On eating forks (1Cor 6:13)

Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. (1Cor 6:13)

Some things are made for each other, and others aren’t. The stomach is for food. A couple of years ago, a dutch medical magazine published an article about a 52 years old woman who came to the hospital complaining about a stomach ache. They ended up giving her an x-ray that revealed that her stomach contained no less than 78 spoons and forks that she had swallowed.

When asked about it she gave the following explanation: “I don't know why but I felt an urge to eat the silverware - I could not help myself.” (Source: The daily mail)

I think you’d join me in saying that woman was insane.The stomach is not for forks and spoons. And if you swallow them it has serious repercussions for your health. Yes indeed. But don’t let yourself get of any easier. The body is not for immorality, and if you use it for that you are no less insane than that woman. And if I ask you about it, you’ll answer with sorrow-filled eyes, those words that so many have uttered before you: “I don’t know why but I felt an urge to commit immorality - I could not help myself”

The particular type of immorality in view in this verse is sex outside of marriage, as we talked about last time. It’s the same Greek word “porneia”.

My hope today is to get you to the point where you’d rather eat a fork than commit fornication. Not because I’m against sex, but because I’m for it. If you love food, you will not eat forks. Because you know that a stomach full of forks will hinder your ability to eat, enjoy and digest food. Now if I may be so blunt as to say this: If you love sex, you ought to know that a past full of sin will limit your enjoyment of it. Those old fork-wounds will add a constant pain of shame and regret to that aspect of your life that will follow you for many years.

Every hint of immorality counts. Don’t console yourself by saying “I haven’t gone all the way”, as if that is all that counts. I’ll tell you that if you’ve gone half the way you have half the wounds. And if you’ve gone half the way twice - well it doesn’t take more than two half forks to make a whole one, does it?

Now what you do with your stomach doesn’t really matter in the big picture. It is a temporal matter of appetite and biology. God will do away with both your stomach and the food in it. But as we will see in the next verse, sex is not merely a temporal matter of appetite and biology. It has eternal significance.