Do not you know that your bodies are Christ's members? Am I, then, to take the members that belong to the Christ and make them the members of a prostitute? Heaven forbid!
Did, then, a thing, which in itself was good, involve Death in my case? Heaven forbid! It was sin that involved Death; so that, by its use of what I regarded as good to bring about my Death, its true nature might appear; and in this way the Commandment showed how intensely sinful sin is.
What are we to say, then? That Law and sin are the same thing? Heaven forbid! On the contrary, I should not have learned what sin is, had not it been for Law. If the Law did not say 'Thou shalt not covet,' I should not know what it is to covet.
But I am anxious that you should understand that the Christ is the Head of every man, that man is the Head of woman, and that God is the Head of the Christ.
Food exists for the stomach, and the stomach for food; but God will put an end to both the one and the other. The body, however, exists, not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body;
If, while seeking to be pronounced righteous through union with Christ, we were ourselves seen to be outcasts, would that make Christ an agent of sin? Heaven forbid!
Does that set the Law in opposition to God's promises? Heaven forbid! For, if a Law had been given capable of bestowing Life, then righteousness would have actually owed its existence to Law.
But, for my part, may I never boast of anything except the cross of Jesus Christ, our Master, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
He fails to maintain union with the Head, to whom it is due that the whole body, nourished and knit together by the contact and Keynesian of every part, grows with a divine growth.