FEBRUARY 11th, 2024 PASTOR DON PIEPER
The Corinthian Complex 1 Cor 7:1-9; 32-40
“A VEXING, VERACIOUS VALENTINE”
If scripture is God's love letter to His people, as it is sometimes referred to, then 1 Corinthians 7 is one very, vexing valentine. In fact, it doesn't much resemble a valentine at all. For one thing it's too long. It also lacks any kind of rhyme scheme or romance... It never even uses the word, “love.”
If we had to skip a bit in the book to find a part of Paul's letter that fits Valentine's Day, most would choose chapter 13, otherwise known as the chapter of love. There, Paul famously writes: “Love is patient . Love never gives up. Love believes all things, hopes all things, endures all thing.” (1 Corinthians 13:4, 7)
Ahhhh.....!
But the chapter of love is not about romantic love at all. It's a teaching on tongues! Chapter 7, on the other hand, unlike chapter 13, is actually about marital and non-marital romantic relationships. It also aligns better with the origins of Valentine's Day than the chapter of love. St. Valentine, after all, made his mark in history by standing up to the Roman emperor, Caesar Aurelious, by ignoring a law the forbid soldiers to marry. Valentine refused to comply and married numerous soldiers who had become Christian and was jailed as a result. His actions were to protect the sanctity of Christian marriage which is the same motivation in which Paul writes this vexing valentine here in chapter 7.
Chapter 7 begins the second section of Paul's letter in which, instead of addressing problems cited by Chloe and her household, Paul begins to answer questions that've been sent to him in writing. “Now regarding the questions, you asked in your letter,” Paul writes. They have all kinds of questions apparently, but none more pressing than the issue of sex, the age-old, hot button issue. (1 Corinthians 7:1)
Ooh, did he just say the “s” word here in church? Is that even allowed? It is! Apparently so, as the church in Corinth are eager to hear from Paul on the subject. It's a church trying to survive in a culture known for its sexual immorality. In fact, its reputation causes even the pagans to pause, or to blush. So it is that they've come to Paul seeking clarity. They have some burning questions to ask.
It reminds me of a certain six-year-old, who's also heard mixed messages and seeks clarity....
Calvin: What do you know about love, Hobbes?
Hobbes: Lots!
Calvin: Yeah? Like what?
Hobbes: I'm not telling.
Calvin: Why not?!!
Hobbes: It's a sophisticated thing.
Calvin: Sophisticated?! Whaddaya mean sophisticated? I'm sophisticated! Come on, tell me!
Hobbes: (shielding his eyes and looking up/out) Lovely weather we're having today.
Calvin: RRRRGH! You know something and you won't tell me what it is!
Hobbes: Maybe when you're older.
Calvin: When I'm older?! Why can't you tell me now?!
Hobbes: Some things you wouldn't understand.
Calvin: Look. Just give me a hint, ok? One hint – c'mon!
Hobbes: Ok. Here: “Snoogy-woogy wips!”
Calvin: EWWWWW!!
Hobbes: See? I told you you weren't old enough.
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Fortunately, unlike Hobbes, the apostle Paul is a little more forthcoming. He knows how hard its been for them in light of the intense cultural pressures around them. He knows that they have already formed their own views on the subject and aren't so much looking for sound teaching as they are for him to validate their own position. As in other things causing division there in Corinth, they are basically two camps of thought. One holds that since the body is perishable nothing one does with it ultimately matters and so things like drinking to excess and sleeping with temple prostitutes are permissible. Paul has taken on this problematic perspective in the chapter six.
The other camp is convinced that in order to be spiritual one must suppress or deny all things physical. Proponets of this view were pushing celibacy as the only acceptable Christian lifestyle. It's to this group and mindset that chapter 7 addresses. It's why he begins with what sounds like a rather shocking statement if not an incredibly unpopular one: “Yes, it is good to abstain from sex.” (1 Corinthians 7:1)
Say whaaaaat? And with that, all the young people walked out of the room... It sounds like he is agreeing with those in the second camp, that everyone should abstain from sex, but that is not the whole of Paul's response. He continues: “But because there is so much sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman should have her own husband.” (1 Corinthians 7:2)
In light of the rampant sexual immorality in and outside of the church in Corinth, Paul urges the church to guard the sanctity of marriage, defending it as a God given means for avoiding temptation. In responding to their questions regarding sexual relations in and outside of marriage Paul provides five key points for living in Christian community and in sync with the Spirit and mission of Jesus Christ.
Point # 1: Living as a celibate single is a spiritual gift. Here, and elsewhere, Paul repeatedly affirms the spiritual gift of celibate singlehood. Paul has the gift himself and so naturally, he sees what an amazing gift it can be and longs for others to embrace it as well. As he puts it: “I wish everyone were single, just as I am, yet each person has a special gift from God, of one kind or another.” (1 Corinthians 7:7)
That sentence confirms it as special gift from God, and that not everyone has that gift. It's a grave mistake the church made in making it a requirement of it's clergy to live in single celibacy. In doing so the church ignored Paul's teaching here. As Paul writes later in this letter: “It is the Spirit who distributes these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have.” (1 Corinthians 12:11)
On the other hand, in the church in America, not enough attention and connections are made with those who are single in their midst. Many who are single don't feel comfortable in local churches because so much attention is placed on couples and young families that those who're single can feel a bit out of place. That doesn't mean that everyone who is single has this gift either.
