1 Corinthians 6:12-20

c. Nor can sensualities be excused by the lawfulness of all natural gratification, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 .

A doctrine by which the Corinthian Antinomians, whose views of Christian ethics were yet unshaped, were deceiving themselves, (1 Corinthians 6:9,) is now stated and explained. God has given internal appetites and external objects to gratify them. This is the divine constitution. He has given, for instance, the stomach and the food, (1 Corinthians 6:13;) so he has given the sexual instincts and the sex; the desire for wealth and external property, etc. St. Paul replies, that all those external objects are truly lawful sources of gratification; yet the unrestrained gratification is limited by the law of the expedient, and that limits the right. The injurious is wrong, the truly beneficial alone is right. And so we are truly restricted not only to the right object, but also to that object in the right degree.

The interpretation given by the great body of commentators ”all indifferent things are lawful” seems not only itself an empty truism, but involves perplexity in carrying a consistent meaning through the paragraph. Our interpretation perhaps justifies itself by its clear results.