Homily 17 — First Corinthians 6, verses 12 to 14

“All things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of anything.” [a]

Here he is taking aim at the gluttons. He means to attack the sexually immoral man again, and sexual immorality springs from luxury and a lack of moderation, so he comes down hard on this passion. He cannot be speaking of forbidden things, since those are not “lawful,” but of things that seem to be neither good nor bad. To show what I mean, he is saying: “It is lawful to eat and to drink, but to do it to excess is not beneficial.” And so here too he manages to bring in that marvelous and unexpected turn of his, which he often likes to use (compare Romans 12, verse 21, and First Corinthians 7), bringing his argument all the way around to its opposite. He shows that doing whatever is in one’s power is not only not beneficial; it is not even a matter of power at all, but of slavery.

First he tries to turn them away on the ground that the thing does them no good, saying, “they are not beneficial.” Next, on the ground that it contradicts itself, saying, “I will not be brought under the power of anything.” This is what he means: “You are free to eat. Well then, stay free, and take care that you do not become a slave to this appetite. The man who uses it properly is its master; but the man who goes beyond the proper measure is no longer its master but its slave, since gluttony rules supreme within him.” Do you see how, where the man thought he had authority, Paul shows that he is under authority? This is his habit, as I was saying before: to turn every objection around the opposite way. That is just what he has done here. Look: each of them was saying, “I have the power to live in luxury.” He answers, “When you do that, you are not acting so much as one who has power over a thing, but rather as one who is himself under some such power. As long as you live without restraint, you do not have power even over your own belly; it has power over you.” And we may say the same of riches and of other things too.

Verse 13: “Food is for the belly.”

By “the belly” here he means not the stomach but the stomach’s greed, as when he says (Philippians 3, verse 19), “Whose god is their belly,” speaking not of that part of the body but of gluttony. To prove that this is so, listen to what follows: “And the belly for food; but the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord.” And yet “the belly” too is part of “the body.” But he sets down two pairs of things: “food” and gluttony (which he calls “the belly”), and “Christ” and “the body.”

What, then, does “Food is for the belly” mean? “Food,” he says, is on good terms with gluttony, and gluttony with food. So gluttony cannot lead us to Christ; it drags us toward these things. It is a strong and beastly passion; it makes us slaves and sets us to waiting on the belly. Why, then, my friend, are you so excited and gaping after food? The end of that service is this, and nothing more will be seen of it. Like a servant waiting on some mistress, it stays in this slavery and goes no further, and has no other work than this same fruitless one. The two are bound together and destroyed together, “the belly” with “the food” and “the food” with “the belly,” winding out a kind of endless round: just as worms may breed from a rotting body, and the body in turn be eaten by the worms; or like a wave that swells high and breaks, and does nothing more. But he is not saying these things about food and the body; it is the passion of greed and excess in eating that he is condemning, and what follows shows it. For he goes on:

“But God will bring to nothing both it and them.” He is speaking not of the stomach but of immoderate desire, not of food but of rich living. With food he is not angry; he even lays down rules about it, saying (First Timothy 6, verse 8), “If we have food and covering, we will be content with these.” Here, though, he brands the whole thing, and having given his advice, he leaves its correction to prayer.

Some, however, say that the words are a prophecy, declaring how things will be in the life to come, and that there is no eating or drinking there. Now if even what is moderate is to come to an end, all the more ought we to keep away from excess.

Then, so that no one would suppose that the body is what he is condemning, and suspect that from one part he is blaming the whole, and say that the nature of the body was the cause of gluttony or of sexual immorality, listen to what follows. He says: “I do not blame the nature of the body, but the unrestrained license of the mind.” That is why he adds, “Now the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord.” It was not formed for this, to live wildly and commit sexual immorality, any more than the belly was formed to be greedy, but so that it might follow Christ as its head, and so that the Lord might be set over the body. Let us be overcome with shame, let us shudder, that after we have been counted worthy of so great an honor as to become members of him who sits on high, we defile ourselves with such great evils.

