What Happens in Vegas (1 Corinthians 6:18)

Flee sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body.

1 Corinthians 6:18 CSB

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

The catchphrase essentially says, “Come do some naughty stuff here then go home and scrub the memories away.”

Trouble is, that’s not how sin works. Sin is more than morally bad activity. Sin changes us—permanently.

That’s why 1 Corinthians 6:18 is so helpful for us. While Paul is talking about sexual sin, he’s also showing us that it hurts us. It’s destructive. It’s an attack on your very body.

What 1 Corinthians 6:18 Teaches Us About the Nature of Sin

Because sin doesn’t scrub off eventually like a Sharpie. It’s not an external problem—it’s an internal one.

In Matthew 15:11, Jesus said: “It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth—this defiles a person.”

The problem is not all the sin “out there.” It’s all the sin “in here.”

So when we leave our proverbial Las Vegas, what happened can’t stay there. Because it always travels with us.

While this is true for sexual sin, it’s true for sin as a whole.

Greed and gluttony. Lies and lust. No matter the sin, it burrows deep. But that is why the Gospel has so much hope and glory, my friends!

What we could never hope to heal or atone for ourselves

Paul tells us exactly what happened. Pay attention if you’ve never noticed this before in 2 Corinthians 5:21:

“He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

It’s not just that Jesus died for our purely external sins. It’s that he became sin and God poured out his wrath against sin itself by tearing his body apart.

This was part of his horror and anguish on the cross. Jesus took both the blade and the blame.

The glory?

He didn’t stay dead.

Our Jesus is alive. His blood has cleansed us of all the sin we could never wash off. Tell somebody today.