Marriage or singleness - What's best? (1 Cor 7:6-7)

But this I say by way of concession, not of command. Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that. (1 Cor 7:6-7)

A concession means that an exception is made to the general rule. An accommodation made necessary by extraordinary circumstances. The rule that the exception is made to is the one we see in verse 2: Each man is to have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

Of course when a single man like Paul says that every man should have his own wife, it’s natural to ask why he doesn’t have one himself. If singleness is not spiritually superior to marriage, then why doesn’t he, as their spiritual father, take a wife.

Paul deals with this question with tremendous wisdom. He says he wishes everybody was like him; single and satisfied living his life in celibacy. But he also recognises that that his ability to be satisfied without a wife is a special gift from the Lord that not everybody has. From his vantage point he sees many advantages to being single. In stead of focusing on a wife and children he is able to devote his life totally and completely to Christ in ways that no married man can do. He is able to travel the world, to dangerous places where Christians are persecuted for Christ’s sake. All his time and energy can be put into proclaiming the Gospel.

It is important for us not to miss the last sentence in verse 7, though. Each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that. Like the Corinthians we’re inclined to ask the question “What is best?” The answer is that what is best depends on your calling and gifting.

If you are going to travel like Paul to preach the gospel in places where it’s likely that you and your family will face severe persecution, and in addition God has gifted you in a way that allows you to be satisfied as a single man without facing any great temptations because of it, then it is probably best for you to remain single, in the same way that it was best for Paul to be single.

However, if God has called you to be a husband and a father, or a wife and mother, then it’s probably best for you to marry.

As we go through the rest of this chapter over the next weeks, that will be a reoccurring theme. How you apply this chapter to your life depends on your particular calling and gifting. We don’t get absolute answers. Just the right questions to ask, so that we can find the right answer for ourselves in our unique situations.

Don't quote this verse to your wife (1 Cor 7:3-5)

The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control (1 Cor 7:3-5)

Paul goes on to warn married Corinthians, that there is no spiritual gain in abstaining from sex with your spouse. To the contrary, you owe it to each other, and depriving each other will put both of you in serious spiritual danger. If you do, you’ll be tempted to fulfill your God-given desires for marital intimacy in less God-honoring ways.

So false gnostic ideas of spirituality is what is in view here. That is what the verse talks about, and that’s the context in which we are to use it. But there is another use that is very tempting to some, and I want to take a couple of minutes to warn you against that use in hopes to bless your marriages and point out the importance of always practising good hermeneutics.

If you are blessed to be married, you’ve probably noticed that you are two separate people, and as such you are almost certainly different. And one of the differences that most often cause conflicts in marriages are the different levels of physical desires and needs.

I’ll direct this advice to the husbands, although some times it’s reversed. This is my challenge to you, men: If this is an area of conflict in your marriage, then make a commitment today to never quote this verse to your wife. You may win the argument with it, but you’ll lose your wife’s heart. In stead be a man and sacrifice for her. You be the one who yields to her! You find out what her needs are and meet them. Study your wife. Love her like Christ loves the church. Make her want you by loving her sacrificially. Not by legalistic duty.

Now notice that I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this Bible verse. What I’m telling you is that this verse is not for this use. The issue Paul is addressing is the idea that abstaining from sex in marriage makes you more spiritual. If that is the issue in your marriage, feel free to make an exception to my rule, and quote this verse to your wife every day. In that case this truth would liberate her to fully enjoy all of God’s gifts in marriage.

But most likely that is not your issue. That is not an idea that is very prevalent in our culture at all. So all you would achieve by quoting this verse is using guilt to pressure your wife to do something she for some reason is reluctant to do. There are two great dangers here. First you put her soul at risk by leading her into legalism. Second, you take away any inclination she might have to enjoy it. If you make sex a duty it will cease to be a joy.

With this in mind, we get to the exception that Paul makes. That is, that you may by mutual consent abstain for a period of time for the sake of prayer. There are times in our christian walk when we pray about certain things with great urgency. Often when we or someone we love are going through a great trial, or we have an important decision to make that we don’t feel a peace about. Whatever the situation is, God puts this urgency on our hearts and draws us into prayer in such a special way that everything else becomes unimportant. Even food. And this can go over a period of hours or days or longer.

I’m sure you would agree with me that if you are in such a state it’s not a good time for your spouse to come and suggest you take a trip to the bedroom. The good and understanding husband or wife will in stead join their spouse in prayer, and agree to put their immediate physical needs on hold until God has released their spouse from their calling to urgent prayer.

