How To Avoid Sexual Immorality
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Ask just about any unbeliever about Christian sexual ethics and they think we’re just weird.
For the past 6 weeks it feels like every other lessons had something to do with sex, and it was always “Don’t do that!”
To wider world we are extremely restrictive
Which begs the question - do God and his people hate sex for some reason?
And it’s easy to see why Christianity in general has given that impression
Rabbi’s taught that it should only be for procreation - God said be fruitful and multiply - not enjoy yourself!
Song of Solomon with all of it’s sex positivity was only taught as allegory for God’s love for his people - not actual sex!
The Roman Catholics held celibacy up as the ideal for priests so they could focus exclusively on the church.
John Calvin taught that if you had sex with your spouse only for the sake of pleasure then you were committing adultery with your wife against your wife!
Maybe you have some mixed feelings towards it. You’re raised in the church with plenty of people rightly telling you to avoid, stay away from it, don’t you dare! And then you get married and it’s whiplash. Everybody is asking when the kids are coming!
And then we read passages like 1 Corinthians 7…
A New Issue
A New Issue
1 Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”
As we saw in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul is addressing specific beliefs that the Corinthians had. They’d say one thing, but Paul would say another. There’s debate in chapter 6 over what phrases belong to the Corinthians, but chapter 7 is much easier.
They wrote “It’s good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”
But because of temptation, Paul says something else.
The Corinthians were an eclectic bunch. Some were going off the deep end into incest and seeing prostitutes while others, maybe in response to these blatant sins, said it’s better if we don’t touch women at all!
We’ve talked about the Corinthian’s low view of the body. this low view could lead to two very different conclusions
The body doesn’t matter and so it doesn’t matter what we do with it.
The body, like all matter in the universe, is inherently evil and thus needs to be controlled and denied. The more you control it, the more you deny its passions, the better you are spiritually.
The Roman’s thought that men were sexually uncontrollable and insatiable. Marriage was a way to help moderate it, but complete monogamy and sexual fidelity was right out the window. The idea of a man having just one woman was insane.
That would have lined right up with the Corinthian’s low view of the body. We need to be spiritual, not of the flesh, so let’s deny all of those passions and desires. It’s good to not touch a woman.
And they would justify it with biblical principles
Mary was a virgin
Jesus never married
Sex made one ritually unclean in Leviticus
Sexual immorality could be punished by death in some instances
And in Roman and Greek society virgins were were seen as especially holy because who could ever give up something like that?
It’s funny, to me at least, that so many critics of the bible will show how shallow their understanding of scripture is when they talk about this passage. They read verse 1 completely out of context and say “Paul was backwards, woman hating, sex denying freak!” And since followers of Jesus are against sex in any form aside from within a marriage people just assume that we and the bible just hate sex.
1 Corinthians 7 is very sex positive when it’s in the correct context. We’ll even see that Paul says in verse 5 that some of these Corinthians need to stop praying so much and go sleep with their spouse!
God is not against sex, he’s against sexual immorality. And after the mess of incest and prostitution in chapter 5 and 6, we now have some positive instruction on how to avoid that sexual immorality.
Sex Is Good
Sex Is Good
2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 I say this as a concession, not as a command.
Contrary to the Corinthians who believed that any and all sex was low maybe even sinful Paul reframes it as a spiritual good. He’s giving this advice and encouraging the marriage relationship because sexual immorality is happening. Rather than a base desire, sex with your spouse is something that guards you against sin. It’s value is not just in the intimacy but in safeguarding your husband or your wife against sin.
So spouses sleeping with each other is something that should be encouraged. We have a responsibility toward our spouse and to help safeguard them against sin.
Paul addresses the men and women equally here - neither have authority over their own bodies. We practice giving ourselves in submission to our spouse, living out the biblical truth that I am not my own.
But with the way Paul talks about it it might feel like the romance is being taken out. He talks about it being:
An act that needs to be fulfilled
A duty
A yielding of authority
Do not deprive
And in Greek it sounds even less joyful. These are financial terms. We’re to give what our spouse is owed. To pay them what is due, to not defraud them of their rights. And for some people if it’s something you have to do then it’s suddenly not so fun anymore.
In which case I encourage you to think of it as a delightful duty. You are being commanded to do something that should be really fun with someone you think is pretty cute.
It’s like your boss commanding that you give yourself a raise
It’s the duty of planning a vacation so you can enjoy one
It’s the obligation of showing up to your own birthday party
Contrary to so much religious thought throughout the ages, you’re encouraged to be with your spouse just for the fun of it.
