A Third Corinthian Mantra I Left on the Cutting Room Floor

A follow-up to the sermon "Not Yours to Give" — 1 Corinthians 6:12-20

In Sunday's sermon I drew attention to a pattern Paul uses throughout 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. He quotes a Corinthian slogan, then refutes it.

The first mantra: "Everything is permissible for me." A corruption of Paul's own teaching on Christian freedom, bent toward license. Paul's counter: not everything is beneficial, and some freedoms will master you.

The second mantra: "Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will do away with both." This one is more explicitly theological — and more dangerous. It's Greco-Roman dualism with a Christian spin. The physical doesn't matter. The body is temporary. Do what you want with it. Paul's counter runs the rest of the passage: God created the body, God redeemed the body, God dwells in the body, and God will resurrect the body. Dualism is not just philosophically wrong, it's eschatologically wrong.

There's (possibly) a third mantra I skipped.

Verse 18 contains a statement that has troubled careful readers for a long time: "Every other sin a person commits is outside the body." The problem is obvious — drunkenness, gluttony, and other sins also affect the body. If Paul is making a universal claim here, it's difficult to defend.

Here's the interpretive possibility I find most persuasive, and why I didn't preach it publicly.

The Case for a Third Slogan

Several scholars argue that "every sin a person commits is outside the body" is another Corinthian claim, not Paul's own assertion. Under this reading, the Corinthians were arguing that sin is a spiritual category, and the body is irrelevant to it — a logical extension of their dualism. Paul's counter, then, is the second half of the verse: "but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body."

The structure would follow the same quote-and-counter pattern Paul has used twice already. The Corinthians make a dualist claim. Paul dismantles it by pointing to what sexual immorality actually does to the body — and to the person united to Christ.

Verlyn Verbrugge, writing in the Expositor's Bible Commentary, explicitly espouses this reading, arguing that the Corinthians are making a dualist claim -- that since the body will be destroyed, activity affecting the body cannot constitute sin. Gordon Fee, in his NICNT commentary, calls the slogan reading "an attractive option, and may well be right," though he ultimately favors a different interpretation. Ciampa and Rosner (The First Letter to the Corinthians, Pillar) acknowledge the possibility but lean against it, noting that the grammatical structure of the verse fits an exception better than a contrast. The debate is live, and the Greek does not settle it cleanly.

Why I Didn't Preach It

I'm persuaded by this reading. But not all scholars are.

Some commentators, including Anthony Thiselton (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC), are more cautious. Thiselton acknowledges the possibility but resists treating it as settled. The Greek does not include quotation markers — those are supplied by translators. The CSB and NIV leave the phrase unquoted. The NRSV puts it in quotes. The NLT sidesteps the problem entirely by rendering it as a comparative: "No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does." Translation committees are divided, which tells you something.

The same ambiguity exists with the second mantra. I noted in the sermon that "food is for the stomach and the stomach for food" is almost certainly a Corinthian slogan. But "almost certainly" is not "certainly." The honest answer is that the Greek doesn't settle it, and the scholarly debate is live.

For a community group or a follow-up conversation, that ambiguity is worth sitting with. For a sermon already running long, it was a byroad I couldn't afford. So I left it on the floor and preached around it.

Why It Matters

If this reading is right, then Paul is not making a philosophical ranking of sins by bodily impact. He is dismantling a third piece of Corinthian logic: the idea that sin is essentially non-physical, and that what you do with your body therefore has no spiritual significance.

Paul's response is that sexual immorality is different in kind — not because it is the worst sin, but because of what it does through the body. It creates a one-flesh union (vv. 15-16). It involves a body that belongs to Christ and houses the Spirit (vv. 15, 19). It is a defiling of what God made, redeemed, indwells, and will raise.

That's the argument the rest of the passage is making. The third slogan, if it is one, sets up that argument rather than derailing it.

Questions from community group discussions are always welcome. This one was good enough to deserve more than a cutting room floor.