Sexual Freedom
Practical Church (1 Corinthians) • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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[LAUNCH VIDEO]
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Please stand as I read our Call to Worship.
Call To Worship
For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,
“Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles,
and sing to your name.”
And again it says,
“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.”
And again,
“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,
and let all the peoples extol him.”
And again Isaiah says,
“The root of Jesse will come,
even he who arises to rule the Gentiles;
in him will the Gentiles hope.”
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
Opening Hymn
Scripture & Prayer: Pastor Atreju
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Offering & Prayer
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Please be seated.
(beat)
RELAX. PREPARE FOR MESSAGE
We’re going to continue our reading about Jesus from the book of John. Today we will finish chapter 3:
After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he remained there with them and was baptizing. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because water was plentiful there, and people were coming and being baptized (for John had not yet been put in prison).
Now a discussion arose between some of John’s disciples and a Jew over purification. And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.”
He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
At this time, I am going to have our ushers come forward. If you are a follower of Jesus, in that you have accepted Him as Savior, bowed to Him as King, and been baptized in obedience to His commandment, we invite you to participate with us. In just a moment, we will pass the plates. Please take a piece of bread and a cup and hold it until we take together.
Pass
Instruction from Jesus: Read Mark 14:22–25
And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
Prayer of Blessing on bread and cup
Song #3
Pastoral Prayer
World -
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Introduction
If you have your bibles with you this morning, please turn with me to the book of 1 Corinthians. We’ll be in the second half of chapter 6 today.
We have been working through this letter of Paul’s as he writes to instruct and correct the church at Corinth. They are having trouble letting go of their old way of life and have begun to be divisive within the church. And, hand-in-hand with that division has come several moral issues which are not being properly addressed by the corporate body.
In chapters 5 and 6, Paul has begun to dig into the problem of sexual immorality that has invaded the church. It seems that there was a sense that the freedom that came from submitting to Christ as Lord was boundless—that any believer could cast off any sense of law whatsoever.
In chapter 5, we found out that someone in the church had even taken this to the extreme of engaging in sexual behavior that even would have outraged the pagans in Corinth. It seems that this particular individual either completely misunderstood Christian Freedom or had begun using it as a cover for his blatant sin.
This week, Paul will address sexual freedom head-on.
[TITLE SLIDE]
(Beat)
As I reflect on human behavior and thinking, I see how easy it is for us to get legalistic about things. Our minds desire structure and order, and we like to have clear cut separations between good and bad, right and wrong.
We are shaped this way from the time that we are toddlers. We quickly learn what is acceptable and what is not. And even though we may push those boundaries in rebellion to the authorities over us, we like to know exactly where the line is.
Most of us grew up with someone who toed the line and loved to not only follow the rules, but insist on others doing the same. If you don’t know someone like that, it might just be you. This desire for rule-keeping can be rooted within us in a good way or a bad way.
After enduring the exile, the people of Judah were determined never to transgress God’s law again. In that determination, they added about 1500 laws to the laws of Torah to prevent anyone from accidentally breaking the laws of God given through Moses. But the Jews became so legalistic that they forgot the reason that God gave them the law in the first place.
Jesus came and called them to a better understanding—to leave legalism behind and seek after the renewal of the heart. The whole purpose of the law—according to Jesus—was to help the Israelites realize their need for a Savior. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus explained how a faulty heart transgresses even the most basic of God’s laws.
Upon His death and resurrection, Jesus offered freedom from the law in the legalistic sense. Instead of focusing on keeping all of the rules, following Jesus and engaging with the Holy Spirit would shape the heart in such a way that the law would be kept automatically. For when we are shaped into the image of Jesus and have our hearts have been molded to His, we will begin to desire the things that He desires.
Well, it seems that the Corinthians have misunderstood this in the opposite direction of the Pharisees. They thought that this freedom that came from the law in Christ gave them carte blanche to do whatever it is that they want.
Paul now begins addressing this issue of liberty expressed through sexual immorality. He writes to them in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, starting in verse 12:
[MAIN PASSAGE SLIDE x4]
“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. (/) And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” (/) But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, (/) for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Paul is trying to help them see that their purpose behind God’s design of the human being. Casting off the law to allow their bodies to experience everything available in life is not God’s design for His human imagers. Instead, if the Corinthians truly want to live in their newfound Christian Freedom, they must first learn what it is.
[POINT 1 SLIDE]
Christian Freedom (v 12)
I think that Paul begins his argument knowing his audience. These are church members who are still holding onto human wisdom and valuing the way that they have learned to think in the world.
