1 Corinthians 7
Turn in your copy of the scriptures to 1 Corinthians chapter seven, we’ll be looking at verses one through 40, the chapter in its entirety. This is sort of section two of Paul addressing the problems at Corinth. One side of the problem was believers said, oh, body soul, soul good, spirit good, body bad, we can go visit prostitutes.
The other side of the coin we get today, body soul division, soul good, body bad. So we want to live the ascetic life. And so apparently one of the issues in the church is people were saying, Hey, we shouldn’t be married anymore. Or if we’re going to get married, maybe we should think twice about it to live the ascetic life. You’ve probably bumped into Christians throughout, I don’t know, maybe the last 50 years. You know, have you got the second blessing of the Holy Spirit?
Oh, you don’t. I mean, whatever that is. You don’t. I’m more spiritual than you. You’ve got people over the last years. I’ve got the Higher Life. That was a big movement that came out of Great Britain. Got the Higher Life. Do you have the Higher Life? Okay. That’s a beer commercial, I thought. But you get all these issues that pop up in the church. We’re super spiritual, you’re not. And so the problem he’s addressing is the super spiritual people, so they thought that they needed to free themselves from institutions, including marriage.
And so keep that in mind as we read Paul’s questions and answers. He says in verse one, now concerning the matters about which you wrote, It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman. But because of the temptations to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife. Each woman should have her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a limited time that you may devote yourselves to prayer. but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Now as a concession, not a command, I say this, I wish that all were as I myself am, but each has his own gift from God, one of a kind and one of another. To the unmarried and to the widows, I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am, but if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion. To the married, I give this charge, not I but the Lord.
The wife should not separate from her husband, but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband, and the husband should not divorce his wife. To the rest, I say, I not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If a woman has a husband who is an unbeliever and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved.
God has called you to peace. Wife, how do you know whether you will save your husband? Husband, how do you know whether you will save your wife? Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.
Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision, for neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.
Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it, but if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. For he who is called in the Lord as a slave is a freeman of the Lord. Likewise, he who was free when called is a slave of Christ. You were bought with a price. Do not become slaves of men.
So brothers, in whatever condition each one was called, there let him remain with God. Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress, it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned. And if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that.
This is what I mean, brothers. The appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none. And those who mourn as though they were not mourning. And those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing. And those who buy as though they had no goods. And those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. I want you to be free from anxieties.
The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, 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. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.
If anyone thinks he is not behaving properly towards his betrothed, if his passions are strong and it has to be, let him do as he wishes. Let them marry, it is no sin. But whoever is firmly established in his heart being under no necessity, but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart to keep her as the betrothed, he will do well. Then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better. A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives, but if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. Yet in my judgment, she is happier if she remains as she is.
And I think that I too have the spirit of God. Amen. God’s great and gracious word. Uh, one or two things just to point out, uh, when the apostle says in this passage, this is sort of my opinion. What happens when the Holy spirit puts it in the Bible? No longer. It’s the word of God, right? So just keep, keep that in mind as you think through this passage.
Uh, some of you may in times past have been to a symphony. Maybe you’ve been to the North Carolina Symphony, and you go and you hear beautiful music, Handel’s Messiah. Maybe you hear one of Beethoven’s symphonies. You hear the music that is written on the pages flow through the instruments of the orchestra, and it’s beautiful. There’s harmony, there’s melody, there’s good sound.
But in recent years, say the last century or so, there have been these modern composers that put out music that lacks harmony, that lacks structure. It’s what we call music of dissonance. Just the layman’s way to put it, it’s a bunch of noise that hurts your ears. It’s not melodic, it doesn’t flow, and it makes little to no sense. And this word dissonance in music means conflicting sounds or discord. It’s out of harmony. And the word dissonance has entered into the world of psychology. We have what psychologists refer to as cognitive dissonance.
We have a thought in mind or a principle in mind. but a desire in our life and they don’t comport, they don’t jive, they don’t work together. And so we say we believe this, but we live that way. One of the jobs of a psychologist or a psychiatrist or a counselor is to point out, you say this, but you do that. You do this and it’s destructive, but you say that, but it’s not yet a reality in your lives. Here’s just a silly example, so to speak, but a very practical one.
