1 Corinthians 6 | You Are Not Your Own
You Are Not Your Own: What 1 Corinthians 6 Says About Your Body and Your Life
The Super Bowl just happened. The Olympics are on. And if you have tried to watch either one without being buried in commercials, you already know it is a losing battle. Streaming services, social media feeds, YouTube, all of it is competing for your attention and telling you a story about the world and your place in it. A cultural commentator named Andrew Sullivan put it this way: the goal of the modern economy is to ensure that you are never alone with your thoughts.
It turns out that is not a new problem. When we worked through 1 Corinthians 6 together this past Sunday at Redemption Gilbert, we found Paul addressing the advertising slogans of 2,000 years ago in the city of Corinth. The names have changed. The pressure has not.
When the Church Takes Each Other to Court
Paul opens the chapter with a pointed question: if you have a dispute with another believer, why are you taking it before an ungodly judge instead of before the Lord's people?
To understand why this matters, you have to understand what Corinthian court actually looked like. It was less like a modern legal proceeding and more like a public rap battle. You hired a lawyer not because he knew the law but because he was a skilled rhetorician who could humiliate the other side. The judge was known for making unjust decisions that favored the wealthy and powerful. And Paul is saying: you are taking your disputes there?
His argument is sweeping. Don't you know that the Lord's people will judge the world? Don't you know we will judge angels? And you cannot handle a land dispute among yourselves? The deeper issue is not really about courts. It is about public witness. How you handle conflict as a church tells the watching world something about Jesus. Paul's challenge is simple: your conduct should be unimpeachable. Not because reputation management matters, but because the way you live is either drawing people toward Jesus or pushing them away.
Wouldn't You Rather Just Be Wronged?
Here is the line that is hardest to sit with. Paul says the very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have already been defeated. And then he asks: wouldn't you rather just be wronged? Wouldn't you rather just be cheated?
Honestly? No.
If you are wired anything like the pastor preaching this, being cheated or wronged or misrepresented is one of the fastest ways to send you straight to war. The instinct to defend yourself, to correct the record, to make sure justice is served, is deep and it is real. But Paul says that instinct, left unchecked, is a sign that you are still playing by the world's rules. The world says winners win. Paul says you have mistaken how the story ends.
This does not just apply to formal lawsuits. It applies to the court of public opinion online. It applies to your marriage. It applies to your workplace. It applies to every moment where someone has wronged you and you have to decide whether to fight for it or let it go. Grace is the only thing separating you from who you were. That should change how quickly you reach for the sword.
The Plausibility Structures We Have Absorbed
Paul starts quoting Corinthian slogans: I have the right to do anything. Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food. These were the commonly held assumptions of the culture, the things everyone just believed without needing to defend them.
Theologian Lesslie Newbigin called these plausibility structures. They are the shared assumptions of a community, the common sense that no one questions because everyone holds it. And Paul's point is that the Corinthians had absorbed the world's plausibility structures without realizing it.
Ours are not so different. Be yourself. You deserve to be defended if you are wronged. My body, my choice. The loudest voice wins. These are the waters we swim in every day.
Paul is not just pushing back on sexual ethics. He is pushing back on the deeper assumption underneath: that your body is just a container for the real you, that what you do physically is separate from who you are spiritually. That belief shows up in far more places than most of us want to admit.
Your Body Is the Temple
Here is where Paul lands, and it is both confronting and freeing.
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you received from God? You are not your own. You were bought at a price.
The Corinthians believed the body was essentially irrelevant. What you did with it did not really count because what mattered was the spirit inside. Paul says that is exactly backwards. God raised Jesus physically from the dead. Your body will be redeemed just as his was. What you do with your body is an act of worship or an act of desecration, and there is no neutral ground.
The question Paul puts to the Corinthians, and to us, is not a list of rules. It is a framework shift. Would you take Jesus where you are going? Because if you follow Christ, you are taking him with you.
That is a serious question. It is also a freeing one. Because the same truth that convicts is the truth that gives you worth. You are not a mistake. The place you have been put is not a mistake. You are the home of the Spirit of God, and that makes you of incredible value.
A Personal Reflection
The hardest question in this chapter is not about sexual immorality. It is this: wouldn't you rather just be wronged? That question reaches into places most of us would rather not look. The argument still replaying. The person who misrepresented you and got away with it. The situation where you were right and it did not matter.
Questions to sit with:
Where are you still holding on to something that God is asking you to release?
Is there a person or situation where your need to be vindicated is costing you more than the wrong itself?
Spiritual practice: Write down one situation where you feel wronged or misrepresented. Then write this underneath it: "God will set this right." Leave it somewhere you will see it this week as a daily act of releasing your grip and trusting him with what you cannot fix yourself.
Go Deeper
This post only scratches the surface of what Paul is working through in 1 Corinthians 6. You can watch the full sermon in the Redemption Gilbert Sermon Library or on YouTube to go deeper.
And if these questions are stirring something in you, they are worth sitting with in community. If you are not already part of a small group at Redemption Gilbert, this is a great time to take that step. It is one thing to hear a challenge on Sunday morning. It is another to have people around you through the week who are wrestling with the same things.