It seems to me—then—that he starts his argument using a human understanding of common sense and rationality. He opens with a deductive argument. That is to say that if X is true, then Y will surely follow.
For instance, a deductive argument would say that if the ocean appears blue, but we know that it only reflects what it sees, then it follows that the sky must be blue. That is a rational and deductive conclusion.
And this is how Paul begins his argument. He does so with a type of writing called a dialectic. That is—he engages in a conversation with an imaginary opponent, anticipating what they would say and responding in kind.
So, here in verse 12, Paul gives both their objection and his response to it. Look back with me at the text:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful.
Paul quotes what seems to be a common saying amongst the believers in Corinth: “All things are lawful for me.” The CSB translates this as “everything is permissible for me.” It appears to be capitalizing on the freedom that was to be found in Christ.
It will become more clear later in the letter that this was used as a slogan in Corinth because Paul will use this same tactic with this phrase in chapter 10 as he more broadly calls the church members to think well about their actions. This may have even been a slogan that the church developed from Paul’s profound teaching on Christian Freedom. But it seems that they have misunderstood what he had taught them.
He begins to address that now—in chapter 6–as he focuses in on this so-called “sexual freedom” that they seem obsessed with. He states their slogan as their expected objection, and then responds to the slogan in two different ways.
First, he says that they may be completely free in Christ, but that doesn’t mean that everything they do is helpful. Christian Freedom is not a license to indulge in the flesh. To use one’s freedom to engage in sin is to go backward—it is to repent from your repentance. Paul addresses this with the church in Galatia:
[SCRIPTURE SLIDE]
For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The scholar Verbrugge says that “freedom should never be exercised simply for personal pleasure but rather for the good of other people.”
To claim that one can use their Christian Freedom to violate the good established order of God is a logical fallacy. God has ordered creation for good and set boundaries within which His human imagers can fully exercise their freedom. To transgress the good of those boundaries in the name of Christian Freedom would be to upend God’s order and mar the name of Christ.
Therefore, to consider using Christian Freedom in any way that is unhelpful to the furthering of the gospel is a non-starter. Paul asks a rhetorical question to the Roman church in this light: “should we continue to sin so that grace may multiply?”
Obviously, his answer is no. He says, “By no means!” We should not continue in sin because God’s grace is sufficient. Grace is not a license to sin. God’s grace meets us in the depths of our deepest depravity and lifts us out when we call on the name of Jesus, but that does not give us the right to continue jumping back in the abyss and asking to be rescued again. “For to set the mind on the flesh is death.”
The author of Hebrews agrees with Paul and says that to continue chasing after the desires of the flesh after tasting the goodness of God is to crucify the Lord of Glory all over again! This type of action is not helpful for the individual or anyone surrounding the individual. To use this slogan to justify continued sin is illogical—even from a human perspective.
Paul continues:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
“All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.
Second, Paul says that they may be completely free in Christ, but that they should be dominated by anything. To be dominated means to be under the control of a thing. Any action that we are not completely free to walk away from becomes an idol that enslaves and dominates us to its will.
These church members cannot celebrate their freedom from sin by becoming enslaved to something else. The bible is clear that sin is the master of everything that is contrary to God’s will. Logically, then—if anyone claims Christ, but is dominated by lust, hunger, selfishness, greed, their fruit will reveal their true master. Their heart has not been shaped into the image of Jesus for they have not submitted their base desires to the Lord of creation.
As human beings—made rational in the image of God—these two responses of Paul’s reveal that logical human thinking can easily debunk the claims of those rationalizing their sin under the title “Christian Freedom.”
But, Paul has just begun. He is now going to make his most thorough argument by pointing these church members to a theological argument. If he hasn’t already won them over from his logical human argument, those who rightly claim Christ cannot but submit to the Truth of His Word.
And the Word is clear that humans were designed with intention and for a specific purpose.
[POINT 2 SLIDE]
Human Design (vv 13-20)
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void”—the world was in a state of chaos. But at the very vibration of the voice of God, it began to come into order. The darkness hid from the light. The dry land appeared from under the water. And God began to speak all manner of living creatures into being.
But one of His creatures was special—set apart from all of the rest of creation. Like the creatures of the earth, mankind would have a physical body. But they would also carry the image of God just as His supernatural imagers did. They would be members of two worlds—one physical and one spiritual. And they were made this way for a specific purpose.
God spoke their purpose in Genesis 1:26, saying “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over” all physical creatures. Men were made intentionally with bodies that were both physical and spiritual for the purpose of helping God with keeping order on earth—with ruling well over creation.
