1 Corinthians 6: Strong and Weak as States of Consciousness

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Quick Insights

Conflict and judgment in the outer world mirror inner courts where we decide for or against ourselves.
Broken relationships and legalistic disputes are expressions of fragmented identity that refuse inner arbitration and healing.
Moral failure and redemption are psychological shifts from an old self to a renewed selfhood that imagination can instantiate.
The body and desire are not merely physical problems but symbols of how attention and feeling shape personal reality.

What is the Main Point of 1 Corinthians 6?

This chapter reads as a map of inner governance: when you bring your quarrels and accusations before external authorities you renounce your own capacity to judge, heal, and create; the true tribunal is consciousness itself, and choices about honor, shame, desire, and restraint are really decisions about who you will be. Imagination and feeling determine whether you live as a divided person acting out fragments of self, or as an integrated being whose internal verdicts shape outward life. The central principle is simple — to change circumstance, change the inner juror and the habitual courtroom of the mind.

What is the Spiritual Meaning of 1 Corinthians 6?

The image of suing one another becomes a psychological drama where parts of the self litigate for attention, superiority, or vindication. When you take your grievance to an outside arbiter you abdicate the role of inner judge and hand your emotional equilibrium to a transient authority. The higher faculty that can judge the world is the imaginative self that evaluates motives and reassigns identity; it is less about punishing and more about deciding which inner narrative will be lived into reality. Choosing to withhold grievance or to accept apparent loss is an exercise in sovereignty: you learn to prefer the unity of being over the momentary satisfaction of being right. Condemnation and lists of moral failings point to habitual identities that claim to be fixed. Those labels are memories dramatized into disposition; yet the same passage insists that some were once held by those very faults and have been transformed. This speaks to the psychological process of acknowledging a story, reimagining the self, and living from that new assumption until external facts conform. Sanctification here is not abstract purity but the living practice of replacing an old self-image with one that is practiced in feeling and that consequently reorganizes behavior and circumstance. The body as temple and the warning against unbridled desire reveal how attention invests matter with meaning. When the body is treated as mere appetite it reflects an interior dissociation; when it is honored as an expression of a chosen spirit, it becomes a vehicle for the imagined self. True change requires that the imagination take responsibility for bodily impulses by rehearsing the posture, feeling, and decisions of the person you intend to be. The resurrection motif reinforces that inner power: what is raised is not only a future event but the inner conviction that what you assume with feeling will be brought forth into experience.

Key Symbols Decoded

The courtroom is a chamber of attention where memory, grievance, and identity present evidence; taking disputes to unbelievers signifies outsourcing inner authority to transient opinions and external circumstances. The saints who judge the world become the faculties of wisdom and imagination that can settle inner disputes, choosing which narratives live and which die. Angels, once seen as distant beings, can be read as higher aspects of mind or ideals that will be judged by your present consciousness to validate or dismiss their influence. The body as temple decodes to the somatic field where imagination deposits belief; when you think of the body as separate, it acts impulsively and inherits old scripts, but when the body is honored as belonging to a chosen spirit, it obeys the new posture and desire. Being bought with a price signals that a decisive inner transaction has taken place — a relinquishing of the old claimants to identity and the adoption of a guiding conviction that governs how you feel and act.

Practical Application

Begin by listening to the inner courtroom: notice the habitual arguments you bring outside yourself and instead seat your higher imagination as judge. When resentment or the urge to litigate arises, pause and imagine a calm, sovereign self that has already chosen peace; feel the bodily posture, the steady breathing, the inner words of acceptance, and let that assumed state rule your immediate responses. Practice reframing moral failures as identities that once were but need not be now by rehearsing scenes in imagination where you consistently act from the redeemed version of yourself until those scenes imprint the nervous system. Work with the body as a responsive instrument of imagination by rehearsing small acts of fidelity to the chosen self: small resistances to appetite, decisive affirmations of integrity, and bodily routines kept with reverence become tokens of a transformed identity. If you would change how the world treats you, begin inside by replacing grievance with creative assumption and allow time for the outer facts to align with the inner verdict. Over time the inner judge will become authoritative, your relationships will reflect that sovereignty, and reality will be reorganized by the steady, lived imagination of who you truly intend to be.

The Psychology of Belonging and Boundaries

Read as inner drama, 1 Corinthians 6 is a courtroom scene staged entirely within consciousness. The outward details about lawsuits, saints, harlots, and temples are personifications of states of mind and the creative dynamics that shape experience. When Paul asks why brothers go to law before the unjust rather than before the saints, he is diagnosing a habitual psychological error: bringing private conflicts into the valley of the senses where base measures prevail, instead of settling them in the higher court of consciousness where clarity, feeling, and creative authority reside.

