First Corinthians 6:13 teaches that the body was made for the Lord, not for sexual immorality, and that God will one day make both our bodies and our appetites new. Paul wrote this to the church in Corinth, a bustling port city where many believers were tempted to treat sex and food as matters of simple appetite with no moral weight.
“Foods for the belly, and the belly for foods,” but God will bring to nothing both it and them. But the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.
1 Corinthians 6:13 (WEB)
What 1 Corinthians 6:13 Means
The verse begins by quoting a slogan that some Corinthians were using, roughly: “Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food.” Paul seems to accept the first half of the slogan. Eating is a natural function, and God does not condemn hunger or meals. But he also says that God will bring both the stomach and the food to nothing, meaning that these temporary, physical things belong to this present age and will not last forever in the way the resurrection body will.
Then Paul turns the slogan around for the body as a whole. The body is not meant for sexual immorality. Instead, it is meant for the Lord, and the Lord is meant for the body. This is a statement of purpose. Your body was designed to belong to God, to serve him, and to be the place where his life and presence are expressed. The verse does not promise that bodily desires will disappear, nor does it give a formula for avoiding temptation. It sets out the direction of a life that belongs to Christ.
The Context of 1 Corinthians 6:13
First Corinthians is a letter Paul wrote to a church he had founded, dealing with divisions, lawsuits between believers, and a range of moral failures. The Corinthian believers lived in a city famous for its commerce and its temples, and some had concluded that because they were free in Christ, almost anything physical was acceptable. Verse 12 shows this attitude directly: “All things are lawful for me,” a phrase Paul seems to be quoting from the believers and then qualifying.
Verses 10 and 11 remind the church that certain sins shut people out of God’s kingdom, and that some of them had once lived that way but had been washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus. Verses 14 to 16 then look ahead: God raised the Lord and will raise believers too, and because our bodies are members of Christ, joining them to a prostitute is unthinkable. Read this way, verse 13 is the hinge of the argument, linking the Corinthians’ freedom in Christ to the bodily future that God has promised.
Key Phrases in 1 Corinthians 6:13
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
(WEB)
These verses continue Paul’s argument by saying that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and that believers have been bought with a price. They deepen verse 13 by explaining why the body belongs to God: he has purchased it and dwells within it.
Romans 12:1
Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
(WEB)
Paul’s appeal to present bodies as living sacrifices expresses the same truth from a different angle. Just as verse 13 says the body is for the Lord, Romans 12:1 invites believers to give their bodies to God as an act of worship in daily life.
A Short Prayer From 1 Corinthians 6:13
Lord, you made my body and you know every part of it. I confess that I sometimes treat it as though it belongs only to me, to satisfy my wants and to chase whatever feels good in the moment. Help me remember that my body is yours. Shape my desires, guide my choices, and let my physical life honor you. Thank you that you are for my body and that you will one day raise it in glory. Amen.
