PAUL AND PROSTITUTES

A prostitute is basically a person who engages in sexual activity for payment. 

Also called a commercial sex worker, or simply a sex worker. 

Other descriptions include hooker, hustler, harlot. 

In given climes or conditions, they are escorts.  

A female prostitute is usually called a call girl, runs girl, lady of the night, woman of the streets, etc. 

A male prostitute, although not as common as a female prostitute, is called a gigolo.

In essence, any offer of sex for payment is prostitution.

Paul, in writing to Believers in Corinth, said this:

“And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.” (1 Corinthians 6:16, NLT)

As a background, history indicates that Paul must have been in his late 30s or early 40s when he wrote his letters to the Corinthian Church. 

That should be sometime around the AD 50s.

The first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, probably written about 53-54 CE at Ephesus, Asia Minor, deals with problems that arose in the early years after Paul’s missionary visit. (Britannica)

The two main reasons he wrote the first letter was to address divisions and conflict in the Corinthian church and to address issues of immoral behavior and sexual immorality. (Brainly)

Some Bible scholars believe that he was married at some point (as an exemplary Pharisee and as 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 may seem to suggest in the use of the word “unmarried and widows”) and that he was subsequently widowed.

The general belief however is that he was never married, as he was converted and started his ministry in his mid 20s to early 30s.

Whichever it was, Paul was single throughout the time of his ministry and missionary journeys, and he remained single till his death in 64/65 AD when he was estimated to be about 60 years.

He chose to remain single and free from the responsibilities of marriage so he could focus on his ministry with single-minded dedication.

He was able to travel all over the Roman world for two decades to preach the Gospel of Christ and to plant and consolidate the churches.

He categorically stated that “it is good” for widows and widowers to choose to remain unattached for similar purposes of focused and uninterrupted devotion to the Lord.

He advised the unmarried and widows to be like him if they could exercise the needed self-control over their natural sexual urges and desires.

In addressing the incessant and notorious sexual immorality in the Corinthian church, he used himself as an example. 

Being single, young and virile, I can imagine that his personal struggles with sexual temptation may likely have been to secretly patronize commercial sex workers (or, prostitutes) from time to time to relieve his natural sexual needs or desires, since he had no wife as a marital partner to have legitimate intercourse with.

Infact at a time, he had very openly written about his own experiences in the universal human struggle with the flesh in his fomidable and remarkable letter to the Believers in Rome.

Hear him recount his dilemma with his flesh:

For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

(Romans 7:19-25, NIV)

Paul the apostle was not a perfect man and he was real, honest, sincere and authentic about it.

However, he sought to firmly make the Believers in the Corinth Church realize or understand the basic spiritual fact that the body of every Believer is actually and essentially “the temple of the Holy Spirit”, the sacred abode of Deity, which was designated to be ‘holy’ (separated or different) by the very reason and reality of the residence of the Holy God in their human spirits.

Thus, it must not be irreverently and ignorantly desecrated or defiled with the mindless and careless indulgence in immorality, impurity, impropriety done with impunity, which they had so far become accustomed to and known for.

He disapprovingly pointed out their persistent sexual sins, as had been reliably reported to him, and strongly exhorted them to repentance.

His rebuke and exhortation to them was lovingly passionate, and thankfully God used that singular writing to bring the erring Believers back to their senses or consciousness, thereby reawakening them to their spiritual identity.

He urged them to “awaken to righteousness and sin not”. He stirred them up with his first letter. They were not to wallow gleefully in sin.

He also answered their questions on marriage, and wrote to clarify some troubling issues about remarriage, separation, divorce and sex. 

He then addressed matters arising, which bordered on the proper administration or operation of spiritual gifts and orderliness of conduct in the local church and their meetings. 

He also spoke about love, Christian character, moral excellence and spiritual maturity.

He crowned it with a thesis on the Resurrection.

Indeed a thought-provoking letter from the very heart of Christ’s Apostle to the Gentile world. 

A man who had dedicated his life to the pursuit of the soul-saving mission of Christ on Earth. 

A man specially called by Christ to be a frontline witness to kings, the learned and dignitaries as well as to the downtrodden and barbarians.

Let me conclude this piece with the part of his rendering, which was addressing the issue of sexual immorality, particularly the constant, consistent or profuse patronage of prostitutes who were offering unwholesome sexual services.

These thoughts can help guide our proclivity for pleasurable activity and our sexuality in general.

God help us, as we sincerely seek to do right by Him per time, amidst our real human struggles.

May empowering grace and encompassing peace be with God’s people trusting Him in this regard.

*****

1 Corinthians chapter 6. 

In verses 12 to 20.

New Living Translation.

[Avoiding Sexual Sin]

You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything. 

You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. 

And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead.

Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! 

And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.”

But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.

Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. 

Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 

for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.