The litigant who runs to an unbeliever to win an argument is the ego seeking validation from external appearances and other egos. The unbeliever stands for the sensory mind and the collective opinion that judges by appearances, fear, and advantage. The saints stand for those parts of consciousness that have discovered sovereignty — the inner tribunal that knows how to judge thought-forms without being seduced by outward proof. To take an internal dispute to the unbelieving court is to abdicate creative responsibility. It hands your script to the mob of sense and circumstance, asking the world to settle what only you can decide in imagination.

Saints shall judge the world, and we shall judge angels. These striking claims map onto a psychological sequence. The world, in this text, is the composite of habitual perceptions and conditioned outcomes. To judge it is not to condemn people, but to master the underlying mental patterns that produce those outer facts. Angels are not distant beings but thought-forms and interior messengers — flashes of feeling and idea that carry consequences. When the higher self sits in judgment, it discriminates which thought-forms to entertain and which to dismiss. The ability to judge angels is the ability to inspect feelings and imaginings, to test them for affinity with the chosen end, and to release those that contradict the assumed state.

The shame Paul expresses about going to law with brothers is shame at the abdication of inner sovereignty. Litigation before outsiders is the psyche outsourcing its verdicts. The better path is to allow the higher imagination to render judgment and thereby transform the facts that it judges. This is the creative law at work: inner assumption, felt with conviction, sculpts outer circumstance. When the saintly faculty judges, it does so not with logic alone but with the feeling of the wish fulfilled; when inner judgment is applied, the world must align, because the world is a reflection of prevailing assumptions.

When the apostle lists sins that bar entry into the kingdom of God — fornication, idolatry, theft, covetousness, drunkenness, reviling — he catalogs states of consciousness dominated by sensation and compulsion. Fornication in this language stands for ungoverned imaginative union with transient objects and sensations. Where the imagination runs promiscuously, fusing itself with passing images, it fragments identity and cedes creative authorship. Idolatry is the enthronement of an idea or object outside the self as ruler; covetousness is the imagination anchored to lack rather than abundance. These are not moral scolds but psychological descriptions: certain imaginal habits yield a world incompatible with the kingdom, which is a state of unified consciousness.

The phrase you were washed, sanctified, justified is the narrative of inner metamorphosis. Washing is the clearing of false assumptions, sanctification is the setting apart of imaginative activity for a single end, and justification is the alignment of feeling with the new assumption so that behavior no longer contradicts identity. This trilogy marks a shift from reactive mentality to creative self-possession. It is not a juridical absolution but the inward reconfiguration of how attention and feeling are spent.

All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient. This is the psychology of freedom tempered by discretion. Imagination is a faculty that can embody any scene; freedom means you can conjure many possible states. Wisdom is choosing which to inhabit. The sensory appetites are lawful in the sense that they can appear in imagination, but allowing them to dominate is inopportune if the aim is to dwell in a higher mode. Thus the counsel is not repression but proper direction: the body and senses are instruments; used as ends in themselves they overthrow the creator within.

The body is not for fornication but for the Lord; the body is a member of Christ. Here the body represents the imaginative apparatus and the faculty of sensation. When imagination is joined to ephemeral objects — the harlot of the text — the psyche experiences a dissolution of identity: two become one flesh, meaning the self identifies with the transient partner and so loses its claim on creative agency. Conversely, being joined to the Lord is to identify with the inner conscious sovereign. That union is one spirit: imagination directed by the inner I Am produces a coherent reality that serves eternal aims.

Flee fornication. The command is practical: avoid mental adultery. When the mind habitually entertains scenes of gratification disconnected from the higher aim, it becomes fertile ground for outcomes that perpetuate states of lack and fragmentation. The only way out is decisive relocation of imaginative attention. Flee does not mean hate the body; it means redirect appetite from the satisfaction of passing shadows to the cultivation of an abiding assumption. The admonition that every sin is outside the body but fornication is sinning against one’s own body points to the special intimacy of imagination and embodiment. Sexual metaphor highlights how closely imagination and bodily life intertwine: misused imagination damages the temple.

Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit is a strong psychological claim: imagination is sacred precinct. The emotive faculty is the sanctuary in which the presence of the creative self resides. To defile this temple is to pollute the very means by which new worlds are conceived. The Holy Spirit is the creative spark, the conscious presence that animates imagination; to recognize this is to treat inner scenes as sacred acts of becoming. Consequently the admonition to glorify God in body and spirit becomes an instruction to honor imagination with deliberate, reverent use.