Paul does not say to come together:
For the exclusive purpose of having children
As an unfortunate but necessary act
God recognizes that men and women have sexual desires, he created us with them, and marriage is the way to satisfy them. And that is the consistent picture throughout scripture.
Adam and Eve were in the garden with each other, naked and unashamed
18 Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, 19 a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.
Proverbs describes being intoxicated as hanging on her every word, being overwhelmed by her attractiveness, letting her pop up everywhere in your life. It’s wise to have a crush on your spouse.
And then we have the Song of Solomon, which has passages of the woman pretty much just saying “Look at how beautiful my man is!”
The joy for all of this is in the relationship itself.
If this is a duty you should be the first and only volunteer!
The One Exception
The One Exception
The only exception Paul makes for the Corinthian position is in verse 5-6
5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 I say this as a concession, not as a command.
Paul isn’t completely at odds with the Corinthians who say it’s good to not touch a woman. There are times and occasions when we do deprive one another - but it should be the exception, not the rule.
It’s by mutual consent, because you belong to each other
It’s only for a time, more specifically a defined amount of time - it’s not an endless “I’m still praying so don’t touch me!”
And it’s for good reasons - devoting yourself to prayer. If you’re devoted to a spiritual exercise and don’t have time for your spouse, but you have time for your shows, for scrolling on your phone, for hanging with your friends, or catching the game - that’s defrauding your partner.
And Paul gives this only as a concession, not a command. You can perhaps come to this agreement but it is by no means necessary.
It’s Not That Good
It’s Not That Good
Many early Christians leaned towards celibacy and a negative view of sex. These days, it’s just as easy to hear people criticize the single lifestyle.
Some come back from Florida College without an engagement and people wonder what’s wrong with them?
Parents pester their kids about when they’re getting married and put this pressure on them to marry the first available partner
All of this creates a negative stigma around the single lifestyle, as if you can’t be a fully realized person or kingdom citizen unless you’re married.
God values the marriage relationship, he created man to be with woman, but Paul says that’s not the only gift.
7 I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. 8 To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. 9 But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
For whatever reason Paul had no desire to marry or just found other matter more pressing.
And he calls this a gift. Other gifts in 1 Corinthians include healings, miraculous powers, prophecy, speaking in tongues and others.
If you have no desire to marry, if you don’t find anyone you happen to fancy, if you just don’t see the appeal of marriage - Paul says that’s a gift that God gave you, just as marriage and children are God’s gift to others.
Even with Paul’s high view of marriage, look at how he describes the single life in 1 Corinthians 7:
32 I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. 33 But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, 34 and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.
So use that gift. Elsewhere in scripture we read about the lifestyle widows, the unmarried, were expected to live. In the absence of a family and household to care for they could devote themselves to the Lord’s work.
In Acts 9 we have Dorcas who was with the widows, likely one herself. She was full of good works and acts of charity.
5 She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day,
When you don’t have a family through marriage you have more time and resources to care for the family you have through Christ.
But again, Paul is not holding up the married or single lifestyle as inherently superior than the other.
8 To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. 9 But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
Don’t feel the pressure to live as if you had a different gift from the one you have. Paul was an apostle without family, Peter was an apostle with a wife. Both are equally valid ways of life.
So if you thrive spiritually as a single - keep thriving and don’t let anyone look down on that gift.
But if you can’t stand the single lifestyle, it’s better to marry than to burn.
Most of our translations say ‘burn with passion.’ That’s an interpretation, not a translation. Quite literally Paul says it’s better to marry than to burn.
Better to marry than burn with passion, or better to marry than burn in hell because you can’t control yourself? Maybe Paul wants us to think of both possibilities.
And that should be the driving question behind all of our relationships, especially marriage. Is marriage going to be a help or hinderance to my service to the Lord?
That depends on you.
Apply
Apply
To the married, make sure your spouse isn’t burning. You have the delightful duty to help them.
Be attractive to them - not meaning be a bodybuilder or a supermodel. Be a person they want to be with. Be the person they were excited to spend the rest of their life with when they said “I do.” You knew how to get them to love you the first time, keep it up
Be available. Turn off the TV, put down the phone, come home early. Don’t make it difficult to have sex. Be up front and ask them “Do you need me?” and be flattered when they say yes. Or just assume that they do and go for it!
Go home and enjoy your marriage.
To the unmarried who don’t plan on changing that, join a family.
Be a part of the family. Studies have shown that the more adult relationships that kids have in the church aside from their parents, the more likely they are to stay in church. You can help raise the next generation of believers.
Be a helper. You have nobody’s schedule to coordinate with aside from your own. You have nobodies else’s input on your finances. So be open to helping people, giving the time you don’t have to give to a marriage or children to help others in the church.