You may say in your head and in your heart, hey, I’m pro-life. And what you mean as a Christian generally is pro-life, you are against abortion, right? You believe all unborn children should be given the right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Yet, you text while you drive.
How does your behavior, the policeman chuckles, how does your behavior comport with your beliefs? It doesn’t, you have cognitive dissonance. And that’s a very light example, maybe not light, but our behaviors and our beliefs don’t match. Well, think about spiritual dissonance. As believers in Jesus in America, we can be very confused about what we believe and how we live.
One of the blessings, I think, of being in a church that is what we call confessional. We have the Westminster Confession of Faith, the catechisms along with it, subordinate to the word of God. But we have the Bible as our only rule of faith and practice. our subordinate standards, the confession of faith, and it teaches us what the Bible tells us we ought to believe about God and what we ought to practice in our lives. And so we are confessional, and you go to the confession, which sits under the Bible. It seeks to explain the Bible. We have very little spiritual dissonance. It tells us what to believe. It tells us how we are to worship. It gives us principles that guide us for life. But our world is full of spiritual dissonance.
And I think when you see an aberration in American Christianity, American churchianity or American liberalism, I guess to use a Machen term, it’s either Christianity or liberalism. What we have seen is people have a lifestyle, right? And they’ve got to justify it. And when the Bible doesn’t justify it, they have to tweak the Bible or change the Bible or toss it out the door altogether.
And so we are living in a world with great spiritual dissonance, lots of noise, hurts our ears. What do we do with it? Well, that’s what’s taking place in the Corinthian church. Paul is away at Ephesus, just over the sea, and there’s all this clanging noise coming from the church. We haven’t yet got through, what, about 10 other chapters plus 2 Corinthians, but there is lots of dissonance, lots of noise rising from the congregation there. Bad beliefs, bad practices, and so Paul, from a distance, is having to straighten out their beliefs and their practice. set out to pick this passage apart, I want you to remember a couple things. Some of you have grown up in the Christian faith. You were born into a Christian home. You can say, I’ve never known a dad, I didn’t know Jesus. You’ve been in church, you’ve been under Judeo-Christian values.
That’s the way it ought to be, correct? But that’s not the way it often is. And so you send Paul to Corinth, a very wicked city, a city like Nineveh and Jonah’s day, full of idolatry, full of debauchery. And you preach the gospel and people repent and come to faith in Jesus.
Their lives don’t look like they’ve been Christians for very long. And so the road of discipleship is a very long one. And so at Corinth, you have very few, if any people who’ve grown up in the Christian faith, as it were. You have people in the Jewish faith who’ve converted to Messiah, Jesus, and they might have a Judeo Christian set of values, but many of the converts. are slaves, many of them are tradesmen, many of them are what we might call ruffians, and maybe they’re from the high parts of society on the other side of the coin, but they are ranked pagans in their beliefs and in their behavior. And so in the long road to Christian discipleship, where Paul has brought them to faith in Jesus, spent about a year and a half with them, now he’s gone away, he’s ministering at Ephesus.
The word and spirit should be what’s leading and guiding the people of God. But they’ve gotten some false teachers and they’ve gotten heavy doses of worldly teaching, not to mention their own fleshly desires and the devil’s temptations. And so across the sea at Ephesus, Paul gets word by letter. He gets word by verbal report. And they ask him several things about their stations in life, what they ought to do.
And so the beginning of verse seven, he says, consider concerning the matters. And so these matters we want to think about as the dissonance in the church, the clanging symbols he’ll use in the love chapter, first Corinthians 13, the dissonance in the church, the dissonance in the hearts of God’s people. the dissonance in the world they live in, but also the dissonance in our own lives, and then how we are to clear up that noise. So, the dissonance in the church. What’s the music like? It’s bad. It’s not harmonious. And so he’s dealt with one extreme.
