490 -- Lawful, Yes, But Still Awful
June 13 (6/13) in Godsfield -- 1 Corinthians 6:13
An audio recording of this e-mail is attached at the end.
(For Better or Verse: Each day in 2025 I will begin this Godsfield e-mail with a Bible verse that corresponds with the month (chapter 1-12) and day (verse 1-31) it is sent. This month features a lot of sixth chapters! Those with eyes and ears, let them see and hear.)
1 Corinthians 6:13 -- You say, “Meats for the stomach and the stomach for meats," and God will destroy them both. The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
I like food. I've never met a carry-in dinner I didn't like. I've never stood in line at a carry-in dinner without someone pointing to the cheesecake (or dirt pudding or brownies or apple pie or peach cobbler) and saying, "It's okay, the calories were taken out.
We all have guilt about indulging; we all have freedom in Christ. All things are lawful, not all things are beneficial; God forgives, and yet it is up to us not to be dominated by whatever God will still forgive us for. That's St. Paul leading up to this verse.
What we do with our bodies matters. Being in Christ means being of the same body as the one who became flesh and lived among us, offering us physical healing and soul restoration. And we will be resurrected to a new physical body -- the current one made whole -- with a new earth that is physical and we are real (more real than we are now!) and transformed, and how great is that. Will there be cheesecake? If there is, it will not be a calorie-concern. If there isn't (and why would we have to eat in Heaven?) there will be something much, much better.
"All things are lawful" where grace is real, however it is not intended to be an excuse of "anything goes," and St. Paul is particularly concerned about looseness with sex, where the two become one flesh, where pagan religions were incorporating prostitutes as religious ritual, where the movies of the day were showing sex outside of marriage as normal and more exciting that fidelity in marriage. (No wait, those are today's movies.)
He warns us because he knows, as do we all, that the chaos created harms the body and soul, for everyone effected even if not one of those involved.
Our bodies and souls are real and really connected. One effects the other, each way, for better or worse.
Mark Twain said, "It is easier to confess to God the sins I have committed than the ones I intend to commit." Oh, that we will catch ourselves and seek the Lord's strength in resisting the temptation, the devil's call -- the devil's food cake -- and be blessed by knowing we belong to the Lord, are one with the body of Christ.
All things are lawful, but some things are just awful.
Love ya,
Paul