and our own paschal lamb is slain: Christ. And still more distinct and partly without imagery (6:11): “but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” (Note the “but” twice repeated with which this assertion is categorically detached from what has preceded it.) This other new thing, which is here asserted is, according to Paul, an unheard-of, boundless promise under which the Church is placed. Nor should this positive side of the matter be here overlooked. Let us keep the feast … with the unleavened bread of “sincerity and truth,” he also exclaims in the essentially more sharply pointed chapter 5 (verse 8), with a suppressed joy. “Awake, Easter Day is here 1” And the viewpoint from which he immediately opens the discussion of the lawsuit question (6:2) is, if possible, even bolder and more joyful. Christians, as such, are not only, as 2:15 prescribes, fundamentally in the position, but are called, to judge the world, and even the angels, to test and distinguish spirits, to recognize and pronounce the last clearest truth. But this high promise, as such, is at the same time also the judgment under which the Church stands. In so far as it is not realized in the Church, the latter is necessarily open to accusations and judgments. But the Passover cannot be kept with the old leaven. The unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God (6:9). Be it observed that these accusations are not directed in a moralizing way against the sins of the world. 5:9–13, very distinctly asks what call had he to judge them that were without. “Do not ye judge them that are within” (5:12). The majesty of the claim and the menace that are here set up, is indeed hidden from those that are without; just as, according to 2:14, the hidden wisdom of God is also utter foolishness to them. Therefore, we are concerned with the new negation that is here visible; hence not to criticize the world, nor to raise oneself above it, not to distinguish Christians before the heathen. Christians cannot and ought not to go out of the world (5:10). Consequently, the question is to enforce the right of God. That is what is to happen in the Christian Church. That is the place in the world (in the world) where the right of God, and therefore accusation and judgment regarding the wrong-doing of man, come to light. Be it further noted, that this accusation also is not directed in moralizing fashion against the individual who has transgressed. It is directed against the Church, as such, and runs: It—the Church—is not what it yet is in Christ! It does not know instinctively, that it must, not out of pharisaism, but simply as a matter of order while lamenting the necessity, cut off from its body such a member as the person guilty of incest (5:2); not in order to anticipate God’s judgment upon him with its own hands, but so that God’s honour here in the flesh, so far as in it lies, will not be stained (5:5). And it does not know instinctively that, without confusing heavenly and earthly things, it may not calmly look on while its members appeal to a right and a judgment which it, the Church, cannot recognize in their dignity and validity with all seriousness. Paul says it more sharply: those who are least esteemed! (6:4). Why does it not draw the strength out of its own resources to settle such disputes concerning “mine” and “thine.” Why, indeed, have such disputes arisen among them at all? Why is it not preferred in such cases to suffer wrong than to do wrong? (6:7). To the accusation 5:3–5 is attached the express injunction, to deal with the guilty person in the manner prescribed. He, Paul, although absent in body, yet among them in the spirit, will himself execute the terrible act of purification, the delivery up of the rebel to Satan, who alone can save him. For only when judgment is executed upon the flesh can the spirit be saved in the day of judgment. The Church does not so much owe to itself as to its Master, and to that extent just to its unworthy and impossible members, to execute the Either-Or, not only by words, but by significant actions visible from afar.
In the second case, Paul gave no express injunction. But it will not for this reason be found that he expresses his opinion of what ought to be done in a less binding and urgent manner. Chapter 6:12–20 develops the principle of this section in a special glance at the first case. It sounds as if he were answering an unspoken objection when in 6:12 he again interposes with: “All things are lawful for me.” This was, according to 2:15; 3:21; 6:2, Paul’s own preaching. Does this mean that the Christian, made lord of all things, has in Christ the right, and probably the duty, simply to be a man again like all other men, to assert his personality, to satisfy his instincts, to seek his right where he finds it? Manifestly as little as God can employ His omnipotence and freedom anywhere and anyhow to be no longer God. Paul gives first two provisional answers (6:12); he says first: “All things are not expedient,” and then (to explain what he regards as inexpedient): “I will not be brought under the power of any.” The limit of my power over all is exactly where I have power over things, the point where it is not transformed into power over me. Where that happens, and that is happening in Corinth, things have just gained power over men. What passes for freedom there, is in reality slavery. But this answer is only preparatory; the decisive is now to follow: Man in his earthly existence is not only belly, he not only vegetates, he is body; he is in and with his vegetating corporeality created by God and destined for God. Is the belly corruptible; is it subject for God’s sake to the judgment of death, then the body is due to the Lord, whom God raised up, as He will also raise up us, our body, through the power of this Lord (6:13–14). Our corporeality as God’s work and property (as such, to be sure, here and now invisible) are members of the body of the risen Christ, one Spirit with it. Fornication, and all human hybris, however, signify that not only our corruptible, but also our incorruptible part is surrendered. Christ’s members become in the members of the harlot one flesh with Him (6:15–17). That is the great impossibility of unbridled human vitality, the dragging down into the dust not only of man, but (Paul did not, according to 6–15, shrink from this thought) of the Lord, His being made captive by matter, by something earthly, by a thing. The authority of God may not be threatened; it is that to which our power must set iron barriers. And it is threatened when man persists in thinking that he is permitted to follow his vital impulses. Christ’s right over us and consequently Christ Himself are in that case subordinated to the world’s right. That Paul actually saw this danger of sexual license in a specially revolting form, is from his “Flee fornication” (6:18) very clear. But the quite special accentuation of this remarkable passage unmistakably emphasizes what is fundamental: We are in no sense to regard our earthly existence, our body, as an opportunity to exhaust our vitality. We are not our own masters. “Ye are not your own.” Rather are we dearly bought. We belong to Another. We have a Master. The Holy Ghost dwells in us; we are His temple. To praise God with our body and with our spirit is the purpose of our existence (6:19–20). Hence the protest and the demand which Paul made (5:1; 6:11). It must be clear how and to what extent this section with its peculiar severity, with its occasional passages of mordant incisiveness, especially at the end, is sensibly connected with the preceding one. The flaming sword, “from God,” which was there unsheathed as the Christian truth against the religious velleities of the Corinthians, is raised here accusingly and menacingly over their natural life, in which they feel secure or even strengthened by the Pauline “All things are lawful for me.” Christianity brings not peace but unrest into the natural life; it transforms it into the members of the body of the risen Lord, which, as such, shall be sanctified. Against the life urge of man, Paul opposes the unassailable truth that he cannot do what he wants: the imperious question, whether and how in his actions he will honour or dishonour the Lord. A hand has been held out to man which will not let him go. Paul does not pursue this theme further. It is not an independent theme, but a paradigm like the preceding. Again, from a new angle, something has become visible in outline, of what he will, in chapter 15, proclaim as the Resurrection of the Dead.
§ 3
Chapter 7 constitutes a section by itself. An unspoken question is in the air, just as in the immediately preceding case. If, then, man in Christ is forbidden to expend his vitality; if the sphere of sexuality is that in which the danger is particularly great of his doing so; if, then, for the sake of God’s honour, it is just here that we must remember the phrase “All things are lawful unto me” has its necessary inner limitation—must, then, the struggle against human wilfulness and presumption not also and perhaps mainly become a struggle against all sexuality, a struggle against marriage? For what distinguishes the captivity in which man and his heavenly Lord are involved through fornication from that which holds sway even in the orderly sexual relations of civic life? Is it worth while, then, when once the sanctity of the body created by God, and destined for God, its waiting for