In Genesis 2, we see that God continued to give the man purpose by intentionally creating a helper for him. Woman was not created as a subservient assistant, but as an integral part of man himself—literally, the text says that she was formed from his side. It was only through the union of the man and woman that they would fulfill their fullest calling to image God on earth.
And that unity designed between man and woman was found in the act of sexual love. It was there that would share the highest intimacy of becoming one flesh and the fruit of their union would be offspring. And then God gave them another purpose—one that could only be accomplished together: to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”
In Genesis 3, we find that the united couple used their free will to forsake this mission and disobey God out of their desire to provide for themselves. And for the first time, humanity found out—in a practical way—that there were severe consequences for transgressing God’s order.
The mandate to rule well became more difficult, as did the mandate to unite as man and woman. Instead of harmony, the curse would bring jealousy and resentment. Instead of desiring to rule creation, man and woman would desire to dominate each other. And ultimately, all of physical creation would now be subject to death.
For thousands of years, human imagers learned hard lessons about the consequences of deviating from God’s design for sexual love between one man and one woman. Even as little as 70 years ago, many of our parents and grandparents had to learn difficult lessons about transgressing God’s sexual order.
In 1957, a new invention rolled out—what we know as the birth control pill. It had initially been rolled out to help women with menstrual disorders, but sex was a much bigger market. In 1960, it was approved as a contraceptive and marketed to married women who wanted to delay pregnancy.
But, as happens with tools, mankind found a way to abuse it. By 1967, the “free love” movement was in full swing. It appeared that humanity had finally thrown off the shackles of the consequences of violating God’s good order for sex—that man had overcome part of the curse placed upon physical creation.
And yet consequences would come. Even with birth control, abortions in the U.S. have skyrocketed since Roe v. Wade passed in 1973. Estimates conservatively say that 63 million babies have been aborted since then, just in the United States. And in the 1980’s, over half a million people were infected with HIV.
Regardless of the tools available to us, we cannot subvert God’s design. There will always be consequences for disobedience by His human imagers, for in their disobedience, they are refusing to fulfill their main purpose—to image Him well.
2000 years removed from Jesus, we continue to struggle with the same mandates that Adam and Eve struggled with. And the believers in Corinth were no different.
These Roman church members grew up in a Greek culture that believed that the body was temporary and expendable—that it was just matter that would fade away in time. They believed that it was only the spirit that would continue living after death, so that it didn’t matter what one did in the physical body.
Later, the Gnostics would grasp on to this Greek understanding, holding that all physical matter was corrupted, and that it was only the spiritual that was good and divine. Therefore, it didn’t matter what one did, but only what one believed with the mind. The human would escape their body and all of physical creation to endure in the spiritual realm.
And this is likely how these church members thought. They may have thought that once their spirit was saved, that it no longer mattered what happened in the body. For many of them, Christian Freedom may have meant that these sexual acts were either allowable or irrelevant. They would have likened fulfilling their sexual desires to satisfying hunger—both simply natural urges of the body meant to be filled.
But these believers have fundamentally misunderstood God’s original design for humankind. And now Paul will challenge their faulty worldview and call them to submit to Jesus, the God of order. Verse 13:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
“Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.
Paul continues in his dialectic approach. Scholars are divided as to where to put the quote marks here as there is no punctuation in the original text, but it is clear that Paul is quoting another Greek saying. I think it makes most sense to see verse 13 as the challenge and 14 as Paul’s response. If this is the case, the argument would go something like this:
“Paul, food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food—and God will destroy them both. In the same way, the body and sex were meant for each other.”
And Paul would respond that “the body was never designed for deviating from God’s sexual order—it was designed instead for glorifying Jesus.”
These members may be arguing that freedom of sexual acts is no different that the freedom for one person to eat what another finds immoral—that Christian Freedom should “leave each to his own.” Why not “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die?” And in that death, we will cast off this corrupted body to become the spiritual beings that we were always meant to be…
There are many so-called Christians today who would agree with them. They would agree that Jesus is the only way to heaven, but that it doesn’t matter what we do in this life—as long as we aren’t hurting others. That we are all basically good and soon enough, we’ll ditch this body that’s holding us back forever and live as spirits in the clouds with God. And maybe, if we’re nice enough, God may even make us angels and give us wings and a harp.
But there’s a problem with that: it’s horrible theology. And the pagan believers have bought into a horrible understanding of what sexual freedom is. Like us, they want to be saved by their belief in Jesus, but bring all of their old beliefs and baggage with them. And Paul says, “No! Leave it all behind. Because God had intention when He created you. He set you into an ordered world for a purpose.”
