<p>6:15 <i>Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?</i>- We noted on :11 and :14 that baptism is in view here; for we are baptized into the mystical body of Christ. Paul in Rom. 6:13,19 likewise warns against the misuse of our &quot;members&quot; in immorality; because we are baptized into Christ, our members are His and not our own. In chapter 12 Paul will explain that our membership of the Lord's body calls us to practical service within that body- rather than using our members for our own gratification.</p><p>Therefore, Paul says, smashing through all Corinth's rationalizations of their sin, &quot;know you not&quot; (isn't it obvious to you?) that we should not become one body with a prostitute. This isn't just because <i>we </i>belong to the body of Christ and manifest Him; it is also because we are representative of us all who are in that body, and we wouldn't wish to bring His body, i.e. all the other believers, into such an inappropriate position. What you do, we all do. And the Lord Jesus has delegated His reputation in the eyes of this world to us, who are His body to them. The wonder of being baptized into His Name, entering the body of Christ (1 Cor. 6:14 matches our resurrection with that of the Lord) means that like our early brethren, we will rejoice to suffer shame for the sake of carrying that Name (Mt. 10:24,25). It will be &quot;enough&quot; for us that we know something of our Lord's sufferings. The more we reflectively read the Gospels, the more we will know the nature and extent of His sufferings, and the more we will see in our own something of His.</p><p>Pause for a moment to reflect that the Lord&rsquo;s resurrection is a pattern for our own. This is the whole meaning of baptism. &ldquo;God has both raised the Lord and will raise us up through his power&rdquo; (1 Cor. 6:13,14). Yet there were evident continuities between the Jesus who lived mortal life, and the Jesus who rose again. His mannerisms, body language, turns of phrase, were so human- even after His resurrection. And so who we are now, as persons, is who we will eternally be. Because of the resurrection, our personalities in the sum of all their relationships and nuances, <i>have an eternal future</i>. But from whence do we acquire those nuances, body languages, etc? They arise partly from our parents, from our inter-relations with others etc; we are the sum of our relationships. And this is in fact a tremendous encouragement to us in our efforts for others; for the result of our parenting, our patient effort and grace towards others, will have an eternal effect upon others. Who we help them become is, in part, who they will eternally be. &nbsp;Job reflected that if a tree is cut down, it sprouts (Heb. <i>yaliph</i>) again as the same tree; and he believed that after his death he would likewise sprout again (<i>yaliph</i>) at the resurrection (Job 14:7-9,14,15). There will be a continuity between who we were in mortal life, and who we will eternally be- just as there is between the pruned tree and the new tree which grows again out of its stump.</p><p>Because He rose, <i>therefore </i>we stop committing sin (1 Cor. 6:14). We can't willfully sin if we believe in the forgiveness His resurrection has enabled. Men should repent not only because judgment day is coming, but because God has commended repentance to us, He has offered / inspired faith in His forgiveness <i>by the resurrection of Christ </i>(Acts 17:30,31 AV mg.). The empty tomb and all the Lord's glorification means for us should therefore inspire personal repentance; as well as of itself being an imperative to go and share this good news with a sinful world, appealing for them to repent and be baptized so that they too might share in the forgiveness enabled for them by the resurrection. Because the Lord was our representative, in His resurrection we see our own. We are therefore born again unto a living and abounding hope, by our identification with the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 1:3). The Ethiopian eunuch read of his representative Saviour as also being childless, and being as he was, in the midst of a wilderness; and realizing this, he desired to be baptized into Him. Grasping the representational nature of the Lord's death inspires response in baptism, and yet the motivational power of this fact continues afterwards.</p><p><i>Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? God forbid</i>- We need to read this carefully. Paul is not accusing them of simply using prostitutes. He is saying that they were the body members of Christ by baptism, but they were acting as the body members of a prostitute. They are therefore accused not of <i>using</i> prostitutes, but <i>being</i> prostitutes. And this connects with our earlier thoughts in this chapter, that the cult of prostitution as practiced in the surrounding religions had been imported into the church at Corinth. They had 'taken' parts of Christ's body and used them in that way; the suggestion is surely that they had appointed some of their number to be ecclesial prostitutes. And this was likely what was going on at the breaking of bread. For this reason I have some sympathy with the reading of the sexual sins in :11 as specifically referring to prostitution of various kinds. Paul was not going to 'take' Christ's body parts, the believers, and use them as the body parts of a prostitute. Perhaps he had been invited to do so and was turning it down. It could be that Paul has in view a symbolic prostitute such as 'Babylon' but the context here is surely of literal sexual misbehaviour.</p>