Sex is not like eating food



“Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will do away with both of them.  However, the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.  God raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.
-1 Corinthians 6:13-14


Does this verse teach that we will not eat in heaven?  No, it does not.  We will not eat food in heaven stay alive and of course there will be no restrooms.  But, we will enjoy food, and celebrate with the Lord together in heaven; having fellowship, and glorifying God, in our eating.  

Jesus said this, at the last supper:

Then he said to them, “I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves. (Luke 22:15-17)

Jesus also said this:

I tell you that many will come from east and west to share the banquet with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 8:11)

John recorded this:

Then he said to me, “Write: Blessed are those invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb!” He also said to me, “These words of God are true.” (Rev. 19:9)


1 Corinthians 6:13 teaches that sex, immoral sex; which is sex outside the boundaries of marriage, is not like getting some food and eating, to satisfy your hunger.

These are some notes from scholars:

There is debate as to the extent of the Corinthian slogan which Paul quotes here. Some argue that the slogan is only the first sentence—“Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food”—with the second statement forming Paul’s rejoinder, while others argue that the slogan contains both sentences (as in the [NET] translation above). The argument which favors the latter is the tight conceptual and grammatical parallelism which occurs if Paul’s response begins with “The body is not for sexual immorality” and then continues through the end of v. 14. (NET Bible footnote)

Dr. Thomas Constable

The first part of this verse is similar to the two parts of the previous verse.

(“Everything is permissible for me,” but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me,” but I will not be mastered by anything.)

It contains a statement that is true, and it may have been a Corinthian slogan, but a qualifier follows. Food is not a matter of spiritual significance for the Christian, except that gluttony is a sin. As far as what we eat goes, we may eat anything and be pleasing to God (Mark 7:19). He has not forbidden any foods for spiritual reasons, though there may be physical reasons we may choose not to eat certain things. Both food and the stomach are physical and temporal. Paul may have referred to food here, not because it was an issue, but to set up the issue of the body and sexual immorality. However, gluttony and immorality often went together in Greek and Roman feasts. So gluttony may have been an issue.[Keener, p. 57.] As food is for the stomach, so the body is for the Lord.

“Not only are meats made for the belly, but the belly, which is essential to physical existence, is made for meats, and cannot exist without them.”[Robertson and Plummer, p. 123.]

The same is not true of the body and fornication. Paul constructed his argument like this.

Proposition 1:

Part 1: Food is for the stomach [A, B], and the stomach is for food [B, A].

Part 2: God will destroy the stomach [B] and the food [A].

Proposition 2:

Part 1: The body is for the Lord [A, B] (not for sexual immorality), and the Lord is for the body [B, A].

Part 2: God has raised the Lord [B], and He will raise us [A] (by His power).

One might conclude, and some in Corinth were evidently doing so, that since sex was also physical and temporal it was also irrelevant spiritually.[Barrett, p. 147.] However this is a false conclusion. The body is part of what the Lord saved and sanctified. Therefore it is for Him, and we should use it for His glory, not for fornication. Furthermore the Lord has a noble purpose and destiny for our bodies. He is for them in that sense.

The Lord will resurrect the bodies of most Christians in the future, all but those that He catches away at the Rapture (1 Thess. 4:17). The resurrection of our bodies shows that God has plans for them. Some in Corinth did not believe in the resurrection, but Paul dealt with that later (ch. 15). Here he simply stated the facts without defending them.

“The body of the believer is for the Lord because through Christ’s resurrection God has set in motion the reality of our own resurrection. This means that the believer’s physical body is to be understood as ‘joined’ to Christ’s own ‘body’ that was raised from the dead.”[Fee, The First . . ., p. 258.]