You see, theology matters. It matters what we believe. Because if we don’t understand who Jesus is, we cannot properly believe in Him. If we don’t understand our purpose, we cannot properly submit to the mandate and mission that were given to us. And Paul is setting out to correct the theology of the Corinthian believers, not so that they can all think exactly like he does, but so that they can flourish in true Christian Freedom.
Later on in this letter, Paul will speak of our future resurrection with Christ. That is, he will clarify that the Greek notion that we will be free from physical bodies in eternity is wrong. That God has always intended for us to be both physical and spiritual, and that in the end, God will resurrect our bodies in a glorified state.
Look at what Paul writes to the Philippians:
[SCRIPTURE SLIDE]
But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.
The body is integral to the human imager of God. Without a body, we stop being a human being—we stop being all that God created us to be. Just like Jesus, we will be raised it a body, but it will be a glorified body—free of the curse once and for all.
God has created us to be completely human. And He has given us order for our good and His glory. And so, in the remaining verses, Paul is going to make 3 arguments for the pursuit of sexual holiness:
Physical argument (15-16)
Spiritual argument (17-19a)
Argument of Ownership (19b-20)
Jump with me to verse 15:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.”
It seems as if some of these church members have not killed their habit of visiting prostitutes when they became believers. Instead, they co-opted a slogan of Christian Freedom to excuse the behaviors that they were not willing to give up.
Romans allowed aristocrats to engage in sex with prostitutes and slaves freely, but not with others of the aristocracy—and certainly not with their own relatives.
These sexual deviants in the church now believe that Christian Freedom means that the Roman law has been thrown off—that they can engage in sexual freedom however the desires of the flesh lead them.
Paul say, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?”
“Hey Corinthian, did you forget that you have been joined with Christ? Should I take something holy and add to it unholiness?”
Paul then likens the physical sexual union of a man and wife to that of a man with a prostitute. He even references Genesis 2:24, saying that “the two will become one flesh.” The implication of Paul—then—is that by engaging in the act of sex, a human being is uniting with another in the same way that a husband and wife come together in a union.
“Woah,” you might say. “Pastor, are you saying that any sex outside of marriage has the same effect as that of a husband and wife?”
Yes. That is exactly what I am saying.
That—by God’s design—the act of sex is such unrivaled intimacy that God has designed it to be used exclusively by husband and wife. That in coming together in sexual union with another human imager, you have effectively entered into an unspoken covenant.
Sexual intimacy should not be taken lightly, for to engage in the act is to bind yourself to another. Your union is physical matrimony.
To Romans, this would have been outrageous—that you could liken the use of a prostitute with adultery.
But this is exactly what we are talking about. Any sexual relationship outside of a covenanted marriage between one man and one woman is adultery. That even if you are not married, you are cheating on your future spouse.
Now—young people—I want you to listen to me. Any violation of God’s sexual order is not only disobedience to God, but a violation against your future spouse.
I want you to think about Velcro for a minute. Whether you had Velcro shoes or something else. I’ve had many pairs of cargo shorts with Velcro fasteners on the pockets. And the same problem always happens over time. The Velcro stops working—it stops sticking together.
You see, Velcro works by fastening itself to the opposite piece. Hard fibers on one side enter-tangle and intertwine with the other side to hold it together. And so, when you rip the Velcro apart, you are not just separating the two halves. The two halves have effectively become one—so much so that when you rip the pieces apart, fibers are ripped out.
And this is exactly what happens with sex. Through the sexual union of human imagers of God, they are united in the flesh. To separate the two is to rip and tear at your own body and soul. Every time you do that, you lose a piece of yourself.
And yet, this is what our culture promotes. Just like the Romans, it sees sexual freedom as the highest of human callings. But with every encounter of casual sex and adultery and divorce, we are ripping ourselves apart. We become a little less than we were designed to be.
And when I was young, I didn’t understand this. For those of you in church in the 90’s, we were promoting a program called True Love Waits. It was an abstinence program teaching youth groups to wait until marriage to have sex. But in the legalistic church I grew up in, all I understood from it was that God wanted you to obey Him and if you didn’t, you would disappoint Him.
And so, I made that oath to God that I would wait for marriage. But life happened. I was upset at God and decided to walk away and live for myself. And one day, I put myself in a position where I had to make a hard decision, and I broke my oath to God.
And I knew that I had violated God’s order and I didn’t see a way that He could ever be proud of me. And so, if I couldn’t make God proud anymore, why should I try? And so I walked away for good.
