1 Corinthians 6:13Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Why, then, man, are you attached to food? This is where that service ends and leads to nothing more. It subdues as to some mistress, holds one in this slavery, and produces nothing but this vanity.

Moreover, by being mutually joined, they also mutually destroy themselves: "the belly for foods, and foods for the belly." They perform a useless cycle.

It is like a decaying body producing worms, and the worms destroying that body. Or it is like a wave that rises and falls and produces nothing more.

He says this not about food and the body, but rebukes the passion of gluttony and excess in food. The following words show this: "But God will destroy both this and that."

He means not the stomach, but immoderate desire; not food, but satiety. He does not condemn the first, but even prescribes this rule concerning it: "Having food and clothing, let us be content with these" (1 Tim 6:8).

He condemns the sinful action, and at the conclusion of his discourse corrects it by prayer.

Some say that his words contain a prophecy about the state in the age to come, namely, that there we shall neither eat nor drink.

If moderate use of food will have an end, then one must all the more abstain from excess.

Then, lest anyone think that he condemns the body, or conclude that from a part he transfers condemnation to the whole, and say that the body by nature causes adultery, listen to what he says next.

He says: I do not condemn the nature of the body, but the immoderate love of pleasure in the soul. Therefore he adds: "But the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord."

It was not created for you to live intemperately and commit adultery. Likewise the belly was not created so that you might give yourself to gluttony, but so that it might serve Christ as Head, and He might be Lord of the body.

Let us then be ashamed and afraid. Having been counted worthy of such honor, and having become members of Him who is Head over us, we dishonor ourselves by such vices.

If even moderate use of food will have no place there, then all the more He abolishes excess and gluttony.

After saying that, with the abolition of food, the belly also will be abolished, he expressed this thought: with satiety, the desire for more ceases.

According to others, he sealed his exhortation with a prayer that both excess and gluttony be abolished, that is, brought to an end.

"But the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body."

From these words it is clear that the Apostle speaks about gluttony in connection with his discourse on fornication.

For he should have said, "The body is not for foods and not for the belly." But he did not say this. What did he say? "Not for fornication," showing what results from bodily pleasures, namely fornication.

The meaning of his words is this: the body, he says, was not created to sink into pleasures and fall into fornication. It was created to obey Christ as its Head, and for the Lord to govern it as Head.

Foods and the belly are corruptible and temporal things, which God after death makes empty and inactive. "But God will destroy both this and that."

These apostolic words are a preparation by which the divine Apostle proves that no one has authority to commit fornication.

Verses 13-14. "But the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised the Lord and will raise us up by His power."

All pious Christians constitute one body, that is, the Body of Jesus Christ. Each one is a member of this Holy Body.

"Now you are the Body of Christ, and members individually" (1 Cor 12:27).

You have authority, says the Apostle, to partake of every food, because foods were produced for the belly, and the belly for foods.

But you have no freedom whatever to commit fornication. The body was not created to fornicate, but to be a member of the Body of Jesus Christ. "The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord."

Your foods are yours and are under your authority, because they were produced to nourish you. But your body is not yours and is not under your authority.

It is the Lord's, as a member of His Body: "and the Lord for the body."

See how he sets one thing opposite the other: "foods are for the belly" and "the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord." "And the belly for foods" and "the Lord for the body."

Foods and the belly are destroyed by God. "But God will destroy both this and all these."

But on the day of judgment our bodies will be raised by the almighty power of God and will become immortal. So too the Body of the Lord Jesus, after three days' burial, rose from the tomb and became incorrupt and immortal.

"And God both raised the Lord and will raise us up by His power."

By these words he proved that foods, as temporal things, are in our authority. But our bodies, as eternal members of the Body of Jesus Christ, are not in our authority.

This is confirmed by the following words, which show the gravity of fornication.

It is destined, finally, not only not for any fleshly and criminal pleasures, but in general not for our pleasures, nor even for our spirit alone. It is destined for the Author of all things, God.

"The body is for the Lord." This alone would already be enough to instill respect for the body and compel us to treat it as a vessel of grace and a temple of the Godhead.

But the Apostle is not content with this. He reveals the dignity of the human body from another and higher side, one that even surpasses the limits of our understanding.

He says that "the Lord" Himself is "for the body." That is, as the body belongs to the Lord as a kind of possession, so the Lord graciously wills to belong to the body as Head, life, and light of mankind faithful to Him.

How many thoughts are born from this expression, thoughts that cannot be portrayed by human language. Each of them must serve as an impulse to guard one's body in purity and holiness.

According to Blessed Theodoret's explanation, the Apostle's thought is this: because of the mysterious union with our Head, Jesus Christ, who is God and man and consists of soul and body, we too must belong and serve Him.

We must serve Him not only with the soul, but also with the body.

Fornication is understood here not as the functioning of nature, but as the abuse of nature. Therefore a sober life in marriage does not make the body not for the Lord.

In such a life the body does not depart from His will or from obedience to Him (Bishop Theophan).

The bodily and spiritual union of Christians with the Lord is founded partly on our creation by the Lord the Creator. It is also founded partly on the Incarnation of the God-man Christ.

He became the Head of the whole body of His Church, in relation to which we are different members.

Our union with Christ concerns our body also, yet the binding power is rooted chiefly in the spirit, which governs the whole being of the Christian.

Whoever is united to Christ in spirit naturally becomes not only one body, but also one spirit with the Lord.

