still, and almost unintelligible: The man who commits any other sin does not keep in his body the matter of his sin (the drunkard, the suicide); while the impure person makes his very body the subject of his sin, and continues in his bodily life identified with the being to which he has given himself.
It seems to me that the contrast stated by Paul is to be explained only from the point of view at which 1Co 6:13 placed us. The apostle means to speak of the body strictly so called, of the body in the body; he contrasts this living and life-giving organism with the external and purely physical organism. We possess a material body, the matter of which is being perpetually renewed; but under this changing body there exists a permanent type, which constitutes its identity. In chap. 1Co 15:50, where Paul is teaching the resurrection of the body, he declares that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. He therefore distinguishes between the organism composed of flesh and blood, which forms the outward wrapping of the man, and the body strictly so called, one with the person which animates this wrapping. It is the same distinction as we have found in 1Co 6:13-14 of our chapter. Now it is to this inner body that the sin of the fornicator penetrates; it is by and against this inner organism that he sins, while other sins only reach its wrapping, the external body. The , in so far as it is contrasted with the prep. , outside of, ought to signify in; but it differs nevertheless from the simple , in, in that it also denotes the injury which the body receives from it; hence the meaning of against which is added to that of in. Thus we understand the of 1Co 6:1. Yet bodily injury is not the thing of which Paul is thinking. The sequel shows in what the punishment consists. The body thus profaned had a sublime destiny, and of this it is deprived by the violence done to it.
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
Flee fornication. [As Joseph did– Gen 39:12] Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. [Paul notes the mutual adaptation or correlation between the belly and food, but asserts that this correlation is transient, and will be demolished by death. A subservient correlation also exists between husband and wife, for they twain become one flesh, and the innocency of their union does not interfere with the relation of either to God, which is the body’s supreme correlation. But there is no lawful correlation between the body of the Christian and that of the harlot, and such a correlation can not be subservient to the body’s supreme correlation, but is repugnant to it. The correlation between the stomach and food is transient, ending at death; but that between the body and the Lord is made eternal by the resurrection. Now, other sins, even drunkenness and gluttony, are sins without the body; i. e., sins against those parts of the body that shall not inhere to it in the future state (Rev 7:16), and hence do not strike directly at that future state; but fornication joins the whole body in sinful union to a body of death, so that it becomes one flesh with the condemned harlot, thereby wholly severing itself from the mystical body of life in Christ, and thus it does strike directly at the body’s future state.]
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
18. Every sin which a man may do is without the body: and he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. Here the apostle forever sweeps away that Gnostic heresy, recognizing sin resident in the body after the soul is made pure; involving that awful and fatal heresy that your body must commit sin so long as it lives. Of course it is the very doctrine of the bottomless pit, concocted by Satan for the damnation of souls, because every one acquiescent in this transparent sophistry is actually committing sin and hastening to his own damnation, vainly gulled by the silly delusion that he will leave his sins in his body when he dies. Here we have the case settled forever that the sin is not in the body, except in the sense that the soul lives in the body, but all sin is really spiritual and immaterial, the work of the devil, who has no body, and homogenous with his nature. Consequently it is utterly impossible for sin to be materialistic, however it may involve material entities. While the body is as incapable of committing sin as the tree by the roadside, it is frequently instrumental in the commission of sin; and, as a rule, instead of committing the sin, it only suffers thereby, as Paul here specifies, He that committeth fornication, sinneth against his own body. So here you see even in case of fornication the body does not commit the sin, but on the contrary is sinned against.
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
Verse 18
Is without the body; is not a sin directly against his own body.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
1Co 6:18. Fly from fornication: direct exhortation, carrying the force of the foregoing arguments, and further supported by those following.
Outside the body: they require some motive or weapon other than the body. But this sin stands alone in making the human body, the chosen medium of Christ’s self-manifestation to the world, to be itself a sufficient motive and instrument of sin. Therefore, as a unique dishonor
(Rom 1:24) to the body, it is in a unique sense a sin against (1Co 8:12; Luk 15:18) our own body.
Fuente: Beet’s Commentary on Selected Books of the New Testament
6:18 {13} Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.
(13) Another argument why fornication is to be avoided, because it defiles the body with a peculiar type of filthiness.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The reason participating in prostitution is wrong 6:18-20
Sexual immorality is wrong, Paul concluded, because it involves sinning against one’s body, which in the case of believers belongs to the Lord through divine purchase.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
In conclusion, believers should flee from fornication (porneian). Joseph is a good example to follow (Gen 39:12). Fornication is more destructive to the sinner than other sins because the people who engage in it cannot undo their act. Gluttony and drunkenness hurt the body as well, but they involve excess in things morally neutral, and abstinence may correct their effects.
Fornication is also an especially serious sin because it involves placing the body, which is the Lord’s (1Co 6:19-20), under the control of another illegitimate partner (cf. 1Co 7:4). [Note: Fee, The First . . ., p. 262.] No other sin has this result. All other sins are outside or apart from the body in this sense. "Every sin that a man commits is outside the body," could be another incorrect Corinthian slogan that Paul proceeded to correct (cf. 1Co 6:12-13).
"Does God then forbid the restoration of fallen leaders? No. Does He leave open the possibility? Yes. Does that possibility look promising? Yes and no. If both the life and reputation of the fallen elder can be rehabilitated, his prospects for restoration are promising. However, rehabilitating his reputation, not to mention his life, will be particularly difficult, for squandering one’s reputation is ’a snare of the devil’ (1Ti 3:7), and he does not yield up his prey easily." [Note: Jay E. Smith, "Can Fallen Leaders Be Restored to Leadership? Bibliotheca Sacra 151:604 (October-December 1994):480.]