1 Corinthians 6:15 Commentary and Bible Study

The church is Christ's body on earth. He is not here; he is in glory. He is represented on earth by whom? Rome says, the Pope. How absurd! How blasphemous! What is Christ represented by? By the church, by all of us. What people make of us is what they will see and think of Christ. ‘Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ’: arms and legs, limbs and parts of the body of Christ on earth? How can you possibly join your body with something which is unclean or a person other than your wife? How can you possibly do it when your body is a member of the body of Christ? The visible representative of Christ on earth. What a terrible thing! When you think of that, you could not possibly do it. Paul uses the most powerful expression at his disposal to reject this possibility, which our King James Version translates quite different from the original, but nevertheless does justice to it: ‘God forbid.’ That is not what the Greek says, but it says something which is the most powerful thing possible for the apostle to legitimately utter: ‘God forbid.’ The idea is monstrous.