Abstaining from sex, in itself, is not spiritual, just as abstaining from food in itself is not spiritual. But some times you do it, not for the sake of false spirituality or legalism, but because God moves you to do it.

Hands off the ladies? (1 Cor. 7:1-2)

Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. (1 Cor 7:1-2)

Paul’s first sentence in this chapter invites us to do a little bit of speculation. What were the things about which they wrote? Actually it doesn’t take too much speculation to get a rough idea. In the rest of the chapter he answers questions about marriage versus singleness. Although the questions aren’t stated, the answers give us a pretty good idea of what kind of questions they might have been.

He answers that while singleness is good, marriage is also good, and each have their strengths and weaknesses based on the particular gifting you have, what your calling is, and other circumstances. He answers that those who are married to unbelievers should do their utmost to preserve those marriages. And he says that while those who are single have more freedom to serve the Lord, those who are married should not divorce so that they can share in this privilege.

Apparently the idea that celibacy was superior to marriage had gained some traction in Corinth. In some ways it’s easy to understand, considering the prevalence of sexual immorality there as we have seen in the last two chapters. And Paul himself was a single man, so perhaps they thought he would agree with them that, for the sake of avoiding such carnal pleasures, it was better to avoid sex altogether, even in the context of marriage.

That idea stems from a heresy known as gnosticism, and the basic premise it that the material world is inherently evil, and that there is a special knowledge (gnosis) that allows us to break free from the physical realm into the spiritual. This usually involves various practices of self-denial and self-abasement. Paul confronts this more directly in his letter to the Colossians:

If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. (Col 2:20-23)

So answering their first question he says yes, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. It is good for a man to live a celibate lifestyle, but only insofar as that doesn’t put him in a situation where he’s tempted to commit immorality. But because of the risk of immorality, every man who desires a wife should be allowed to have one, and every woman who desires a husband should be allowed to have one without being subjected to man-made commandments of self-abasement.

What you do to your body, you do to God's temple (1Cor 6:18-20)

Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. (1Cor 6:18-20)

Concluding this section dedicated to sexual immorality, Paul says flee from it. That means run. Run for your life. Run faster than you run from every other sin, because this one defiles you in a way that no other sin has the power to do.

If you’re like me, you’re tempted to say “Wait a minute. There are other sins that affects your body. How about drug abuse? Or suicide? That has to affect the body more than fornication”

If you still think of your body as merely a biological entity, you’d be correct in stating those objections, but Paul argues that since the Holy Spirit lives in you, your body is a temple. And the worst sin you can commit against a temple is not tearing it down. It is defiling it. Bringing that which is unclean into it.

The Lord never let fire rain down on the Roman army that destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. But when Nadab and Abihu approached God’s altar with a fire that wasn’t from God, he torched them alive (Lev 10:1-2)

Your body is a temple. It is holy, set apart for God. It doesn’t belong to you. It is his. He bought it at the price of his son’s blood. Therefore glorify God in it.

Don't prostitute Christ (1Cor 6:14-17)

Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, “THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.” But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. (1Cor 6:14-17)

The stomach and the food in it will pass away, we learnt in the last verse. But you are a member of the Body of Christ. And that is not temporary, but eternal. God raised him from his grave, to live eternally, and he has promised to raise us up to eternal life with him as well.

As members of the Body of Christ - his hands and his feet, his eyes and his ears and mouth - whatever we do with our bodies we also do with his body. If we prostitute our own bodies, we prostitute his body.

Now when Paul says “he who joins himself with a prostitute”, you need to know how common prostitution was in Corinth. In our culture prostitution is considered immoral, but it is not considered immoral to sleep with just about anyone you’re not married to as long as there’s no exchange of money involved. In Corinth it was almost the other way around. Ancient Greece was a society very much divided by class, and to defile a free woman was a very serious matter. A slave or a prostitute on the other hand was no big deal. So with the average age of marriage for men being 30 years, you can probably imagine how common this sin was.

In addition Corinth had a temple to the goddess Aphrodite. Like with modern paganism, Aphrodite worshippers saw sexuality as a pathway to religious experiences, and their ceremonies were very sexual in nature. That made the temple a natural marketplace for those who sold such services.