But God… God was not content to let me walk away. Like the good Father in the parable of the prodigal son, He waited until I learned the consequences of my sin. And when I repented, He ran to me and embraced me.
And I finally understood that it wasn’t about making God proud of me. It wasn’t about following all His rules. He wanted me to love Him because I was His son. And all that He ever wanted was my heart.
(Beat)
But now, I had a mess to clean up. The consequences of violating God’s design had come. I understood that one day I would give myself to my wife, but that I could no longer her give her all of me—for in chasing after the lusts of the flesh, I had torn parts of myself off. I had robbed my future wife of God’s design for our union.
And Paul is trying to get the church members in Corinth to understand the same thing—that by becoming part of the church, they have been united with Christ. And so, to continue in engaging in so-called Christian Freedom through the free expression of sex not only hurts their spouse, but also damages the Name of Christ.
This is not Christian Freedom at all. It is chaos and disorder. Back to Paul in verse 17:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?
Paul says that believers are united in spirit to Christ in the same way they are united to their spouse in the flesh. Jeremiah and Zechariah both echoed this to God’s people in their prophecies. They said that the people would “join themselves to the Lord” in an everlasting covenant.
This is the work of God’s Holy Spirit, drawing His human imagers into intimacy with Jesus. The church and all of its members are united and covenanted with Him. Scripture makes clear in the OT that God is married to His covenant people, just as the NT makes clear that Jesus is betrothed to be married to the church.
Any violation of that design is spiritual infidelity on the part of God’s covenant people. We have been joined to Him in one spirit—the Holy Spirit. And because of that, we should “flee” from sexual immorality.
Once again, sexual immorality is anything other than God’s design for sexual intimacy shared in covenant between one man and one woman. And Paul says that sexual immorality is so dangerous that we should run from it. Not that we should avoid it, but that we should escape its clutches and flee—that there is spiritual danger when believers dwell in the presence of sexual temptation.
Paul will later talk this same way about idols. And the two go together for a reason, for when one is dominated by lust, it has become an idol in the place of the Most High God of order.
I often counseled my Youth and my children of this. To be careful not to put themselves in the difficult position of having to say no. It will be much harder when you think when the time comes. If you avoid being alone with someone you are sexually attracted to, you have already made a wise decision.
Paul says that sexual immorality is a sin against the self. We talked about that with the Velcro illustration, so I won’t belabor it. But then he points out that we are a temple of the Holy Spirit. This is a callback to chapter 3, where Paul says:
[SCRIPTURE SLIDE]
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
Followers of Christ not only bear His Name, but are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. In this way, they have become mobile temples of God. That we—both individually and collectively—are tabernacles of the Spirit of Jesus. The one who created us with purpose and intention now dwells within us, guiding us to fulfill our role as human imagers of God.
And finally, Paul closes this section. Back to verse 19:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Believers were enslaved to sin. But the blood of Christ purchased their freedom. They, therefore, have been set free from sin and have become voluntary bond servants to Jesus.
In Revelation 5:9, John writes “And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation,”
Humans are not simply physical creatures. They were designed to be spiritual creatures with physical bodies. Both of those parts are essential to human imagers. And even though they violated God’s order, His Son came to redeem them.
[PREVIEW SLIDE]
Application
Christian, you are not your own, for you were bought by the blood of Jesus. He has redeemed your sin and is restoring you—through the process of sanctification—to your original purpose. For it is only in Jesus that we get to truly experience what it is to be human.
Sexual freedom is not found is straying from God’s orderly design. Christian freedom is not a license to exercise sex in any way that the flesh desires. True sexual freedom is found in exercising sexual love for the purpose which God designed it for.
If your so-called acts of Christian Freedom violate God’s law, you are not practicing freedom, but enslaving yourself to sin once more.
So, as we close, let me get really practical.
Any indulgence in lust, pornography, premarital sex, adultery, homosexuality, or gender confusion is a violation of God’s good order. Not only are they bound up in the sin of sexual immorality, but they hurt you and those that you love.
God has designed sexual intimacy for a purpose and He has made it good. Uniting your flesh with anyone outside of the bonds of holy marriage not only violates the self and the spouse, but violates the unity of the spirit with Christ.
And so, you shouldn’t avoid it because it’s against the rules. You should flee from it because God loves you and He carefully and intentionally crafted you for more than temporal earthly pleasures.
Invitation
Gospel presentation and call to belief
CLOSE IN PRAYER
CLOSING HYMN
CONGREGATIONAL BLESSING