Having now condemned the glutton enough, he also uses the hope of what is to come to turn us away from this wickedness, saying in verse 14, “And God both raised up the Lord, and will raise us up also through his power.” [e]

Do you see his apostolic wisdom again? He is always establishing the credibility of the resurrection from Christ, and especially now. For if our body is a member of Christ, and Christ is risen, the body too will surely follow the head.

“Through his power.” Since he had asserted something people did not believe and could not grasp by reasoning, he left the whole matter of Christ’s own resurrection to God’s power, which is beyond understanding, and brought this forward too as no small proof against them. And about the resurrection of Christ he did not add this. He did not say, “And God will also raise up the Lord,” for that was past and done. What then? “And God both raised up the Lord,” and no proof was needed. But about our resurrection, since it has not yet happened, he did not speak that way. How, then? “And will raise us up also through his power.” By pointing to the power of the one who does the work, on which we may rely, he stops the mouths of those who speak against it.

Further, if he ascribes the resurrection of Christ to the Father, do not let this trouble you at all. He did not put it this way as though Christ were powerless, for it is Christ himself who says (John 2, verse 19), “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” and again (John 10, verse 18), “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again.” And Luke too says in the Acts (Acts 1, verse 3), “To whom he also showed himself alive.” Why, then, does Paul speak this way? Because the acts of the Son are credited to the Father, and the Father’s to the Son. For he says (John 5, verse 19), “Whatever things he does, these the Son also does in the same way.”

And he made mention of the resurrection here very aptly, holding down the tyranny of gluttonous desire with those hopes, and all but saying: “You have eaten, you have drunk to excess; and what came of it? Nothing but destruction. You have been joined to Christ; and what comes of it? A great and marvelous thing: the resurrection to come, that glorious resurrection, beyond all words!”

So let no one go on disbelieving the resurrection. If anyone does disbelieve it, let him think how many things God made out of nothing, and accept that as proof of the other as well. The things already done are far stranger, and full of overwhelming wonder. Just consider. He took earth and mixed it, and made man — earth that did not exist before this. How, then, did earth become man? And how was it brought out of nothing? And how were all the things made from it: the endless kinds of creatures without reason, of seeds, of plants — with no labor pains going before in the one case, no rains falling on the others, no plowing to be seen, no oxen, no plow, nor anything else helping to bring them forth? Why, this is the very reason the lifeless and senseless ground was made at the beginning to put forth so many kinds of plants and creatures without reason: so that from the very first he might teach you the doctrine of the resurrection. For this is harder to explain than the resurrection. [f]

It is not the same thing to relight a lamp that has gone out and to show a fire that has never yet appeared. It is not the same thing to raise up again a house that has fallen down and to produce one that has never existed at all. In the first case, if nothing else, the material was there to work with; in the second, not even the material appeared. That is why he did first what seemed the harder thing, so that from this you might accept the easier. Harder, I say, not for God, but as far as our reasoning can follow the matter. For with God nothing is difficult. As the painter who has made one likeness will make ten thousand with ease, so with God it is easy to make worlds without number and without end. Or rather, as it is easy for you to picture a city and worlds without bound, so it is easy for God to make them; or rather again, far easier. For you spend time, however brief, in picturing them, but God does not spend even that. As much as stones are heavier than the lightest things, yes, even than our minds, by so much is our mind outdone by the speed of God’s work of creation.

Do you marvel at his power on the earth? Think again how the heaven was made when it did not yet exist; how the countless stars, how the sun, how the moon were made, and all these things when they did not yet exist. Tell me again: once they were made, how did they stand firm, and on what? What foundation do they have? And what foundation does the earth have? What comes next after the earth? And again, what comes after that? Do you see into what a whirlpool the eye of your mind is plunged, unless you quickly take refuge in faith and in the Maker’s power, which is beyond understanding?

