For you are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.
All Commentaries on 1 Corinthians 6:20 Go To 1 Corinthians 6
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. Value highly your bodies, though the devil bids for them with a shameful and brief bodily delight. Do not despise your bodies, do not sell them for nothing—rather think them of the highest possible worth; for it is to the glory of God if these bodies, which God bought at a great price, even with His own blood, become of great importance in our eyes. Hence the well-known proud name of a Christian Isaiah , "Bought and Redeemed," viz, from sin and heathenism, by the precious blood of Christ. So in olden times the children of Christians were bought by the Turks, and became, instead of Christians, Mahometans, and were called Mamelukes, or "the bought;" for when the Tartars had subdued Armenia they sold the children of the Christians. Melech-Sala, Sultan of Egypt, bought them in great Numbers , and had them trained as soldiers, and called Mamelukes. After the death of Melech-Sala the Mamelukes began to appoint a king for themselves, A.D1252 , out of their own society of apostate Christians. As they took their rise under the Emperor Frederick II, so under Solyman, who filled the Egyptian throne, they were exterminated, A.D1516. Then their reign and existence ceased together. Glorify God in your body, by keeping it pure in obedience to the Spirit and to God.
The Latin has, "Glorify and carry God," but the carry is not in the Greek. "As a horse," says S. Thomas, "carries its lord and rider, and moves as he wills, so does the body serve the will of God." The Greek also adds, and in your spirit, which are God"s.
Observe that the Corinthians were greatly given to impurity, and consequently to gluttony. This is evident from Suidas, who, under the word "Cothys," says: "Cothys is a devil worshipped by the Corinthians as the ruler of effeminate and unclean persons." Herodotus says the same thing (Clio), and Strabo (lib.viii.). The latter says: "The temple of Venus at Corinth was so wealthy that it had mire than a thousand harlots as priestesses, whom men and women dedicated to the goddess." Thus κοÏινθιάξεθν became a common word for lasciviousness, self-indulgence, and impurity generally. Hence it is that the Apostle takes such pains to warn the Corinthians against their common sin of fornication; and he does this by various reasons drawn from different sources: (1.) from creation, (2.) from the resurrection of the body, (3.) from the shamefulness of impurity, and the injury it does to the body, (4.) from the dignity of the body.
From these we may collect six arguments by which he seeks to save them from fornication: (1.) Because our body is not our own but the Lord"s (ver13); (2.) Because, if it is pure, it shall rise again with glory (ver14); (3.) Because our body is a member of Christ. (ver15); (4.) Because the body is a pure temple of the Holy Spirit, in order that by clinging to God in chastity it may become one spirit with Him (ver17); (5.) Because our body has been bought with the blood of Christ, and therefore it is an unworthy thing, and an injury to God, to Christ, and the Holy Spirit, to give it to a harlot (ver20). See Chrysostom (in Morali.).
S. Bernard (Serm7 in Ps.xci.) moralises thus: "Glorify, dearly beloved, and bear meanwhile Christ in your body, as a delightful burden, a pleasant weight, a wholesome load, even though He seem sometimes to weigh heavily, even though sometimes He use the spur and whip on the laggard, even though sometimes He hold in the jaws with bit and bridle, and curb us wholly for our good. Be as a beast of burden in the patience with which you bear the load, and yet not as a beast, heedless of the honour that its rider gives. Think wisely and sweetly both of the nature of the load you bear, as well as of your own future benefit." So S. Ignatius, the martyr, was called "God-bearer" and "Christ-bearer," and he salutes the Blessed Virgin by the same name, "Christ-bearer," in his letters to her, as S. Bernard says.
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