What Does 1 Corinthians 6:15 Mean?
Have you not seen that your bodies are limbs of the Anointed One? Shall I then lift them and make them limbs of a seller of bodies? May it never be.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
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 KEY
The body itself is the contested ground: the very same limbs are named as Christ’s members and as what could be made a harlot’s members.
THE MEANING
Your body is not an isolated possession; its physical members are already named as Christ’s. The verse places sexual use directly against that belonging: the same members are involved in joining a harlot.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that what happens with your body is separate from belonging to Christ dissolves here: the verse names the body’s members as Christ’s.
THE ROOT
μέλη
melē
GROWS FROM
μέλος
melos
limb, body part
“limbs” in this verse is melē. The Greek word means a bodily limb or part, not simply someone enrolled in a group. The verse repeats the same noun for members of Christ and members of a harlot, putting the physical body itself at the center of the claim.
ALSO GROWS
melos: a limb or bodily member in the singular
μέλος
It keeps the image grounded in an actual part of a body.
melē: limbs or bodily members in the plural
μέλη
This is the repeated form in the verse: the same bodily members are named in relation to Christ and to a harlot.
Χριστοῦ
Christou
GROWS FROM
χρίω
chriō
anoint
Christos means “the anointed one,” from the verb “to anoint.” The verse names the body’s members as belonging to the anointed one, making that belonging concrete and embodied.
ALSO GROWS
chriō: to anoint
χρίω
This is the verbal root behind the title used for Christ.
chrisma: anointing
χρῖσμα
This related word keeps the sense of anointing present beneath the title “the anointed one.”
THE PATTERN
Bodily life creates real relations of belonging; its parts are not detached from the whole or bond they enter.
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.So we, though many, are one body in the Anointed One, and each of us is a limb of one another.For we are limbs of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.THE THREAD
Now you are the body of the Anointed One, and limbs, each from its portion.This verse uses the same Greek word for “members” and names those members as parts of Christ’s body. It makes clear that 1 Corinthians 6:15 speaks of embodied belonging, one member at a time.
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