The believer is exhorted to flee sexual immorality. This is a command to act decisively, to move hastily from danger from fear of being ensnared. Let this be a spiritual reflex in your life. All other sins a man commits are outside his body but sexual sins harms the body. It defiles him. How so? As one writer puts it succinctly, “It wastes the bodily energies; produces feebleness, weakness, and disease; it impairs the strength, enervates the man, and shortens life.” [Barnes]

Matthew Poole said well, “Christ is united to the person of the believer, and He is the Head of the church, which is His mystical body; so that the bodies of believers are in a sense the members of Christ, and should be used by us as the members of Christ, which we should not rend from Him: but he that doth commit fornication, rends his body from Christ, and maketh it the member of an harlot; for as the man and wife are one flesh by Divine ordination, Genesis 2:24, so the fornicater and the harlot are one flesh by an impure” union.

God has wonderfully made man with digestive system in his stomach that allows food that is consumed to be assimilated to nourish up the body. And yet, its benefit is be temporal. The believer must not make the satisfying of his physical appetite the only focus of his life – Matthew 4:4 … It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

A good paraphrase is “All things are permissible to me but I will not be enslaved by any.” The Apostle Paul testifies how needful it is for the believer to exercise their God-given power to say “no” to any temptation to sin and anything that robs him of his devotion to the Lord. He will not be a slave to sin but fears God and will not be brought under its subjection. He uses the first person “I” to encourage the Corinthian Christians that he himself takes steps not to be brought under any bondage of sin, exercising his liberty in Christ. Setting the example, he urges the believers to heed his exhortation.

A good paraphrase is “All things are permissible but all things are not profitable”. “Lawful” in the sense that “it is possible, referring to moral possibility or propriety in that it is lawful, right, permissible”. The word “expedient” means “to be profitable, advantageous, to contribute or bring together for the benefit of another.”

The Apostle Paul reminds the Corinthian Christians that they have been made holy through Jesus Christ. The words “washed” and “sanctified” and “justified” speaks of the process of spiritual regeneration. You are now a spiritual man having being washed from all your sins by the blood of Jesus Christ. As such, you are positionally holy in the sight of God. Your violation of God’s law has be nullified, it is no longer held against you. In other words, he tells them that God has saved them from their sins. Their behaviour must be befitting of their privileged as God’s children. He reminds them how far they have come by the rich mercies of God and exhorts them to not go back to their old ways.

Hendrickson commented well, “Paul does not say that the Corinthians had lawsuits against one another, but against themselves. The entire Christian community, so to speak, becomes a defendant before Gentile judges. The result is that these lawsuits are devastating to the morale of the Christian fellowship.” In the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:39b-40 but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. Also, in Luke 6:29-30 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.