Biblion Bible Commentary
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All Things Are Lawful, but Not All Profitable
1 Corinthians 6:12-14
12 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are expedient. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be brought under the power of anything. · WEB
Paul quotes a Corinthian slogan twice and answers it twice, then denies the assumption underneath it — that what is done with the body does not matter.
"All things are lawful for me," but not all things are expedient. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be brought under the power of anything 1 Corinthians 6:12.
The repeated phrase is a slogan, quoted and then qualified — a Corinthian principle Paul is willing to grant in a form and then hedge twice. The freedom is real; the letter never retracts it, and it returns to it later in the argument about food 1 Corinthians 10:23.
But two limits are set. First, not all things are expedient — the question is not only whether an act is permitted but whether it builds anything, which the later discussion will develop into a concern for other people 1 Corinthians 8:9 1 Corinthians 10:24. Second, and more penetrating: I will not be brought under the power of anything. The slogan is turned inside out. A man asserting his liberty by doing whatever is permitted very often ends up owned by the thing he insisted on being free to do, and the freedom that cannot be given up has become the master. Corinth's argument for license is answered on its own ground — this is not free.
"Foods for the belly, and the belly for foods," but God will bring to nothing both it and them 1 Corinthians 6:13.
A second slogan, and it reveals the reasoning being used. Appetite and its satisfaction are natural and morally neutral, the argument runs, so eating is a fair analogy for sex — a bodily function with no more significance than digestion. Paul's reply concedes the transience of food and stomach both, and then refuses the analogy outright.
But the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body 1 Corinthians 6:13.
The body is not a neutral appliance; it has a purpose, and the purpose is a person. For the Lord — and then the astonishing reciprocal, and the Lord for the body, which says that the relation runs both ways. Whatever else Corinth believed about matter and spirit, this letter refuses to treat the body as the disposable part of a human being.
Now God raised up the Lord, and will also raise us up by his power 1 Corinthians 6:14.
And the proof that the body is not disposable is the resurrection, mentioned here in passing and argued at length at the end of the letter 1 Corinthians 15:20 1 Corinthians 15:42–44. God did not discard his Son's body; he raised it, and intends to do the same with theirs. A body with a future cannot be treated as a thing whose use does not matter — which is why the ethics of the next paragraph rest on physiology rather than on rules 1 Corinthians 6:15.
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