Law and grace
Day 588, Sunday, Mar. 22
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Paul writes in today’s reading against a heresy we call antinomianism (against law). While the heresy didn’t get its name for a few centuries after Paul, we can recognize it here. Antinomianism corrupts the understanding of grace by taking it to the extreme of teaching that Christians are not obligated to obey any laws, that all accountability for both past and future sin is wiped out in salvation.
Paul, with his radical understanding of grace and freedom from the law, probably faced accusations of antinomianism himself. This passage is one of several times he seems to be defending himself against that claim.
Quoting someone (possibly what his opponents accused him of saying), Paul said, “‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say—but not everything is beneficial.”
He singles out sexual immorality by saying the body is meant for the Lord, not for sexual immorality. “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh.’ But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.”
He continues, “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.”
Even in today’s passage Paul presents obedience to the law more as an affirmative gift to God (“Therefore honor God with your bodies”) than as a way to avoid punishment.

-Rev. Mark Fleming

Sunday meditation

Psalms 102:1-11
Hear my prayer, Lord; let my cry for help come to you. Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress. Turn your ear to me; when I call, answer me quickly.
For my days vanish like smoke; my bones burn like glowing embers. My heart is blighted and withered like grass; I forget to eat my food. In my distress I groan aloud and am reduced to skin and bones. I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins. I lie awake; I have become like a bird alone on a roof. All day long my enemies taunt me; those who rail against me use my name as a curse. For I eat ashes as my food and mingle my drink with tears because of your great wrath, for you have taken me up and thrown me aside. My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass.

Prayer focus
Let us live in your grace, Lord, but never take it for granted.