Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

1 Corinthians 6:20

1 Corinthians 6:20. For ye were bought with a price [1] “with precious blood, even Christ's,” says Peter (1 Peter 1:19). Is it so? then, as the purchased property of another, ye are at no liberty to dispose of yourselves for uses of your own.

glorify God therefore in your body. The words of the received text that follow were beyond doubt wanting in the original text, and have crept in to fill up the supposed sense. [2] But since the subject in hand was the abuse of the body, the seeming abruptness of this way of closing the subject will be seen to give it a telling effect.

[1] The Vulgate renders this ‘with a great price' (magne pretio): Luther, ‘Ye were dear-bought' (theuer erkauft); De Wette, much as the Vulgate (um theuren Preis erkauft). But, as Bengel well says, the emphasis is best conveyed by being left to speak for itself, as in chap. 1 Corinthians 7:23.

[2] They are wanting in all the Uncial MSS. save three (two of these of less value); they are found only in one good Cursive; they are wanting in both the old Latin and the Vulgate, as also in other versions; and they are wanting in the oldest and best patristic authorities.

Note. It is impossible not to be struck with the contrast between the views of even the most cultivated portions of the heathen world on the subject of morality and religion and those of Christianity. It is to Christianity alone that we owe that purity of feeling which has expelled almost the knowledge of those unnatural lusts which were current in heathen lands, which has banished to the darkest caverns of secrecy such of them as still live, and has made the mention of even the less abhorrent impurities which were unblushingly practised and freely spoken about to be offensive to Christian ears, and felt to be tainting to Christian lips. But another thing, the counterpart of this, should not escape notice that although Christianity furnishes motives to holiness peculiar to itself, motives inappreciable save to its genuine disciples, it is so far from disdaining considerations favourable to virtue which are derived from natural ethics, that it readily avails itself of them all, and both kinds of motives are found so readily to fit into each other as to shew that they come from one Divine source. In the present case, for example, while Christians are asked with astonishment if they are not aware that their bodies are members of Christ and temples of the Holy Ghost a sphere with which only Christians can intermeddle they are at the same time reminded that unnatural sexual connections are of such an intrinsic character as to be a species of corporeal suicide. Thus are the lower ethical principles taken up into the higher and thereby consolidated and sublimed.

Continues after advertising

BibliaPlus

Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

1 Corinthians 6:20

Old Testament

New Testament