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Against Abstinence
1 Corinthians 7:1-5
April 22, 2018
Lord’s Day Worship
Sean Higgins
Download the bulletin.
Download the Kids’ Korner.
The sermon starts at 15:45 in the audio file.
Or, The Goodness of the Marriage Bed
Let us be entirely for abstinence outside marriage. There is no such thing as good or morally safe sex unless you have a spouse. Let us also be earnestly against abstinence in marriage. These are our only holy options, and they are mutually exclusive. The marriage bed is good, and keeps us good, and husbands and wives do well to get in it.
At the beginning of 1 Corinthians chapter 7 Paul begins to respond to a letter he received from them. The previous six chapters are not filler, they are full of reminders and exhortations and imperatives based on reports he had heard about them. The church in Corinth had disunity issues and discipline issues. Some of them had problems filing too many lawsuits and some of them had problems calling sexual immorality lawful.
It also seems that some of them had the opposite problem. If some were skipping down the sexual street with partners outside of marriage, others were running the wrong way down the one way street with their eyes covered and fingers in their ears. At the end of the previous paragraph Paul urged: “So glorify God in your body.” A part of the church thought they could do whatever they wanted with their bodies and it didn’t matter. Now Paul addresses another part of the church who apparently wanted to glorify God by denying their bodies. They thought what they did not do with their bodies mattered too much.
It is a group of Christians who were against sex, outside of marriage, which is right, but even within it, which is dangerous. At least some of them thought it wasn’t good, and they wrote to Paul about it, probably believing that they would get his confirmation based on his teaching about fleeing sexual immorality (as in 6:18). But they were wrong. As the author of Hebrews wrote (Hebrews 13:4), marriage should be held in honor and the marriage bed should be recognized as pure, not that to be pure one must reject the marriage bed.
This chapter, starting in the first paragraph, confronts dualism rather than condones it. Paul, with his pastor’s pen, corrects their misunderstandings about marriage, sex, celibacy, divorce, remarriage, engagement, and singleness. Rather than promote hyper-holiness he pops the hyper-holy pride of thinking that they could be more good than God.
The issue heads the paragraph in the first sentence followed by three imperatives.
The Issue: Super-Spiritual Spousal Celibacy (verse 1)
Unlike the verbal reports he heard about the Corinthians, here Paul responds to written material from them: Now concerning the matters about which you wrote. The same heading appears again a few more times in the letter, but Paul signals his transition here.
What did they say? They knew what they said, but we don’t have a copy of their letter. There is disagreement over the final part of verse 1. Who said it? Is this Paul’s teaching (so no quotation marks, as in the KJV and NASB)? Or is it a quote from their letter (as in the ESV)? Is this something they are wondering about? Is this representing what they believe?
I think it represents their understanding, and the remaining part of the paragraph corrects it. Paul does not affirm it; what they had separated Paul tries to join back together.
“It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” Why would they say this?
It doesn’t fit as a simple statement against sex. The KJV translates, “for a man not to touch a woman,” a euphemism for more than contact. But Paul just finished an extended section against sexual immorality. To join with anyone other than one’s spouse is like joining Christ to a prostitute. If the Corinthians meant it like that, Paul could have put it before 6:12 or 6:18 and he wouldn[...]
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By Trinity Evangel Church1 Corinthians 7:1-5
April 22, 2018
Lord’s Day Worship
Sean Higgins
Download the bulletin.
Download the Kids’ Korner.
The sermon starts at 15:45 in the audio file.
Or, The Goodness of the Marriage Bed
Let us be entirely for abstinence outside marriage. There is no such thing as good or morally safe sex unless you have a spouse. Let us also be earnestly against abstinence in marriage. These are our only holy options, and they are mutually exclusive. The marriage bed is good, and keeps us good, and husbands and wives do well to get in it.
At the beginning of 1 Corinthians chapter 7 Paul begins to respond to a letter he received from them. The previous six chapters are not filler, they are full of reminders and exhortations and imperatives based on reports he had heard about them. The church in Corinth had disunity issues and discipline issues. Some of them had problems filing too many lawsuits and some of them had problems calling sexual immorality lawful.
It also seems that some of them had the opposite problem. If some were skipping down the sexual street with partners outside of marriage, others were running the wrong way down the one way street with their eyes covered and fingers in their ears. At the end of the previous paragraph Paul urged: “So glorify God in your body.” A part of the church thought they could do whatever they wanted with their bodies and it didn’t matter. Now Paul addresses another part of the church who apparently wanted to glorify God by denying their bodies. They thought what they did not do with their bodies mattered too much.
It is a group of Christians who were against sex, outside of marriage, which is right, but even within it, which is dangerous. At least some of them thought it wasn’t good, and they wrote to Paul about it, probably believing that they would get his confirmation based on his teaching about fleeing sexual immorality (as in 6:18). But they were wrong. As the author of Hebrews wrote (Hebrews 13:4), marriage should be held in honor and the marriage bed should be recognized as pure, not that to be pure one must reject the marriage bed.
This chapter, starting in the first paragraph, confronts dualism rather than condones it. Paul, with his pastor’s pen, corrects their misunderstandings about marriage, sex, celibacy, divorce, remarriage, engagement, and singleness. Rather than promote hyper-holiness he pops the hyper-holy pride of thinking that they could be more good than God.
The issue heads the paragraph in the first sentence followed by three imperatives.
The Issue: Super-Spiritual Spousal Celibacy (verse 1)
Unlike the verbal reports he heard about the Corinthians, here Paul responds to written material from them: Now concerning the matters about which you wrote. The same heading appears again a few more times in the letter, but Paul signals his transition here.
What did they say? They knew what they said, but we don’t have a copy of their letter. There is disagreement over the final part of verse 1. Who said it? Is this Paul’s teaching (so no quotation marks, as in the KJV and NASB)? Or is it a quote from their letter (as in the ESV)? Is this something they are wondering about? Is this representing what they believe?
I think it represents their understanding, and the remaining part of the paragraph corrects it. Paul does not affirm it; what they had separated Paul tries to join back together.
“It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” Why would they say this?
It doesn’t fit as a simple statement against sex. The KJV translates, “for a man not to touch a woman,” a euphemism for more than contact. But Paul just finished an extended section against sexual immorality. To join with anyone other than one’s spouse is like joining Christ to a prostitute. If the Corinthians meant it like that, Paul could have put it before 6:12 or 6:18 and he wouldn[...]