Sermon

1 Corinthians 6 — Honoring God Through Sexual Purity

February 9, 2003

Last week we saw Paul encourage the church to discipline, in love, a member who was involved in sexual immorality. You recall that Paul took pains to tell the believers that he was not calling them to remove themselves from the world (see 5:9-10). But he was urging them to hold high the standards for those who were professed parts of the body (5:11). Believing in Jesus should make some real, observable difference in the way we live our lives. They were not to pass judgement on outsiders, but they were to pass judgement on insiders. It seems they, like we today, had gotten kind of confused about that.

Perhaps because of the nature of the persistent sin in which this man under scrutiny in 5:1 was involved, Paul gives special emphasis in chapter six to the whole notion of the honoring God through sexual purity. Paul seems to calling the Corinthians to honor God through sexual purity and propriety.

In 6:9 Paul asks a provocative question: “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God?”

That question alone is one that many people in our culture will have trouble with. You see the notion of universalism (the idea that God will save everyone if they are basically “good” people) has been poured out so liberally over this culture that it is, in fact, what most folk take for granted as truth. It has even seeped into the church. We have been guilty of promoting an “easy-believism,” telling people that they have to walk the aisle and be baptized but failing to demand a life of obedience and holiness as the fruit of real conversion.

But Paul’s question shatters that illusion. Paul maintains that some will not inherit the kingdom of God because of their moral and ethical perversity in this life. You see, for Paul, it matters a great deal what we do in this life. It has eternal consequences.

That’s why Paul says: Do not be deceived (v. 9). And then he goes on in vv. 9b-10 to list a whole catalogue of vices that are condemned: “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters or adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

We note that from this list of ten particularly sinful behaviors, at least four of them are particularly related to sexual sin. In vv. 12-20 Paul will focus on this dimension most particularly.

Paul, no doubt, gives focus to this issue, because it was a particularly vexing problem among the Corinthians believers.

Corinth was a port city like New York or San Francisco. It was a thriving commercial center and one the largest and most prosperous places on the globe. It was a place of diverse religious and ethical viewpoints. Corinth was known not only for its prosperity but also for its immorality. In fact, the Greek comic playwrite Aristophanes coined the phrase “to act like a Corinthian (korinthiazesthai)” which meant “to fornicate.” In the center of ancient Corinth, on the Acrocorinth, there had been the commanding temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. The historian Strabo wrote that there were over a thousand cultic prostitutes who served in that temple. One commentator I read, however, I think accurately observed that it would be wrong to play up the licentiousness of Corinth, since it was probably no worse than any other large commercial center of its day (see R. B. Hays, I Corinthians, 4).

In the midst of this pagan environment there was this tiny band of believers. This tiny group who felt that their lives had been claimed by Christ. Their problem, then, is the same problem we believers face today. That is, the world influences us more than we influence to the world. They were apparently adopting the ways of the world and accepting its weak values rather than being obedient to the ways of God.

Let’s look at the list that Paul provides of things that can hold us back from entering into the kingdom of God:

1. Sexual immorality (porneia; KJV: fornicators). This is a general term that refers to sexual intimacy shared outside the bounds of covenant marriage.

One of the great lies that is told today is that Biblical Christians are sexual kill-joys. That we have hang-ups about sex. That we are repressive and Victorian.

This is absolutely wrong. The Bible tells us that God made us in the beginning as sexual beings. He made us male and female, and this was part of the original goodness of creation. God literally made us to fit together perfectly. In Genesis 2:23-25 we read Adam’s response to the creation of Eve:

23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman, ‘for she was taken out of man.”
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

If you want to read a beautiful love poem to your spouse just pick up the Song of Songs. How could anyone read that book and say that the Bible has a repressive view of romantic love and sexuality?

Jesus blessed marriage in Matthew 19:4-6 when he said:

4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’
5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?
6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

You see the Bible blesses our sexuality. It is God’s gift of intimacy for us. But with one crucial qualification: It is only to be enjoyed between a man and woman who have made an exclusive covenant commitment in marriage to one another for a lifetime.

All else falls infinitely short of God’s good design for us.

That’s why in Hebrews 13:4 we read:

Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.

2. Idolatry. The Corinthians were encircled with pagan practice, including cultic worshipped that encouraged immoral behavior. Some were slipping into the ways of the world. They had developed spiritual Altzheimer’s, forgetting whose they were and to what the Lord had called them.

3. Adulterers. The prohibition against adultery is included in the ten commandments. To be unfaithful to one’s spouse and the covenant vows you have made is to endanger one from entering the kingdom.

I heard Adrian Rogers preaching a sermon in which he said that when a man commits adultery he is saying to his children: Your mother isn’t worth much; your father is a liar; and your needs aren’t that important to me.

Of course, Jesus upped the ante when he said in the Sermon on the Mount:

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’
28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
29 If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

4. Male prostitutes (malakoi) and homosexual offenders (arsenokoitai).

This is one of the places in scripture where we have a clear prohibition against homosexual practice.

The early Christians adopted this viewpoint from their reading of the Old Testament. Leviticus 18:22 says: “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable” (cf. Lev 20:13).

