1 Corinthians 3:9–17; 6:12–13, 18–20

Build With Lasting Works (3:12–17)
Moreover the building that rests on the foundation of Christ — an idea that extends the metaphor to talk about what kind of lives the Corinthians live — must last. Here Paul contrasts using precious stones and metals as building materials (no doubt alluding to the lavishly decorated Jerusalem temple) with materials used in the construction of common houses. The imagery is complex. On one level, Paul contrasts what is dear with the ordinary. The implication is that the knowledge of God that believers possess and their Christian way of life are rare and precious, while in the rest of Corinth, the common understandings of the divine lead to depravity. On another level, Paul contrasts what will endure testing "by fire" to what is perishable. Ever mindful of Christ’s return and the troubles that must come first, Paul deploys an apocalyptic image here to exhort endurance. But even this metaphor works on two levels: the Corinthian Christians themselves must endure coming trials, and they must produce works that will survive God’s coming judgment.

This idea of survival leads to a third point. Throughout the letter, Paul is concerned with the unity of the Corinthians. In verses 16–17, Paul warns against anything that threatens this unity. Here he explicitly calls the Corinthians "God’s temple." The image is collective ("you" here is plural): together the many Corinthian congregations constitute a single house for God’s Spirit. Woe to those people whose factiousness threatens to bring down the Spirit’s dwelling place. By extension, believers should gauge their actions within the congregation by this standard: do my actions build up God’s temple or weaken it?

Live for God’s Glory (6:12–13, 18–20)
Paul can also deploy the metaphor of God’s sanctuary to the individual Christian. In some respects, Corinth was the Las Vegas of the Greco-Roman world. Spanning the isthmus connecting Greece with the Peloponnesus and with two ports, in Paul’s day, Corinth was famous for wealth and widespread immorality. As in most cities of the Roman Empire, anyone who wanted sex could find it and there were few social or legal scruples to limit what one could get. The bustling polis of Corinth was known for its permissiveness. Indeed, in 1 Corinthians 5:1–8, Paul addresses a case of incest, and one of the problems he must overcome is the church’s general apathy about the situation.

To combat these attitudes and excesses (Paul mentions eating and sex, both associated with pagan religious practices: the eating probably has to do with consuming meat that has been offered to pagan gods; see Chapters 8–10), Paul reminds the Corinthians that the body does matter. There is no separation of body and soul here, and no one can claim that what one does with the body does not alter one’s "true" being. That is implicit in Paul’s exhortation. What he makes explicit is that the body belongs to God. Paul speaks to the individual rather than collectively, as earlier. A believer’s body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Therefore it "is meant for the Lord," to glorify God rather than to gratify the person. Once that principle is understood, in addition to sexual promiscuity, any number of physical activities, although permissible in society, simply becomes off-limits to believers.