Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

1 Corinthians 6:20

20. [καὶ ἐν πνεύματι ὑμῶν ἅτινά ἐστιν τοῦ θεοῦ, at end of verse.] Omit אABCDEFG Vetus Lat. and Vulg. Rec. inserts them with Peshito. The words are not found in the earlier Fathers. Thus Irenaeus in his work on heresies, Book 1 Corinthians 6:15, leaves out the words. Tertullian, De Resurrectione Carnis, ch. 10, also omits them, and still more distinctly in his De Pudicitia, chap. 16. But by the time of St Chrysostom they had found their way into the text, and he comments upon them. They seem clearly to have been added by some ascetic who thought that without an addition of some kind undue honour would seem to be paid to the body. Alterations and additions are made for similar reasons in ch. 1 Corinthians 7:5.

20. ἠγοράσθητε γὰρ τιμῆς. Ye were bought with a price, the ‘one sufficient Sacrifice, Oblation and Satisfaction made for the sins of the whole world’ by the Death and Passion of our Saviour Christ. Cp. Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 1:19; 2 Peter 2:1; Revelation 5:9, &c. For the construction see Winer § 30 and Matthew 10:29; Matthew 26:9; Acts 7:16.

δοξάσατε δή. Cf. ch. 1 Corinthians 5:13, note. δή with the imperative gives urgency to the command. ‘Now glorify,’ not ‘therefore,’ as in A.V.

ἐν τῷ σώματι. It is impossible to help seeing how much the insertion of the words in the rec. text has weakened the force of the exhortation here. After a most striking passage deprecating the misuse of that body which God created and which He has promised to raise, St Paul concludes with the two forcible arguments that the body is the shrine of the Holy Ghost, and that the most precious price was paid for its redemption. And he then ends with the emphatic and somewhat abrupt summing up of the whole argument, ‘Glorify God, I beg, in your body.’

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

1 Corinthians 6:20

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