What is the world going to see in the life of the believer if we practice sexual immorality, defacing the oneness that we are privileged to have in marriage?

Paul quotes from Genesis 2:24, how male and female are to commit themselves together holistically in a way in which two shall become one, enjoying each other to the fullest while not ripping each other off. When he refers to taking a prostitute, he’s referring to any kind of sexual intercourse outside of marriage. In Corinth, religious prostitution was the order of the day. Several thousand religious prostitutes worked in the Temple of Aphrodite overlooking the city. In the evenings, they would come down and ply their sexual trade in the name of the goddess. You can see how tempting this would be.

God is making a once-and-for-all indictment against either of the extremes. You and I are not called to asceticism, which denies the doctrine of creation. God has given you and me our appetites to be healthfully expressed. Some first-century Christians were so ascetic that they were denying the right of a husband and wife to have sex. It involved the concept of “spiritual marriage,” so rarified that they would not dirty the relationship with sex. Can you imagine the pent-up frustrations that came in that kind of a relationship and how one or the other might rationalize their way into sex outside of marriage?

Paul repudiates asceticism, but he also repudiates that libertarian approach of the Epicureans that says anything goes, because the body is bad. He states this clearly in 1 Corinthians 6:15-17: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, ‘The two shall be one flesh.’ But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.”

Then he adds this final dimension as he declares, “. . .your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you. . . .” Whereas in Old Testament times, God’s presence was in the tabernacle and then the temple at Jerusalem, now God dwells inside each believer. You are His temple. “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

Action Principle #3: Sexual sin destroys. Flee from it!

Paul writes, “Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself” (1 Cor. 6:18). Sexual sin, by its very definition and reality, is dehumanizing. You become an animal. You declare yourself to be nothing but body parts and nerve endings. It destroys you, and it destroys others.