For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
What a verse to have in the Bible. This verse smacks directly at the modern messaging that we own our own bodies and no one has control over them but ourselves. This begs the question, in what sense is Paul talking about and to what extent does this impact our day-to-day lives. To answer this question, we must understand the context of the above verse. How does it fit into the whole of the passage.
Paul ended the last chapter warning the church to flea sexual immorality:
1 Corinthians 6:12-15 (ESV)
“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (ESV)
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
He then moves to the married persons in the church at Corinth and states that our bodies belong to our spouses, in the realm of sexual relations. Paul understands that our bodies belong first to the Lord for Him to do with us as He pleases. We are to use our bodies to glorify God, through Christ, in all areas of life. Sexual relationships with one’s spouse is one of those aspects of submission to what God has designed. We are to use our bodies in a way that is not making us the self-centered people we want to be. That is the point of the text. Even in sexual relationships with our spouse we are not to be focused on the pleasure that the act of sex brings to us, but on the giving our spouse the pleasure they could have. This falls under one of Paul’s many one another passages in the New Testament:
Romans 12:10 (ESV)
Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.
We are to always want to outdo one another in showing honor to another, even in the bed room. It is very easy to want to be selfish in any aspect of life, but much more so in the act of sexual pleasure. One of the greatest mistakes we can make in our lives is to live in the world of self-pleasure ... for anything. The Bible has much to say and we read it even has something to say about the marriage act of sexual pleasures. We are to make sure we understand that God designed all aspects of our lives. He wants us to use our bodies in a way that we please Him. One way we do that is to obey the Scripture that tells us that in the marriage bed we are also to be equally submissive to our partner. The world wants to make this about our bodies, that no one has authority over our bodies. That is a seemingly logical thought. And there are times that might be true. But to complete the act of sexual relationships in the marriage, that thought is not what God designed or outlined in the above text. We can bring God honor and glory even in the act of marriage. But it calls for us to think about it completely differently than the world.
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