That was the licentious people, the ones who said, body, bad, doesn’t matter. Spirit, good. really important, we can visit prostitutes. That’s really faulty thinking. So what does Paul tell them? He says, you’re not your own, you’ve been bought at a price, we gotta honor God in our body, it’s a temple of the Holy Spirit. Now he’s gonna deal with the other extreme, which is asceticism.
So y’all know about monks, right? Monks, mono, what does mono mean? Not the cold you get. One, yeah, so a monk is a person who retreats from society. They exclude themselves from the world. They live a life of asceticism. Maybe, you know, Uncle Billy is your strange uncle. He never married and he lives in a one room cabin. you know, out in the woods or something, you say he’s an ascetic, right? He lives with very little.
Or you think about, you know, those crazy monks that lived on top of poles and lived in caves and escaped the world, body bad, spirit good, go out and develop the spirit. Well, here you have a church full of people who are at all kinds of places, ages and stages in life. And this teaching of asceticism has crept in. And they’re all of a sudden saying, I’ve got to get out of my commitments so I can go live on a pole. I’ve got to get out of my commitments so I can go live in a cave, that sort of thing. Asceticism would say I can’t do anything in the body because that is evil, that is wicked. And so no life in the fleshly realm.
Now, just a little reminder here. When Paul uses the word flesh in his New Testament epistles, he means not our skin, not our epidermis. Right? What does he mean? Our remnant sin, our remnant corruption, our sin is pardoned. Past, present, future sins pardoned in Jesus, but we have remaining in us remnant sin, remnant corruption. He refers to it as the flesh, not the skin. And so the body of sin still in us is the flesh. Yes, that flesh bad. But when they say flesh in this passage, it means body bad, spirit good.
And so they believe that asceticism makes you super spiritual. And so you can begin to see the problem that Paul is addressing. I’m engaged to be married, but if the life of asceticism is good, maybe I should put off marriage and just Go live on a pole, live in a cave, something like that. Or you see the whole list throughout this passage, asceticism, godly, super spiritual.
So I’ll be single or I’ll get out of my marriage or there’ll be no intimacy in the marriage. They ask questions about being married to unbelievers. If I’m a believer and I’m married to an unbeliever, that couldn’t be a good situation. I should get out of that marriage.
And so he’s going to address all these issues. So there are some who will say, if you are married, you’re living too much to the flesh. sexual intimacy bad, and so gotta get out of that. He addresses that. Then he goes on, they ask, I’m in a marriage, but it’s dragging me down spiritually.
I’m super spiritual, the spouse isn’t, so I’ve got to get out of the marriage. Kind of sounds like that king over in Europe that made himself the Pope, right? Was that Henry? the eighth or something like that. Just make up a new church because don’t want to be in the marriage. Then there’s the issue. You’re in a marriage. Spouse gets converted. The other spouse doesn’t get converted. What do we do? Paul says, live as you’re called, right?
Perhaps your holiness will rub off on the children and on the other spouse. And incidentally, this is one of the places in the New Testament where we find the blessings of being in the covenant. You know, we have this whole argument of, okay, God said to circumcise boys on the eighth day. You know, you Presbyterians say that now we baptize boys and girls. You know, we get into the whole dunking and believers baptism and all the rest. Well, one of the principles that comes from the Old Testament and here is Maybe one of the places Paul is pretty clear about it is this.
When one person is a believer, that holiness, that righteousness is going to affect and perhaps infect, in a good way, the rest of the family. And so a believing spouse, can sanctify an unbelieving spouse. Now, does that mean it sanctifies them and sets them apart and makes them holy and they get better? No, they’re still unconverted, but it has a covenantal effect, we say, and the same with children.
That’s an interesting just little tidbit that pops up in this passage. Well, then Paul is going to address the single people. There’s all this dissonance in the church, asceticism, good. Got to get out of marriage, not get married, be single, whatever, all that. Now he’s dealing with the single folks. There are unmarried virgins. There are widows who are seeking or not seeking to get married. There’s widowers. And he says to them, I wish you could be like I am and not be married. Now, Paul, we’re pretty sure was married at some point. Now, we have no evidence that he was, but we have hints.
