Allowing our Lifestyles to Preach
a sermon based on 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
by Rev. Randy L. Quinn

In case you hadn't noticed, sex is everywhere in our society. You can't avoid it. It's on the radio. It's on the TV. It's in the newspapers. It is often the basis of humor and the background for many of the most popular novels. And there is no question that it is the basis of most advertising.

It would be hard to not notice, and almost as difficult to avoid altogether.

And yet it is almost never discussed in church. We rarely, if ever, give a constructive balance to society's emphasis on sex. We abdicate our own authority and remain silent.

Our society is very much like the Corinthian world in the time of Paul. Except perhaps that in Corinth, sex was acknowledged and addressed as a spiritual issue, since most of the sexual activity took place among the temples with temple prostitutes. Our society tends to think of it as a physical or emotional issue, not a spiritual one.

And the church's silence has all-too-often served to reinforce this concept. And when we do speak about it, we often couch it in terms of a private matter to be kept private, not public.

And so we continue to silently condone an emphasis on sex in our society while wrestling with it individually.

Maybe it's time for us to turn to the scriptures and seek the advice of God. Maybe it's time to turn to Paul and see what he has to say that may apply to us today.

The church in Corinth had heard Paul's message loud and clear. They knew that he had spoken about the freedom that came from and through Christ. They understood that salvation was a gift of grace, not a thing to be earned or deserved. They had heard and understood what Paul meant when he allowed the freedom to eat anything, to accept circumcision or not based on personal understandings and preferences. The church in Corinth had been good students.


But they also had inherited the Greek concept that the body and the spirit are separate entities, that what happens to one may or may not affect the other. They began to put this concept along side the freedom that Paul proclaimed and came to some additional conclusions. Things like, "all things are lawful for me" and "food was meant for the stomach, and the stomach for food." What you eat is a physical, not a spiritual thing.

From there, they began to look at their own sex-crazed world and see sex as a physical issue, too. That gave them permission to join in reckless and care-free sex with no concern for the consequences.

They are a lot like us. We use different sayings to justify our position, like, "if it feels good, do it," but we do the same thing.

If we don't directly partake of the world's offering, we do condone it by laughing at sexual innuendos or by reading sexually charged novels and watching sexually charged soap operas and sit-coms. Or we begin to accept the notion that some sex crimes like pornography are victimless crimes, and therefore less important.

If we are to address the issue in a helpful way, we must begin by recognizing our own guilt, our own sin. This is not the safe kind of sin -- the kind we can see in others and know we are innocent of -- it is the kind that calls for confession on our own parts. We need to be forgiven of our own participation in this sex-filled world.

Paul responds to the Corinthians from a Hebrew concept of humanity -- a perspective that does not divide the physical from the spiritual, but sees them as an organic whole that includes all aspects of life. To him, food is a spiritual issue. To the Hebrews, sex is a spiritual issue. To them, exercise and rest are spiritual issues.

To begin an appropriate response to our own society's issues, we need to begin with a similar understanding. What we do with our bodies, how we respond to its needs, must be seen from a holistic perspective. What we eat, how we respond to our emotions, why we take medications, and when we respond to sexual impulses are all spiritual issues.

If that is not clear, nothing else I say will make sense. Nothing that Paul says will make sense.

We are spiritual by nature, and anything that we do has spiritual consequences. Anything.

Paul specifically addresses sexual issues in this passage, though he does address food and work in other places (1 Cor 10:23 ff or Col 3:22 ff). In a similar manner, I hope you hear me address sexual issues while understanding that it is more than just sex that I am speaking about. I am talking about stewardship. Stewardship of our bodies. Stewardship of our emotions. Stewardship of our whole selves.

Paul begins with the Corinthian's own favorite lines: "all things are lawful for me" (v 12). The Corinthians used this line in their rationalization of their activities. And while Paul agrees that all things are lawful, he does not think that this means that all things are good for us -- or for the community of faith, the church.

The freedom God has given to us is meant as an asset to life, not a detriment. Whenever we allow our freedom to bring us into bondage again, it is counter-productive. As Paul says, "I will not be dominated by anything" (v 12).

Smoking, for instance, may be an acceptable activity in Paul's understanding, but not an addiction to tobacco. Once we are dominated by anything, it becomes our God, and as Jesus said, "you cannot serve two masters" (Mt 6:24). Anyone who has or is addicted to nicotine can attest to its power. Smoking becomes a driving force behind many of our actions when we run out of cigarettes. It really does control us.

So Paul advises us not to be dominated by anything -- not addictive substances nor by our own passions and desires. God alone has the right to us and our lives. We "were bought with a price" (v 20), we are not our own.

But we come to God with some habits and patterns of living that are in need of being renewed, changed, and overturned. Our acceptance of the salvation of God, our acceptance of Jesus as our Lord and Savior, is the beginning point of a process in which we are recreated, refashioned, and reshaped into the image of God, into the originally intended form of our humanity.


John Wesley and others, including Paul, refer to this concept as sanctification. It is the process whereby we give ourselves to God and allow God to remold us and recreate us into a new person. This life-long process of "going on to perfection", as Wesley refers to it, continues each time we offer another aspect of our lives to God.

For some of us, for many of us, for myself, at least, we have a long way to go. We are learning how to turn more and more over to God, giving God permission to change our habits, our attitudes, and our lifestyles. Step by step, piece by piece, until we are fully changed, fully converted, fully transformed, fully Christ-like.

A tool in that process for me has been the concept of Covenant Discipleship. In Covenant Discipleship, we learn how to create new habits, new attitudes, and new lifestyles. We help each other grow into the likeness of God as we make ourselves available to the grace of God.

In terms of sexual activities, it seems clear that the intent of God is for mutual love and respect, a mutual giving and receiving to take place within a committed relationship. To give ourselves fully to another out of love is to partake in the gifts and grace of God. It is an act of worship and devotion.

Paul suggests that we violate that intention when we join in sexual activities without commitment, without covenant, without love and respect. And when we allow ourselves to discount the long term affects of nonchalant, instant gratification-oriented sex, we give sex a power over us and over our society that is not only sick but is also idolatrous. We begin to literally serve and worship the god of sex.

And the media becomes the local temple where we find the 'sacred prostitutes' who will sell us sex in whatever form we are looking for it.

Like the church in Corinth, its time for action on our parts. It is time to name the demon-god who is seeking control of our lives, of our families, of our society. And it is time to denounce it.

Since I am a Navy Reserve Chaplain, I have frequently been asked how I felt about homosexuals in the military. My own feeling is that the problem in the military -- and in the rest of society -- is not homosexuality, per se, but an emphasis on sex as the primary topic of discussion, as the primary metaphor for life, as the most important aspect of a person. When sex is less prominent in our own minds, then perhaps we can ask the question about homosexuality and its place or role in society. Until then, I will continue to support the civil rights of homosexuals, including their right to serve in the military.

Until then, I can only offer my own life as a model, as a living testimony of what God can and has done. I can invite you to live your lives in a similar manner. We can respond to the grace of God with the freedom from sin, and the freedom to give ourselves over to the grace of God so that we can be transformed.

Our lifestyles, then, will proclaim a message of love, of redemption, and of hope. In all that we do, then, we can see that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit (v 19), and the Holy Spirit can be seen and heard speaking and acting through us and our lifestyles.

Let's join together in presenting an alternative to our society's emphasis on sex, not by discounting it, nor by ignoring it. Let's provide a valid lifestyle that recognizes both the purpose and the power of sex as well as its appropriate expressions, so that our lifestyles may preach a message that is more profound than what is heard elsewhere.

Amen.