Greetings to the Father, Angels and saints in Christ. I had a laugh yesterday because I was able to use the contents of Thursdays’s blog on planting in unfruitful places to write an essay for an examination I had to do for US Immigration purposes. That was just God – my work was made easy. Anyway, today I had planned to write about the widow in 2 Kings 4. I was sitting in McDonald’s waiting for the Library to open when the Lord reminded me about today’s topic for which I had written a few lines when I was writing on “how not to get a man”.

Today, the truths flowed clearly and unobstructed, so I know for sure that the Lord intends me to share this today. The text is found in 1 Cor 6: 15 – 20 and says:

“Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.

What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.

But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.

Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s”.

This discourse was written by Paul just after his discussion in verses 1-11 about believers judging each other, the world and angels as well as the kinds of people who will inherit the kingdom of heaven. Notice the use of the term “kingdom of heaven” which is present and future. He then moves into another concept of self-control in verse 12. In other words, he is exhorting the believers to keep under their power the unfruitful works that will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.

He uses the imagery of meat-eating to illustrate his point or thesis. He begins the issue of self-control by exhorting the believer to control of the intake of meats (1 Cor 6: 13). Meats, as we soon discover, is used both literally and figuratively by Paul (he was a master orator, expositor, teacher and would have written great mystery books). He uses the literal example to skilfully lead the readers into another concept when he tells them that “the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body”.

In the figurative sense, fornication is symbolized by “meat”, since sexual intercourse is something that the body is made for. However, God did not create fornication, but marriage. Therefore, the body which craves to illegally eat the “meat” of sexual intercourse must therefore be brought under the subjection of the Lordship of Jesus (1 Cor 6: 13).

Paul is really a very skillful writer and teacher, because he uses the simple imagery of the body which he introduced in verse 13, to lead unto more complex principles related to the body. This is actually a teaching and learning technique in which the teacher stages the learning from simple to complex. Look at how God created the earth in simple to more complex things. He never created something until preparation had been made for it. The point here is that Paul moves on in verse 15 to the body image. He keeps it simple:

“Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.”

The principle is THAT WE BECOME ONE WITH THE THING OR PERSON WE ARE JOINED UNTO/JOINED WITH”.

There are two threads of unity here – unity with the Lord and unity with a harlot (either male or female). We become one with any thing or person that we bind to spiritually, physically, mentally or emotionally. We become ONE SPIRIT with Christ and His kingdom (including it principles, power, people etc) when we When we bind to Christ (v 17). In other words, we come into union with the spirit of the Lord when we sign up into His kingdom. Please read Ephesians 5: 21 – 33 and 1 Cor 12: 12 – 27 for more on the body image.

Keeping the same principle in mind, an individual therefore becomes ONE BODY with anyone to whom they are bound sexually (v 16). We must remember that Paul is talking about becoming “members of an harlot”.

I feel as if I have to stand on my head to see, because this scripture has so many angles. To keep to the point however, the Lord showed me, based on Matt 16: 19 and Matt 18: 18, that the power to bind and loose on earth are related to this principle, yet we do not fully realize it. Anything that we bind on earth is recognized in the heavens as bound. Remember the woman who for some reason was bound to the spirit of infirmity until Jesus loosed her? (Lk 13: 11). Spirits bind to humans by permission, known and unknown and do not release captives until we loose the captives through the anointing. See the point?

In other words, we have the power to put a thing together and then the power to take it apart again. This does not necessarily mean that God always approves of the binding and loosing. It also does not mean that the principle of binding and loosing is a free for all for people to unscrupulously take advantage of. Binding and loosing are the privileges of rulers in the spirit realm.

Let us examine the power of binding and loosing. For example, God created Adam and Eve as bound together by Him as Adam unknowingly revealed in the telling words that Eve was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Why then did he allow Moses to give the Jews permission to loose marriages? Jesus clearly said that this was not intended in the beginning, but permitted only because of the people’s hard hearts. Israel knew God by rote but not by relationship, so it was hardly likely that they understood all the deep, wonderful mysteries of marriage as He intended. Other issues were at stake, say for example, how much dowry the woman had.

Jesus said that no one should separate what God had joined together. Were some of these marriages joined by God or joined by man? Heavens help the marriage if God did not join it together in the first place. Get the point? Let’s look at other examples. Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, became one with Shechem after they had sexual intercourse. Gen 34: 2-3 says that:

“Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her. And his soul clave unto Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the damsel, and spake kindly unto the damsel.”

His soul clave or joined with her (strong’s in blueletterbible.com), but they were not married.

Let us examine another kind of union, which was a friendship and non sexual union in scriptures, showing an example of brotherly love. This was the knitting that Jonathan and David experienced. This was described in 1 Sam 18: 1-3 and shows the brotherhood (almost twinship) between these young men:

“And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

And Saul took him that day, and would let him go no more home to his father’s house. Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.

And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.”

The word “knit” means that they were now in league and were conspirators. This emerged in the ways that Jonathan would foil his father’s plans to kill David, by revealing every secret plot and helping David to escape.

We have not spoken of the greatest mystery of all, that of Christ and His church. He shows evidence of the union by revealing HImself and His will, His nature and power and by making believers like Him. He wants to reveal the deep riches of His grace so that we can come into possession. This is the union of which Paul spoke so eloquently in Ephesians 1, for example.

Paul is horrified, therefore, by the very thought that a believer united to the Spirit of the Lord, would taint and dishonor the union by coming into union with a harlot, whether male or female. His expressions of “what?!!!!!” (1 Cor 6: 19 and 19) would be equivalent to the most horrified expression of our modern times (for example, maybe, “say what????!!!!). Unthinkable! Why the horror? We are talking about joining with the member of a kingdom that is directly opposed to the kingdom of heaven.

Furthermore, principle teaches us that a spiritual and emotional union occurs in sexual intercourse (Adam and Eve, Dinah and Shechem). Secondly, two bodies joining together become “one flesh” (1 Cor 6: 16). This one flesh is not just a physical element, but the spiritual and emotional connections and oneness as revealed in Adam’s exclamation that Eve was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. She possessed some of his spirit, the intangible that he could not see with the natural eye. Thirdly, spiritual union occurs with being joined to the Lord. The serious question at stake is this – if a spiritual and emotional connection emerges from a physical union, what kind of spirit or spirits are you taking on from the person with whom you have had sexual intercourse?

Let’s face the truth. If the member of the body of Christ receives His Spirit, His ways, His knowledge, His faithfulness, righteousness, counsel, might, fear, discernment, understanding, quick understanding in the fear of the Lord (Isa 11: 2-5) what kind of spirit do those joined to the devil receive? The bible is full of the works of the unfruitful works of darkness. Furthermore, since the principle of spiritual and emotional union through sexual intercourse applies, what kind of spirit or spirits are being transferred to the disobedient believer involved in adultery or fornication?

It seems as if the believer would find him or herself in a spiritual and emotional quagmire as demons from the other individual take room or even as they become influenced by the spirit of the other person. Take for example, a marriage, which is a great example of how people become “better people” as they take on the spirit and ways of the partner in places in which they were in need. This is one reason why a marriage can make or break a person. See how the believer becomes changed into the Lord’s image by spending time with Him (2 Cor 3: 17 – 18).

Blessings and more  to come.