I remember during my internship that I decided I had the gift because dating had not been going well. I saw the advantages of being single too. My schedule was my own. I had no family responsibilities so I fully invested in the families of others. I had, as Paul points out, fewer distractions. But I soon realized I was distracted all the same. A pretty face smiling at me was all it took. Clearly, I did not, and do not, have this gift, but a spiritual gift it is and Paul notes its one worth celebrating.
Point # 2: Marriage is God's gift to those without the gift of singlehood. Paul focuses on marriage as the means by which we can overcome sexual temptation. One might wonder why he doesn't focus on the value it provides in providing a safe, nurturing, loving environment not only for the couple in question but for the children they might raise but Paul writes to a people in culture wars.
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He wants them to see how they're being married, or getting married, serves another purpose that God intends for them, to remain focused on him and his kingdom mission. They've been waffling in so many ways that he urges them to see all the value that marriage entails, another means to stay true not only to one another but to the God who provided marriage back in the garden as a way of loving on us.
Marriage is a gift from God, Paul maintains. Through it, God intends to bless us. God's best blessing is the sharing of himself and since marriage is a reflection of Christ's relationship with his church, we in love for one another should freely share ourselves with one another in the context of marriage. As Paul writes: “The husband should fulfill his wife's sexual needs and the wife should fulfill her husband's needs. Both give authority over their body to the other.” (1 Corinthians 7:3-4)
This speaks to any inclination we might have to use sex as an emotional weapon or a means for manipulation. We are to freely give ourselves to one another as if our body no longer belonged to our-selves. In this way we bless one another akin to how God seeks to bless us – by sharing of ourselves, completely, unashamedly – making the needs of the other more important than our own.
Point # 3: Sex is a gift to be celebrated only in marriage. Paul makes that clear by both taking about the gift of singlehood in the context of celibacy and by making it clear that though, yes, it is good to abstain from sexual relations to avoid sexual immorality, it is a good and beautiful thing in the context of marriage. It is a biblical teaching that many continue to struggle or dismiss today.
Some argue that sex is a private, personal matter. Couples move in together, including those who believe in Jesus, thinking that the church's teaching on the subject of premarital sex is archaic and out of touch. But Paul made it clear in his conclusion of the previous chapter that sex is not a private matter at all: “Run from sexual sin. No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God...? So you must honor God with your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:18-20)
It is a gift by which God intends to bless a marriage, a couple's lifelong commitment to one another. It's not as is if God is sitting up in heaven, talking with Gabriel and Michael, and looking down, muses aloud, “Whatever will they come up with next?”
Sex was obviously God's idea but it's meant as a gift to be cherished and shared as God intended – between a husband and his wife, between a man and a woman, committed to each and other & to God
Point # 4: Paul stresses equality in Christian marriage. That may seem surprising to those of you who are used to hearing passages from Paul quoted defending the position that women are to be submissive to their husbands. Those words need to be understood in their context, as do these, but since our focus are on these, what we read hear is unmistakably clear, in it's call for marital equality.
Over and over again Paul uses a classic Greek literary device. One of my Greek seminary profs referred to it as 'the echo element'. Paul introduces it back in verse two, and repeatedly thereafter: “Each man should have his own wife and each woman should have her own husband...; The husband should fulfill his wife's sexual needs and the wife should fulfill her husband's needs. The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife. Don't you wives realize your husbands might be saved because of you? And don’t you husbands realize your wives might be saved because of you?” (1 Corinthians 7:2-4, 16...)
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Back and forth in a kind of holy tit for tat Paul forces the point that what applies to one, applies to the other. One is not more subject to the other. His teaching applies to both. They are to consider their bodies that of their spouses as a witness to the way their bodies are submitted to God!
The marital dance of a couple committed to one another utterly, physically, joyfully is meant to be a Christian couple's most powerful witness to the way they utterly, physically, joyful submit themselves to Jesus as Lord of their lives. It's not something we reluctantly do. It's what we love to do because the one we submit ourselves to we are learning to love more than our very selves!
That's why this is such a veracious valentines' day card! Paul is veracious in the sense that he tells it as it is, that he is always and precisely here imparting truth. As he says it himself: “I am saying this for your benefit, not to place restrictions on you. I want you to do whatever will help you serve the Lord best, with as few distractions as possible. I am giving you counsel from God's Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 7:35, 40)
Whether you show up as a couple or as a single, or as a married person whose spouse stays at home, Paul urges you in the Spirit to not get distracted. Life is not a competition to get what you want when you want it, its experienced most fully in giving it away, to help those around you shine, starting with those with whom you share your life – your spouse, your children, your friends, your church fam
Do what helps you serve the Lord best...and may you relish where you are in life, be that single or married, as the gift from God that it was intended to be! This is, all of it, for your benefit in Christ!