He was a Jew. He was a member of the Jewish courts. All of that required not only to have a high view of marriage, but to be married. And so perhaps his wife passed away. Perhaps there’s a reason, if he was married, that they’re not together any longer. But he sees now his devoted calling to be a traveling missionary, a traveling apostle. And so he says to the single folks, whether it’s an unmarried virgin, a widow, a widower, or a man betrothed, you can be happy and holy in body and spirit. Now, some have tried to take the passage like this and say it’s sinful to get married. Well, we got a good example of spiritual dissonance here. It’s not good to be married.
Well, how do we populate the earth? And do we toss out Genesis 1 and 2? be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. So you see how passages like this can be meant to clean up the cognitive or spiritual dissonance in the Corinthian church. And then we in our day just take it and make something worse.
Well, all this dissonance, all this asceticism, all this get out of marriage, get married, don’t get married, all this is sounding across the sea to Paul at Ephesus. And so he wants to deal with the dissonance in the church, but he wants to also deal with the dissonance in their heart. It could be that asceticism gives a spiritual reason not to do something that otherwise is biblically command.
A lot of times we speak of our lot in life, our situation, our life setting. We think of how God made us, what he’s given us. And then the life setting that we’re in, we call that our lot in life. And Paul refers to it here as the gifts of God. of one kind or another.
And what he’s referring to is some are single, some are married, some are betrothed, some are widows, some are widowers. Some are at this age stage in life. He even mentions the circumcised. He mentions the uncircumcised. He mentions the slave and the free. And so while we’ve looked a little at the issues of the spiritual dissonance in the church related to marriage, related to singleness and all that, here’s the bigger issue.
They aren’t happy with where God has them in life. And isn’t that the bigger spiritual issue that could cover multitudes of things? He says, you must lead the life the Lord has assigned to you and to which God has called you. That’s a tough pill to swallow, isn’t it? Lord, this is my lot in life, and I don’t like it. The Puritans called contentment the rare jewel. And isn’t contentment elusive?
We live in a world that throws all kinds of stuff at us. Our flesh, our own sinful desires throw all kinds of temptations at us. The devil tempts us, deceives us. Our smartphones are full of curated pictures and worldviews to make us dissatisfied, TV commercials to make us dissatisfied and ungrateful and even covetous.
And we want to a la carte life. It used to be we had to look over the neighbor’s fence and say, I’d like their pool. Or we look at the neighbor’s Christmas picture and say, I’ll take their children. Or we look at the neighbor’s salary and say, I’d take his income. And so we a la carte life. This and that and a little of this and that. And my life would be perfect.
And so we become dissatisfied, ungrateful, even tossing God’s providential lot for us back at him. We’re to be thankful in prosperity, the Bible teaches. We’re to be humble in hardship, the Bible teaches us. And so we can not only have dissonance in the church where a creeping teaching like asceticism comes in and shakes up the marriages and the families of the church, but we also can have dissonance in our own hearts that can leak out into the church. And so this dissonance in our own heart ought to be settled by the grace and the promises of God. What about the dissonance, the noisiness in the world? Paul mentions in this passage something about the present distress. And scholars wonder, what is this present distress?
Well, it’s the 50s, not the 1950s, but just the 50s. You know, Jesus was born, what, about 6 BC, probably died about You know, late 20s, 30 BC, Paul gets converted, late 30s, mid 30s, goes off to Arabia for 10 years, learns at the feet of Jesus, gets the gospel, and in the 40s, as the Acts of the Apostles and all that are taking place, Paul is out on his missionary journeys. We’re into the 50s now, so he’s… what, 20 years converted, about 10 years into apostolic ministry. And Nero is the king of Rome. He’s the emperor.
And persecution is hitting a very high point in the life of believers. It’s going to be 70, 20 more years or so before the temple is destroyed at Jerusalem. But you’ll remember the worldly troubles that Christians faced. They were separated from their families. They were thrown to the lions. They were used as human torches. They would be beheaded as some of the apostles would be. They would enter into all kinds of worldly stresses and ultimately their death.