More important that this is just the general way that homosexual practice is a sinful rebellion and rejection of God’s good design for humanity in Genesis 1-2, as Paul points out in Romans 1:21-31.

Occasionally we will hear someone say that Paul was just addressing violent homosexual practice in which one person took advantage of another and that if he knew of contemporary loving, monogamous homosexual partnerships, he would not be disapproving. That is balderdash. The ancient world knew all about homosexual practice. We can read of it in the accounts of the great Philosopher Socrates and in the lives of the Roman emperors. The problem was not that Paul did not understand homosexuality. The problem was that it fell short of God’s original good design for humanity and was a false alternative that was to be rejected by those who sought obedience to God.

What about the person who is “born gay”? someone may protest. If God made them that way, who are we to tell them to act against their nature? But you see the Bible teaches us that sin has pervaded human existence. Those of us who are heterosexuals have our own struggles with lust. Our sinful nature tells us that we should gratify our desires as we like. But God’s law stands over our lives. The person who struggles with homosexuality is held to the same standard as any other person: No sexual relationship outside the bounds of a one man, one woman, one flesh union in covenant marriage that lasts for a lifetime.

5. Thieves. Again, the ten commandments enjoin: Thou shalt not steal (Exod 20:15). We are not to take or claim what is not ours.

Cf. Ephesians 4:28: He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.

6. Greedy. This is addressed again in the basic ten commandments when we are told not to covet, or inordinantly want or desire, that which belongs to someone else. We are not to desire to pile up things for ourselves that we are unwilling to share with others.

7. Drunkards. These are those who lack the fruit of self-control (Gal 5). They try to escape this world by numbing themselves to the experience of it.

8. Slanderers. These are those who use their words to tear people down rather than build them up. They are a verbal wrecking crew.

9. Swindlers. These are those who misrepresent themselves in order to take advantage of the good will of others.

At the end of this list, Paul repeats that these sorts will not “inherit the kingdom of God” (v. 10). I can just see this letter being read aloud as Paul knew it would. I can hear the chorus of “Amens” rising. “That’s right, Paul,” I can picture them saying, “You let’em have it.”

And then in v. 11 comes the “Aha” moment: “And that is what some of you were.” This connects with Paul’s previous point. This is what we should expect from those who live by the world’s standards. It comes as no surprise. This is the way of those who live outside the bounds of God’s word, in ignorance of his revealed way. This is the way we all were, before God drew us to himself in Jesus.

The gospel always has a “before” and an “after” picture to place before us.

Paul says, “And that is the what some of you were, but ....” (v. 11). Isn’t that a wonderful little word? “But.” But you were washed. This may refer to baptism. It is not merely the washing with water but the new birth, the new creation, and the accompanying forgiveness of sins. But you were sanctified. Sanctification is the process by which God calls us into greater purity, holiness and faithfulness. But you were justified. This is being set right with God. It is having the blood of Christ and the righteousness of Christ applied to our lives through no merit of our own.

I love the way Paul can speak here of sanctification as if it is an already achieved objective. In fact, for those in Corinth and for all of us, it is a work in progress. God is sanctifying us.

John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace,” the man who had been a slave trader and renegade till God changed his heart is reported to have said: “I am not what I should be, but by the grace of God, I am not what I used to be.”

These believers had not yet arrived. Paul was encouraging them to seek greater holiness. I heard evangelist Luis Paula the other night on PAX television. He was speaking to a large group of teens and young adults. And he was speaking about God’s call to sexual purity. He told them to look at him, a 67 year old Grandpa, but not to think for a second that he no longer had to struggle with sexual purity. To have temptation is not a sin, and it will be something we will always struggle with because of our sinful nature. The sin is to give oneself wholly over to those temptations. God calls us to something beyond what we can achieve. Gary Chapman tells couples that getting married does not mean that you will never have the “tingles” for someone else. In the same way, we might say that becoming a Christian does not mean that all sexual temptation will cease. In fact, it may even intensify as the devil attempts to harass one who has gone over to his enemy and mock your conversion. But Paul calls us here to persist in holiness.

Some at Corinth apparently had a different answer. They thought that the answer was just to throw off any repressive restraints and say that anything goes. Paul quotes one of their slogans in v. 12: “Everything is permissible for me.” And he answers: “But not everything is beneficial.” He quotes it again: “Everything is permissible for me.” And answers: “But I will not be mastered by anything.”

Isn’t it funny how that answer still prevails among so many today? Let’s throw off all restraint and let anything goes!

Some have seen this as a way of liberation. Let’s get rid of all the prohibitions and rules and give people unbridled access to satisfy their sexual appetites.

This was the answer of the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Social crusader Margaret Sanger paved the way for this in movement by adamantly opposing “’the moralists’ who preach abstinence, self-denial, and suppression.” She described Christian ethics as “the cruel morality of self-denial.” She said that sexual liberation was the answer for society’s problems: “Remove the constraints and prohibitions which now hinder the release of inner energies, [and] most of the larger evils of society will perish” (Sanger as quoted in Charles Colson, How Now Shall We Live? Adult Workbook, 103).

