Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
What? know ye not? etc.--Proof that "he that fornicates sinneth against his own body" (1 Corinthians 6:18).
your body--not "bodies." As in 1 Corinthians 3:17, he represented the whole company of believers (souls and bodies), that is, the Church, as "the temple of God," the Spirit; so here, the body of each individual of the Church is viewed as the ideal "temple of the Holy Ghost." So John 17:23, which proves that not only the Church, but also each member of it, is "the temple of the Holy Ghost." Still though many the several members form one temple, the whole collectively being that which each is in miniature individually. Just as the Jews had one temple only, so in the fullest sense all Christian churches and individual believers form one temple only. Thus "YOUR [plural] body" is distinguished here from "HIS OWN [particular or individual] body" (1 Corinthians 6:18). In sinning against the latter, the fornicator sins against "your (ideal) body," that of "Christ," whose "members your bodies" are (1 Corinthians 6:15). In this consists the sin of fornication, that it is a sacrilegious desecration of God's temple to profane uses. The unseen, but much more efficient, Spirit of God in the spiritual temple now takes the place of the visible Shekinah in the old material temple. The whole man is the temple; the soul is the inmost shrine; the understanding and heart, the holy place; and the body, the porch and exterior of the edifice. Chastity is the guardian of the temple to prevent anything unclean entering which might provoke the indwelling God to abandon it as defiled [TERTULLIAN, On the Apparel of Women]. None but God can claim a temple; here the Holy Ghost is assigned one; therefore the Holy Ghost is God.
not your own--The fornicator treats his body as if it were "his own," to give to a harlot if he pleases (1 Corinthians 6:18; compare 1 Corinthians 6:20). But we have no right to alienate our body which is the Lord's. In ancient servitude the person of the servant was wholly the property of the master, not his own. Purchase was one of the ways of acquiring a slave. Man has sold himself to sin (1 Kings 21:20; Romans 7:14). Christ buys him to Himself, to serve Him (Romans 6:16-22).
Other commentary entries containing this verse:
Song of Solomon 2:16
Isaiah 44:5
Jeremiah 42:4
Matthew 25:14
Acts 27:23
Romans 8:9
1 Corinthians 3:16
1 Corinthians 6:12
1 Corinthians 6:20
1 Corinthians 8:1
2 Corinthians 6:16
Ephesians 2:22
2 Thessalonians 2:4
Revelation 21:22
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