So when Paul is talking about joining oneself to a prostitute, he is not saying that prostitution is the only form of fornication that is wrong. But he’s addressing the most common form of fornication that took place in their culture.

While prostitutes were looked down upon, their clients were not accustomed to being under the same stigma. And telling them that if they sleep with prostitutes they are no better than them would be as strange to them as saying if you eat beef you’re no better than a cow.

But sex has the power to create a very unique and powerful union between a man and a woman. Indeed that was the purpose for which God created it. To tie a wife and a husband together for life with unbreakable bonds. Those who treat it as just another biological process soon end up discovering the pain for those bods being torn apart as you move from one partner to another. You have joined yourself to them. In Biblical terms, you have become one flesh with them.

Now when you make yourself one with a prostitute, than you’ve made yourself a prostitute. And if you are one spirit with Christ, if you are a member of his body, then you have prostituted him.

On eating forks (1Cor 6:13)

Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. (1Cor 6:13)

Some things are made for each other, and others aren’t. The stomach is for food. A couple of years ago, a dutch medical magazine published an article about a 52 years old woman who came to the hospital complaining about a stomach ache. They ended up giving her an x-ray that revealed that her stomach contained no less than 78 spoons and forks that she had swallowed.

When asked about it she gave the following explanation: “I don't know why but I felt an urge to eat the silverware - I could not help myself.” (Source: The daily mail)

I think you’d join me in saying that woman was insane.The stomach is not for forks and spoons. And if you swallow them it has serious repercussions for your health. Yes indeed. But don’t let yourself get of any easier. The body is not for immorality, and if you use it for that you are no less insane than that woman. And if I ask you about it, you’ll answer with sorrow-filled eyes, those words that so many have uttered before you: “I don’t know why but I felt an urge to commit immorality - I could not help myself”

The particular type of immorality in view in this verse is sex outside of marriage, as we talked about last time. It’s the same Greek word “porneia”.

My hope today is to get you to the point where you’d rather eat a fork than commit fornication. Not because I’m against sex, but because I’m for it. If you love food, you will not eat forks. Because you know that a stomach full of forks will hinder your ability to eat, enjoy and digest food. Now if I may be so blunt as to say this: If you love sex, you ought to know that a past full of sin will limit your enjoyment of it. Those old fork-wounds will add a constant pain of shame and regret to that aspect of your life that will follow you for many years.

Every hint of immorality counts. Don’t console yourself by saying “I haven’t gone all the way”, as if that is all that counts. I’ll tell you that if you’ve gone half the way you have half the wounds. And if you’ve gone half the way twice - well it doesn’t take more than two half forks to make a whole one, does it?

Now what you do with your stomach doesn’t really matter in the big picture. It is a temporal matter of appetite and biology. God will do away with both your stomach and the food in it. But as we will see in the next verse, sex is not merely a temporal matter of appetite and biology. It has eternal significance.

The wrong question (1Cor 6:12)

All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. (1Cor 6:12)

Does God allow us to sin?

It’s always hard to find right answers to wrong questions. And this question, that has apparently been posed in some form or another by the Corinthians, is most definitely wrong.

No doubt Paul had taught the Corinthians about Christian liberty when he worked among them. He would have preached the good news of a new covenant, where your relationship with God is not founded on works of the law, but on the Grace of God poured out on them through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

So if we asked “will God punish us for our sins”, the answer -- according to the Gospel -- is a loud, clear no! If God has given you new birth through his Spirit, then he also has by his sovereign decree chosen to love you unconditionally. No matter what you’ve done in the past, and no matter what you do in the future.

So doesn’t that mean the same as allowing us to sin?

The question still sounds odd, doesn’t it? It’s odd because it presumes that you want to sin. And as a born-again believer in Christ, you are overjoyed by the fact that God allows you not to sin. And you’re not -- or at least you shouldn’t be -- looking for a way back into the misery that God saved you from.

It’s kind of like asking “will God allow me to knock myself over the head with a two-by-four and then poke out both of my eyes with a rusty shrimp-fork?” Well, he may not have loved you any less if you were to do that, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not still stupid. And it doesn’t mean that there won’t be any consequences if you do it. Your head will still hurt, and you’ll still be blind, even if God still loves you.

Sin is the same way, only a lot more stupid, and with much greater potential to hurt both you and everyone you come into contact with. So are you “allowed” to do it? Is it lawful? If you still insist on asking the wrong question, than yes, it is “lawful”. But it’s not profitable. And it will master you.