It is clear that such a person can no longer give himself decisively to anyone except the Lord.

The intimate relation into which adulterers enter is revealed from this alone: they enter a union similar to marriage, of which it was said in ancient times that the two become one flesh.

How the whole body is defiled through fornication is revealed by the great perversion of nature that takes place here.

This perversion is very often accompanied by the most destructive consequences for the body and soul of sinners of this kind.

Both the Apostle himself and his interpreters dwell especially on the highest motives for bodily abstinence.

For example, Saint John Chrysostom says: “The body was not created so that you might live without restraint and commit fornication, just as the belly was not made so that you might give yourself to gluttony.

It was created so that it might serve Christ as Head, and that He might be Lord for the body.

Let us then be ashamed and afraid. We have been deemed worthy of such honor and have become His members, yet we dishonor ourselves with vices.

If our body is a member of Christ, and Christ is risen, then the body without doubt will follow its Head.”

To this His Grace Theophan adds: “By awakening thought of the brightness of the risen Lord's body, the Apostle makes us imagine in what brightness our body will rise.

In this he prepares the strongest inducement to flee fornication, which darkens both soul and body.

The vision of the brightness of the future body served for all ascetics as a powerful motive to refine the body as much as possible, and especially not to allow lustful excitements.

When any of them, by the grace of God, was deemed worthy that lust within him was extinguished and died away, people said of him that before the general resurrection he had tasted its power.

Some of them, when grace-filled movements awakened during prayer, sometimes became wholly luminous. In others, the hands raised to heaven became luminous.

All these are tangible signs that they had tasted the power of the future resurrection.

The Christian body is pure, holy, and akin to the body of Christ, since it is in mystical union with it.

The passion of fornication makes the body dark and shameful. When fornication is committed, the darkness becomes impenetrable and the stench unapproachable.

Fleshly people do not see or perceive this. Spiritual people and the angels see and perceive it.

Fornication completely tears one away from the Lord, for what is dark and foul-smelling can no longer be one with the Lord.”

From this it is clear why the Apostle says, “Flee fornication.” That is, withdraw from this vice swiftly and irreversibly, as from the lowest and most shameful of all.

‘But God will abolish both this and these,’ as if to say: after the resurrection both will be abolished as unnecessary. Then God will transform us into incorruption, so that there will be no need either for food or for the receptacle of food, the belly.

The meaning of the words ‘foods for the belly and the belly for foods’ is this: they stir and provoke one another, and seek one another. The appetite of the belly seeks foods, and foods in turn stir and provoke the appetite.

But after the resurrection God will make them unnecessary. Therefore one should not care too much for what is to be abolished.”

Earlier the Apostle limited the use of fleshly pleasures, including food, by their profit and by the need not to let oneself become enslaved to them.

Here, setting our present state before the face of the future one, he draws from this a new inducement to abstinence and moderation.

In the age to come, he says, there will be neither food nor belly. Therefore one must take care to destroy in the soul all gluttony and attachment to foods through strict abstinence.

Otherwise the soul, passing into another age with these attachments and finding nothing there to satisfy them, will be tormented and will bear Hades within itself.

If there will be no belly and no foods there at all, then in preparing for that life one must reduce them in this life to the smallest possible measure.

How rationally, then, the great fasters act! What a view of the future life blessed Theodoret opens through this word.

There will be no food, and no belly. Therefore there will be no impulses below the belly, no marital unions, no family relations, and nothing worldly.

The whole structure of life there will be different. If the aim of the present life is preparation for the future, then how wisely those act who detach themselves from all the arrangements of this life.

They do this in order to pass into the other life bound by no ties.

In a few words the Apostle said very much against sensual pleasures in general, and especially against gluttony. He did this to prepare the way for his word rebuking fornication.

He also opened for the abstinent man, freed from sensual sweetness and gluttony, the path to victory over the movements of fleshly lust.

“But the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” Having taught an abstinent life, he now begins to teach chastity.

Motives for preserving chastity could also be drawn from the natural dignity of man. But the Apostle Paul, passing over nature, draws them from the essence of the Christian faith.

“The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” The Lord is the Head, as God and man, composed of soul and body.

We are mystically His members, not only in soul but also in body. Therefore we must belong to Him and serve Him both in soul and in body.

Consequently our body also must belong to the Lord and serve Him together with the soul.

But how is the Lord for the body? The Lord was incarnate in order to enter into communion with us, with our whole nature, which He received from us.

He is pleased to enter such communion mystically: with the soul by His Godhead and by His soul, and with the body by His Godhead and by His body.

In this respect He is pleased to communicate Himself also to our body, or to be for the body also.

This passage is somewhat obscure. To shed at least some light on it, one should not separate body from soul in our thoughts concerning us.

In the Lord one should contemplate the whole Theanthropic reality.

Saint Chrysostom says: “The body was not created so that you might live without restraint and commit adultery, just as the belly was not made so that you might give yourself to gluttony.

It was created so that it might serve Christ as Head, and that He might be Lord for the body.

Let us then be ashamed and afraid. We have been deemed worthy of such honor and have become members of Him who is Head over us, yet we dishonor ourselves with such vices.”

Theodoret writes: “The Apostle often calls the Lord our Head. Therefore the body is joined to Him as to the Head.”

Fornication is understood here not as the function of nature, but as the misuse of nature. Therefore sober life in marriage does not make the body cease to be for the Lord.

In marriage the body does not depart from His will or from obedience to Him.