Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid.
All Commentaries on 1 Corinthians 6:15 Go To 1 Corinthians 6
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? For ye yourselves, and consequently your body and soul, are members of the Church of Christ. S. Augustine (Serm18. in hæc Verb.) says beautifully: "The life of the body is the soul, the life of the soul is God. The Spirit of God dwells in the soul, and through the soul in the body, so that our bodies also are a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom we have from God."
Shall I then . . . make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. Take here is not to pluck off and separate from Christ, for a fornicator remains a member of Christ and His Church so long as he retains the true faith. But it means, as S. Thomas says, unjustly to withdraw these members, that were given for generation, from the obedient service of Christ, whose they are. For whoever of the faithful commits fornication filches as it were his body and his organs of generation, which body is a member of Christ, from their lawful owner, and gives them to a harlot. He takes, therefore from Christ, not jurisdiction over his body, but the use of it.