Ben Witherington III, p. 168 ; wrote:

It is hard to say whether the Corinthian slogan quoted in verse 13 consists of only the first sentence or also includes "and God will destroy it all."  The latter seems most likely , in which case they reasoned "The body for food and vice versa.  What does it matter since God will destroy it all?"25  On this view Paul agrees with their premise, but then in the rest of the verse makes it clear that this principle does not apply to the body in all its activities.  But if Paul adds "and God will destroy it all," his meaning is that "one who lives by and for his or her belly will ultimately be destroyed by God.26  In any event, Paul stresses that the body belongs to the Lord because God's Sprit dwells in the Christian so that God has rights over the Christian and because the Christian's body has been bought by God by the sacrifice of Christ.  Thus the bodies of Christians are not their own to do with as they please, but God's to do with what God pleases.

Verse 14 establishes a principle to be elaborated in ch. 15 at great length.  Just as God raised Christ, so also will God raise Christians.  Salvation in the Christian worldview entails the body, and therefore what one does with one's body, and therefor what one does with one's body has moral consequences.  The Greek idea of immorality of the soul is not Paul's idea of eternal life.

25. In view of this slogan and the Epicurean-sounding quotation in 15:32, one wonders if the "strong" in Corinth had been influenced by Epicurean philosophy.  Cf. Fiore, "Passion in Paul and Plutarch," in Greeks, Romans and Christians: Essays in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbre, ed. D. L. Balch, E Ferguson, and W. A. Meeks (Minneapolis: Fortress: 1990), pp. 135-43.  Plutarch argues against locating all of the good in the belly an other pleasure centers of the body (Suav. Viv. 1086C-1107C).

26. Hedonism is no Christian virtue and gluttony is positively a sin, a form of greed applied to food.


F.F. Bruce, pp. 62-3:

13. 'Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food': again we should probably recognize a catchword of the gnosticizing party which emphasized that the body and everything pertaining to it belonged to the category of religiously indifferent things.  So far as food was concerned, Paul would go most of the way with them (cf. 8.8, Rom 14.17, 'the kingdom of God does not mean food and drink...'); but he knew that for some of them the corollary held good: 'sexual relations for the body and the body for sexual relations; lawful ot illicit, such things are irrelevant to the spiritual life'.  (Food and sex are bracketed together in the Jerusalem decree of Ac. 15.29 and in Rev. 2.14, 20.)

and God will destroy them both one and the other: this too may have been part of the libertine argument: since food and stomach alike will pass away, will attach religious importance to either- or, for that matter, to sexual relations?  Paul agreed that food and drink and the like were 'things which all perish as they are used' (Col. 2:22); in respect of them the conscience of the Christian was subject to no one's judgement (Rom. 14:3; Col. 2:16). But sexual relations were on a completely different footing; they affected the personalities of the parties involved as food did not.  Jesus had contrasted food, which 'goes into a man from outside' and 'cannot defile him' with those 'evil things' which 'come from within, and... defile a man', and among the later he included fornication (Mark 7:18-23). It was one thing to speak slightingly of the stomach -Paul himself could warn his converts against certain people whose ;god is their belly' (Phil. 3:19, where the same word koilia is used)- but the body falls within the scope of Christ's saving and sanctifying work: it is for the Lord, not for fornication.  The koilia, related to the exigencies of this mortal life, may indeed disappear, but since the Lord is for the body, a nobler destiny lies in store for it.

14.  Although some of the Corinthian Christians did not believe it (15.12), the Lord's care for the body would be finally manifested by its resurrection: God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power (cf. Rom 6.4; 8.23). Here, as in 2 C. 4.14, Paul includes himself among those who will experience the resurrection, whereas in 1 Th. 4:15, 17, he had included himself among those who would be alive at the parousia.  He makes no dogmatic affirmation either way, but, as time went on, the likelihood of his dying before the parousia increased (see notes on 2 C. 5.1ff.).  As in 15.20ff., the resurrection of Christ is the pattern and precondition of his people's resurrection (cf. Rom. 8.11; Phil. 3.21).  The resurrection body would be a body of a different order (15.42ff.). but sufficiently continuous with the present mortal body to demand reverence for the latter.


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