For you are bought with a price points to the cost of reclamation. Redemption here is the relinquishing of an old identity that mistook itself for the body and the sensory mind. The price is the surrender of attachment: the small death of the ego that makes room for risen consciousness. That surrender is not loss but revaluation; what appears as sacrifice is the exchange of transient satisfaction for enduring sovereignty. Once paid, consciousness is free to wield its power intentionally.

Practically, this chapter teaches an interior technique. When conflict arises, do not run to the marketplace of appearances. First, convene the inner court: place the dispute before the saintly faculty, the part of you that can assume the end state with calm conviction. Attend to feeling; imagination without feeling is empty rehearsal. Test thought-forms as angels: allow each feeling and idea to present itself, then judge which aligns with the assumed identity. If a thought is an enemy, do not litigate it in the world by arguing with others; displace it in imagination with a scene implying the desired state and feel the certainty of its truth. If realized with conviction, the inner judgment will gradually rewire the habits that produced the dispute in the first place.

When desires threaten to seize the imagination, treat them as intruders. Refuse to consent to scenes that fuse you to the harlot of sensation. Instead, imagine your life as a temple of intention. Occupy the posture of one bought with a price: a resolute self that pays the cost of renunciation and thereby reclaims creative authorship. From that posture, the saints will judge the world because the world will begin to mirror the settled assumptions of your inner court.

In sum, 1 Corinthians 6 is a manual of inner jurisprudence and imaginative hygiene. It distinguishes the courts of sense and soul, catalogues the mental states that obstruct creative inheritance, and prescribes the sanctification of imagination so that the one spirit may govern the body. The drama is not external punishment but internal correction: assume, feel, judge, and the phenomena of outer life will respond to the depth and conviction of your inner law.

Common Questions About 1 Corinthians 6

Are there Neville Goddard lectures or readings that explain 1 Corinthians 6?

Many of Neville Goddard's lectures and writings treat Paul's language as psychological and address the principles behind passages like 1 Corinthians 6, even if not labeled chapter-by-chapter; look for his talks on the Bible as mystical allegory, on imagination, and on feeling as the secret of creation. These explain how the body is a reflection of consciousness and how assumption changes conduct; reading his essays alongside the Apostle's admonitions will show you how to apply imaginal practice to sexual morality, stewardship of the body, and the judgment of states, helping you translate scripture into psychical technique and lived experience.

How can I apply the Law of Assumption to the moral teachings in 1 Corinthians 6?

Begin by recognizing moral injunctions as directions for inner alignment, then use the Law of Assumption to live them: quietly assume the identity you wish to be—pure, faithful, temperate—and dwell in scenes that evidence that state until your feeling convinces you of its reality (1 Cor 6:19-20). Revise memories that contradict your desired self, practice short imaginal acts that express self-respect, and persist in inner conversation that affirms your membership with the Lord rather than with destructive desires. Over time the outer choices will follow the newly established interior state, making the moral teaching practical and lived.

How would Neville Goddard interpret Paul's warning about sexual immorality in 1 Cor 6?

Neville Goddard would say Paul addresses the law of inner assumption: sexual immorality is an attunement of imagination that identifies one with a state contrary to being joined to the Lord, and the remedy is to assume the state you desire until it governs your outward life. Neville taught that the body follows consciousness; when you imagine yourself as one with Christ, treating your body as a temple, the organs of behavior obey that assumption. Rather than moralizing, the emphasis is practical: change your sleep-time scenes and inner feeling so that your self-concept is sanctified and the former scenes lose their reality.

What does 1 Corinthians 6 mean when it says 'you will not inherit the kingdom of God'?

When Paul warns that certain behaviors will keep one from inheriting the kingdom of God he is speaking of inner states rather than a distant reward; the kingdom is a present state of consciousness into which one enters by assumption and self-identification, and to persist in a contrary state is to exclude oneself from that experience (1 Cor 6:9-10). The passage exposes how repeated imaginal acts and desires form a persistent state that rules the outer life; to inherit the kingdom is to embody the Christ-state within, so repentance means revision of inner conversation and imaginative assumption until you live as if already seated in that sanctified consciousness.

What is the relationship between 'body as member of Christ' (1 Cor 6) and Neville's idea of consciousness?

The statement that the body is a member of Christ becomes lucid when read as Neville taught: Christ is a state of consciousness, and the body is the outer expression of whatever inner state you assume (1 Cor 6:15-20). To be 'joined unto the Lord is one spirit' means to identify with the divine state within; the body then becomes the temple that manifests that assumption. Practically, this teaches reverence for your body by first changing imagination—assume holiness, feel it real, and the body's appetites and actions will reorganize to express that inner reality, proving that consciousness fashions form.