Sanger was joined in this crusade by Alfred Kinsey who used questionable scientific method to argue that sexual expression be separated from morality by reducing sexuality to “a sheer biological act of physical orgasm. He then claimed that all [sexual acts] are morally equivalent – whether between married or unmarried persons, between people of the same or opposite sex, between adults and children, even between humans and animals. His model was the animal world.” (Colson, 104).

Chuck Colson says of those that engineered this revolution: “They have made biblical morality out to be the source of evil in the world. According to these people the problem that causes evil is not breaking the ten commandments; for them the problem is the ten commandments” (102).

In our society, with so much emphasis on sexual freedom and sexual expression, what has been the result? Now we have the internet and the ubiquity and easy access of pornography. Has this eliminated all the evils of society? Has it led to greater satisfaction in people’s lives? No. Instead we find that most folk are like men lost at sea, dying of thirst, and drinking salt water that, far from alleviating their thirst, actually draws from them the precious little they had.

The living waters are only found in living life God’s way, by the pattern he has set out for us in his Word.

C. S. Lewis’ shared these comments on “sexual morality” from Mere Christianity:

Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it: the old Christian rule is, “Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.” Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong. One or the other. Of course, being a Christian, I think it is the instinct which has gone wrong.

But I have other reasons for thinking so. The biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair the body. Now if we eat whenever we feel inclined and just as much as we want, it is quite true that most of us will eat too much: but not terrifically too much. One man may eat enough for two, but he does not eat enough for ten. The appetite goes a little beyond its biological purpose, but not enormously. But if a healthy young man indulged his sexual appetite whenever he felt inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then in ten years he might easily populate a small village. The appetite is in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its function.

Or take it another way. You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act–that is, to watch a girl undress on stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let everyone see, just before the lights went out, that is contained a mutton chop of a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think that there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct among us?” (75).

Paul’s attitude, the Biblical attitude, is not that just because the appetite is there that that we ought to indulge it. Some in Corinth were apparently saying something like that: “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food” (v. 13). Paul answers: “God will destroy them both” (v. 13).

Then I think Paul succinctly states the Biblical perspective on sexuality: “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (v. 13). Note Paul does not say that this body is not meant for sexuality. Remember, that is God’s good gift. He says it is not meant for sexual immorality. But it is meant for the Lord. Our bodies are living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to the Lord. Paul is saying that we are not like animals and that our sexual identity is not just another biological function like any other.

In v. 14 a promise is expressed. Just as God raised Jesus from the dead, he will one day transform our bodies. When God saves a man he saves not just his soul or spirit, but he saves all of who we are.

For those who struggle with lust, remember this, one day God is going to take away our bent to sinning and make us whole. For those who carry around guilt from promiscuity, for the believer whose body has been ravaged by AIDS, there is coming a day when God will raise us as he did Jesus, the firstfruits.

In v. 15 Paul says that our very bodies have become part of Christ himself. I don’t think we should spiritualize that statement. We should take it literally. Paul says to the Corinthians: “Shall I take the members of Christ and join them with a prostitute?” He answers: “Never!” (me genoito, God forbid!). Drawing a parallel with the “one flesh” idea of Genesis 2 Paul says that our sexual activity has spiritual consequences. In v. 17 he reminds the believers that they are now united with Christ. To participate now in sexual immorality is to blaspheme the one we worship by drawing him into it through us.

In v. 18 Paul comes to the conclusion of this chapter and he gives this one, simple prescription to the believers: “Flee from sexual immorality.” His answer is run and run fast and run hard. Gary Chapman says that if you keep meeting a pretty young thing at the water cooler and you’re tempted to enter into an adulterous relationship, there is only one answer: Don’t go to the water cooler. If you have a problem with internet pornography, there’s one thing you can do. Get rid of the internet. If you have trouble with the images you see on tv, turn it off or get rid of it altogether.

The second sentence in v. 18 I think is a deep Christian truth that the world is trying hard to tell you is not true. Sometimes, for example, you will hear it said that Christians are prudes. Why do we pick on homosexuals? Why not talk about gluttony or greed or gossip?

Paul says: “All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.”

The Bible recognizes the incredible power of sexuality. God gave it as an incredible gift. He gave it to draw a man and woman into a beautiful bond of intimacy. But our sinfulness has distorted that. And now its misuse outside those God ordained boundaries can lead to scars and wounds that run deep and can damage not just the body but also the spirit and psyche of a person. Therefore, it is a part of our lives to be guarded and protected.

So, in the end, our sexual expression is not about our freedom or our autonomy. When we become believers we lose control of our lives. That is what Paul gets at in vv. 19-20:

19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

When we become believers, Christ invades our lives. Our bodies become his. We can put a sign outside: “Under new ownership.” And he cares what we do with ourselves. He cares with whom we sleep with. We are no longer in charge of those decisions. He has bought us.

The thing that the world does not understand is that we do not see this as his restriction of us or of our “rights.” We see it for what it is: our liberation, our freedom, our salvation.

Jeffrey T. Riddle
Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church

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Sermon

1 Corinthians 6 — Honoring God Through Sexual Purity

February 9, 2003

Jeffrey T. Riddle Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church

Jeffrey T. Riddle
Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church