But if you choose to reason from human things too, you will gradually be able to find wings for your understanding. Someone may ask: “What kind of human things?” Do you not see the potters, how they reshape a vessel that had been broken in pieces and become a shapeless mass? Those who smelt the ore from the mine, how in their hands earth turns out to be gold, or silver, or copper? Others again, who work in glass, how they change sand into one solid, transparent substance? Shall I speak of the tanners of leather, of the dyers of purple robes, how they make what has taken their dye look like one thing when it was another? Shall I speak of the begetting of our own race? Does not a small seed, at first without form or shape, enter the womb that receives it? Where, then, does the living creature’s intricate structure come from? What of the wheat? Is it not thrown into the earth as a bare seed? Once it has been thrown there, does it not decay? Where, then, do the head, the bristles, the stalk, and all the other parts come from? Does not a tiny fig seed often fall into the ground and produce root and branches and fruit? And do you accept each of these without prying into them, and demand an account from God alone, when he changes the form of our body? How can that be excused?

These things and others like them we say to the Greeks. To those who obey the Scriptures I have no need to say anything at all.

If you mean to pry into all his doings, I say, what advantage will God have over human beings? And yet even among human beings there are many whose doings we do not question in this way. Much more, then, ought we to keep away from meddling inquiry into the wisdom of God, and from demanding an account of it: first, because the one who affirms it is trustworthy; second, because the matter does not admit of investigation by reasoning. God is not so wretchedly poor as to do only such things as the weakness of your reasoning can grasp. If you do not understand the work of a craftsman, much less will you understand the work of God, the best of craftsmen. So do not disbelieve the resurrection, or you will be very far from the hope of what is to come.

But what is the wise argument of those who speak against it — or rather, I should say, their utterly senseless one? “How can it be? When the body is mixed with the earth and has become earth, and this in turn is carried off somewhere else, how will it rise again?” To you this seems impossible, but not to the Eye that never sleeps. To that Eye everything is clear. You see no distinction of parts in that confusion, but he knows them all. You do not know even your neighbor’s heart, or what is in it, but he knows everything. If, then, because you do not know how God raises people up, you do not believe that he does raise them, will you also disbelieve that he knows what is in your mind? That is not open to view either. And yet in the body, even when it is dissolved, the matter is visible; but those thoughts are invisible. Will he, then, who knows the invisible things with all certainty, not see the visible ones, and easily tell apart the scattered pieces of the body? I suppose this is plain to everyone.

So do not disbelieve the resurrection, for this is a doctrine of the devil. This is what the devil is working for: not only that the resurrection be disbelieved, but that good works too be done away with. The man who does not expect to rise again and give an account of what he has done will not readily apply himself to virtue; and in turn he will come to disbelieve the resurrection entirely. For each of these is built up by the other: vice by unbelief, and unbelief by vice. A conscience filled with many wicked deeds, fearing and trembling at the recompense to come, and unwilling to find comfort by changing to what is best, gladly settles down to rest in unbelief. So when you deny the resurrection and the judgment, the other man for his part will say, “Then I too will not have to give an account of my reckless deeds.”

But why does Christ say (Matthew 22, verse 29), “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God”? Because God would not have done so many things if he did not mean to raise us up again, but to dissolve us and wipe us out of existence. He would not have spread out this heaven, he would not have stretched out the earth beneath, he would not have made all the rest of the universe for this short life alone. But if all these are for the present life, what will he not do for the life to come? If, on the other hand, there is to be no future life, then in this respect we count for far less than the things that were made for our sake. For the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and the rivers all last longer than we do; and so do some even of the animals without reason, since the raven, and the elephant, and many other creatures enjoy the present life for longer. What is more, for us life is both short and full of toil, but not for them; theirs is both long and freer from grief and care. [g]

“What then? Tell me: has he made the slaves better than the masters?” Do not reason this way, I beg you, do not, my friend. Do not be so poor in mind, or ignorant of the riches of God, when you have such a Master. From the very beginning God wanted to make you immortal, but you were not willing. Even the things of that time were faint hints of immortality: talking with God; a life free of uneasiness; freedom from grief and cares and toils and the other things that belong to a life that passes away. Adam needed no clothing or shelter or any other provision of that sort; he was rather like the angels. He knew beforehand many of the things to come, and was filled with great wisdom. He even knew what God did in secret — I mean with regard to the woman. That is why he said, “This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2, verse 23). Toil came afterward; so did sweat, so did shame, and cowardice, and loss of confidence. But on that day there was no grief, no pain, no mourning. But he did not remain in that dignity.

