the slogan - Everything is permissible for me was a theological slogan bantered about by the pneumatakoi, a group of spiritual people who influenced Corinthian Christians (cf. also 10:23). Could be that this group simply caricatured Paul’s own teaching about Christian freedom. If taken out of context, Paul does come close to saying the same thing: For all things are yours (3:21). The difference that Paul qualifies Christian freedom with his "in Christ" perspective: . . . and you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God. For Paul, it is only as one is in Christ that ‘everything is permitted me,’ and in any case that would have to do with adiaphora (the nonessentials: food, drink, days, circumcision, etc.), not with Christian ethics. [1]

who is lord? - The NIB provides a helpful reflection on verse 19:

In our individualistic society and culture, Paul’s claim that ‘you are not you own’ (6:19) will seem decidedly alien. Are we not in charge of our own lives? . . . Our own self-control is a fiction that we struggle to maintain.

. . . Paul’s anthropology emerges here: All people are dependent on some being or some thing beyond themselves to give them meaning and significance (cf. Rom. 14:7). So for Paul the issue is not whether one has a lord or not; one simply will have some lord. At stake is what lord one will have . . .

. . . In Paul’s categories, the chief competing lords are sin, a power that takes over one’s life and governs it (and a power that Paul thinks was the former lord of all believers, or Christ, whose lordship grants perfect freedom. [2]

How would you characterize our culture’s view of sexually?

From this passage, what are Paul's arguments against sexuality immorality? Which one is most convincing to you

What does it mean that "your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?"

block #1 - You may want to hold up the saying of the pneumatakoi-"All things are lawful to me." Describe ways, scenarios, events, media in which that basic philosophy still flourishes in our post-modern age.

block #2 - How does Paul qualify this statement? Unpack his discussion on Christian freedom by focusing on his addendum-"but not all things are beneficial." You could point out the addiction pattern so prominent in our age-that we are free, yet can become slaves through addictions if we don’t know boundaries.

block #3 - Hold before your listeners a new vision of freedom based on this passage-sketch out several "for instances," or "for examples" that will allow people to grasp the differences.

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[1] Gordon D. Fee, The New International Commentary on the New Testament: First Corinthians  (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1987), page 252.
[2] New Interpreter’s Bible II (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), page 779.
[3] Serendipity Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Co., 1998), page 1592.