And so this dissonance in the world, this clanging noise in the world, Paul mentions to the church, you’re so enamored with what’s going on in your day to day living, you forget what’s going on in the world. And the present distress causes the people of God, he says, to think hard about the institutions you have entered into or you may want out of. And he says, our interests are divided. We’re not wholly devoted to the Lord. We’re not wholly devoted to holiness in body and in spirit. And then he says something very bold.
The present form of this world is passing away. He’s in a sense, snapping his fingers and saying to them, you’re all into these little issues in your life when this world is passing away and there is a world to come, your interests are divided. And so there’s some pause we ought to take in our daily living. What’s the world like? How soon is Jesus coming? What’s the world to come like? There’s much dissonance in the world. But what about the dissonance in our flesh? We talked about the dissonance in our hearts. But our flesh, our remaining sin, brings all kinds of temptations. It brings all kinds of immoralities to us.
And one of the reasons Paul gives the instructions he does is echoed in our confession of faith. What is the purpose of marriage? Our confession of faith says, Garden of Eden, mutual help. It’s not good for Adam to be alone, so God made a helper. The confession of faith goes to the book of Malachi. We need godly seed, godly offspring to build up the church. But Paul hits on one of the things the confession mentions.
It’s to prevent uncleanness. All kinds of places in our passage Paul has said some of you are tempted. Some of you have passion. Some of you are burning with desire and you lack self-control. And so that’s where you ought to be married. That’s where if you’re widowed, you ought to marry again and all those things. Our attention is divided. It’s all over the place. And so there’s dissonance in our flesh. And he’s saying, look, look, you ascetic wannabes.
The body is not bad, God made it. Marriage is not bad, God made it. And it can be the thing that keeps you from living an unclean and ungodly life. Now, how do we clear up all this dissonance in our flesh, in the world, in our hearts, and in the church?
Well, we clear it up by listening to the voice of God. We go to the word. We do like the Bereans in Acts chapter 17. We take everything that we hear and we run it through the scriptures. We do what Paul says to the Colossians. We take every thought captive and we make it obedient to the word of God. How else do we clear up the dissonance?
Well, to use the goofy little phrase we hear very often, maybe it was on the wall at your school, bloom where you’re planted. What is Paul saying here? If you’re married, be married. If you’re betrothed, maybe hold off on marriage because of the present distress. If you’re a widow, be happy and holy in the Lord. If you’re single, be like I am. If you can’t help it, then get married. But he says, bloom where you are planted. Nothing is evil.
It’s a wisdom issue. What do we do with the hardships in our lives? What do we do with the thorns in our flesh? What do we do with, as Thomas Boston called it, what do we do with the crooks in our lot? Not thieves, but the crooked things in our lives.
Well, we remember, as Paul has said in this passage, everything is tailor-made by God. He’s given you your lot in life. He’s assigned it to you. He’s fitted it for your life. And so we are to learn patience. We are to exercise fortitude. We are still to be profitable in our hardships, to find humility, to be thankful. Remembering these are the gifts of God of one kind or another. And our job overall is to please the Lord. Our job overall is to be holy in body and spirit. and that’s in our present situation, whatever it may be.
Now, Paul is gonna give a little, I don’t know, quick look at the future and say, if you are worried about this life, think about the next. In the next life, there’ll be no marriage. In the next life, there’ll be no weeping. In the next life, there will be not these things that pass away.
And so I think his cure for dissonance is yes, God, and his clear word, yes, contentment, bloom where we are planted. But I think one of the best ways to clear up the dissonance we may have is to remember this is a very short life, and eternity is forever, and these things will be of no concern to us.
Let’s go to God in prayer. Lord, we thank you for the chance to think about What is good, right, and true? We thank you for the chance to think about what is lasting and what is short-lived. Lord, make us content, even with hard things. Help us to be humble and to prosper in spite of these things. By your grace, by your word, and by your power, let us look to Jesus, who for the sake of eternal things emptied himself and became nothing, who was rich in heaven but for our sakes became poor. Let that attitude be ours, we ask and pray in the name of Christ our Savior, amen. We want to respond to God’s word by singing number 576, Awake My Soul, Stretch Every Nerve.