Someone says: “What then am I to do? Must I perish because of him?” I answer, first, that it is not because of him. You yourself have not stayed free of sin; even if it is not the same sin, there is at least some other that you have committed. And again, you have not been harmed by his punishment; rather, you have gained by it. If you were to have remained wholly mortal, perhaps what you say would have some reason in it. But as it is, you are immortal, and if you will, you can shine brighter than the sun itself.

Someone says: “But if I had not received a mortal body, I would not have sinned.” Tell me, then: did he have a mortal body when he sinned? Surely not. If it had been mortal before, it would not have undergone death afterward as a punishment. And that a mortal body is no hindrance to virtue, but keeps people in order and is of the greatest service, is plain from what follows. If the mere expectation of immortality so puffed Adam up, to what heights of arrogance would he not have gone had he actually been immortal? As things are now, even after sinning you can wipe out your sins, because the body is lowly, wastes away, and is subject to dissolution; such thoughts are enough to sober a person. But if you had sinned in an immortal body, your sins would likely have been more lasting. [i]

So mortality is not the cause of sin. Do not accuse it; the wicked will is the root of all the harm. Why was Abel none the worse for his body? Why are the demons none the better for being bodiless? Would you like to hear why the body’s becoming mortal, far from harming you, has actually been useful? See how much you gain by it, if you are sober-minded. It drags you back and pulls you away from wickedness by griefs and pains and toils and other such things. Perhaps you will say: “But it tempts people to impurity.” Not the body, but lack of self-control, does this. All the things I was mentioning do certainly belong to the body; that is why no one who has entered this life can escape disease and pain and dejection. But it is possible for him to commit no impurity. So it appears that if the passions of vice were part of the body’s nature, they would be found in everyone, since everything natural is; but committing sexual immorality is not found in everyone. Pain does come from nature; but committing sexual immorality comes from deliberate choice.

So do not blame the body. Do not let the devil take away your honor, which God has given you. If we choose, the body is an excellent bridle to curb the unruly leaps of the soul, to pull down haughtiness, to hold back arrogance, and to serve us in the greatest achievements of virtue. Do not point me to those who have lost their senses. We often see horses that have thrown their drivers dash over cliffs with their reins trailing, and yet we do not blame the reins. It was not their breaking that caused it all; the driver’s failure to hold them in was the ruin of everything. Reason the same way in this case. If you see a young person left an orphan and doing countless evil things, do not blame the body, but the charioteer who is being dragged along — I mean the person’s power of reasoning. For the reins give the charioteer no trouble; the charioteer is the cause of all the harm by not holding them properly. (That is why they often exact a penalty from him, tangling themselves around him and dragging him along, and making him share in their own disaster.) So it is in the case before us too. The reins say: “As long as you held me, I bloodied the horse’s mouth. But since you threw me away, I am exacting satisfaction for your contempt: I wrap myself around you and drag you along, so that I will not be treated that way again.” So let no one blame the reins, but himself and his own corrupt mind. For over us too there is a charioteer, reason; and the reins are the body, connecting the horses with the charioteer. If these are in good order, you will suffer no harm; but if you let them go, you have wrecked and ruined everything. So let us be self-controlled, and lay the blame not on the body but on the evil mind. For this is the devil’s special work: to make foolish people accuse the body, and God, and their neighbor, rather than their own twisted minds, so that they will not discover the cause and get free of the root of their evils.

But you, knowing his scheme, turn your anger against him. Set the charioteer on the chariot, and fix the eye of your minds on God. In every other case the president of the games contributes nothing; he only waits for the outcome. But here the one who appointed the contest, God himself, is all in all. So let us win his favor, and we will surely obtain the blessings in store, through the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be glory, power, and honor, now and always, and forever and ever. Amen.