This sermon explores Paul’s teaching on marriage and singleness in 1 Corinthians 7, contextualizing it within Greek philosophy and Corinthian culture. It emphasizes the sanctity of the body, the purpose of marriage as a defense against immorality, and the call to devotion in both states, all while highlighting God’s sovereignty and the completeness found in Christ.
Transcript
Introduction and Context
Last week we were looking at the last portion of chapter 6, and if you remember last week, we were talking about how Paul was interacting with ideas that the Corinthian church had and his contradiction of that kind of thinking. A kind of thinking that no doubt arose out of Greek philosophical thought. So we’re going to, I think there is a touch of that in the next section, so I thought maybe it would be appropriate just to review that just a little bit, the idea that the material things in this world don’t matter. So the Greeks, when they were thinking about this, they would fall on one of two sides. If material doesn’t matter, if your body doesn’t matter, then you can sin with your body in any way and it doesn’t matter.
What does your body really matter? So they had these slogans, something like verse 13,
Foods for the stomach, and the stomach for foods. God will do away with both of them.
And, the idea underneath that is that any kind of behavior that we have, sexual immorality for example, is just a hunger that the body has. It’s something that, it’s just satisfied, it’s just a need of the body and it doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s a physical thing. In the way the Greeks thought, all physical things were basically evil, so you’d move away from that. Well, Paul corrected that in the next few verses. He clears up that idea. He replaces that idea by saying that the Lord is for the body and the body is for the Lord.
He corrects the second part of that as well. It’s not that God destroys your body. In fact, God raises up the believer’s body and we’re eternal. There’s eternal purpose. Not just the spiritual has value, but the physical has value as well. God, you know, values the material world that He created, and He especially values the body. He demonstrates that, in this passage, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And the fact that His body is resurrected, and the fact that He will raise up all believers. And just the fact that Christ’s body is what He offered for the redemption of our sins demonstrates the value of the human body, how it can’t be taken lightly.
He goes on in these closing verses to point out that the body isn’t just valuable to the Christian who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. It is sanctified. It is holy. It is holy before God. So you need to be careful how you treat your body and what you do with it. And sinful immorality, which was the temptation in the culture in Corinth, was something that is not tolerable when you consider the sanctity of the human of who we really are in Jesus Christ.
Primary Scripture Reading
So, with that in mind, let me begin reading this next section, the teaching on marriage. So I’ll just read a few of these verses and then we’ll explore this passage. This is God’s holy and inerrant Word.
Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it’s good for a man not to touch a woman. Now because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife and each woman is to have her own husband. 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. 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. But I say this by way of concession and 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. But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry. For it’s better to marry than to burn. But to the marrying I give instructions, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband. But if she does leave, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband, and that the husband should not divorce his wife. But to the rest, I say not I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her. And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband. For otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave. The brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace. For how do you know, oh wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, oh husband, whether you will save your wife?
Marriage and Immorality
I’m not going to cover all of that this morning in all probability. We’re going to begin with this first section. The passage begins with that phrase “but concerning” or “now concerning” and then he explains that as the things about which you wrote. It’s kind of interesting, because First Corinthians is an epistle, it’s a letter, and it’s a true letter. So in this case, Paul is interacting with a letter that he’s received. So he’s talking about the things that they had written to him, and he brings up these items. And you find that throughout that little phrase “but concerning” introduces the element that they’re asking about, or a question about, or an idea that’s come up in a letter.
So he mentions that as he writes the letter back to them. You have it, it’s very clear in 7:1. You also have the phrase, you know, down in verse 25, in chapter 8, verse 1. Not not the whole statement, just the phrase “but concerning.” And so, each time you find that “but concerning,” you know, in 12:1, in 16:1, in 12, and all through Second Corinthians you see that. He’s introducing an idea that’s been brought up to him, so he’s interacting with it. So, one of the things that makes this a bit difficult is you don’t know the complete statement, so there’s, you know, you we struggle, as you read the passage and come to an understanding of it. Yet we trust God that He’s given us exactly what He intended for us to have.
So we have this precious letter from the Apostle Paul that’s been inspired by the Holy Spirit. He says,
Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it’s good for a man not to touch a woman.
Some versions say “not to marry.” But that’s probably, that’s probably too highly interpreted, in fact, I think it’s basically a wrong idea. It can lead you down the wrong path, it’s related, just a little bit wrong. Because, because the phrase, you know, “to touch a woman” really has to do with the act of marriage, not marriage itself. Has to do with a sexual relationship, whether that’s within a marriage or not, that’s all it’s really saying. That phrase was used, you only have it here in scripture, but you have the phrase used about nine times in antiquity, and in each time, each account, that’s the meaning. So it’s pretty clear that that’s what’s involved here, that’s the idea.
It’s interesting because this could be, and there is probably some element of it, the opposite way of taking that idea that material things don’t matter. Or that material things are evil. If you believe that, you know, as the as the Greeks worked out their philosophy in life, one way to go is that since material things don’t matter, we can do whatever we like. Anything is permissible, it doesn’t matter, we can do whatever we want with our body because it really doesn’t matter. But the other way is to say that these evil things, anything material, such as your body, is evil in itself. And so to practice it or pursue it in any kind of a way would be evil. And so it led to ascetic practices.
Paul rejects that. It comes up in a few places in the New Testament. And that idea is always rejected. It came about, you know, because of the Platonic philosophies and the incipient Gnosticism that was there in the First Century. But because of this wrong way of thinking, people would practice all kinds of ascetic things. Tor- torturing, starving themselves, denying themselves in all kinds of ways. But Paul rejects it. You know, in Colossians, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. That idea. And in Colossians, forbidding people to marry. In order them to abstain from certain foods. You know, all those who say these things. Rules like these don’t work to produce holiness or godliness. He says,
Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, but with their harsh treatment of the body, you know, in in regard to that, they lack any value in restraining sexual sensual indulgence.
And he warns this a heresy to prohibit marriage. He says,
For everything that God created is good and nothing is to be rejected if it’s received with thanksgiving.
So this whole idea, the basic idea that matter is evil, and that you abstain from matter, material things, that that whole concept, that whole worldview has got to be rejected. C.S. Lewis said, “There’s no good trying to be more spiritual than God.” He said, “God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature.” He said, “He likes matter.” He said, “He invented it.” And I think that’s really true. In light of last week’s, his pointing out to them the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the future resurrection of our bodies, the fact that God values the material as material, holy, as we are, both body and soul.
You know, it’s definitely not the topic. I’m just going to mention this as a as a quick aside. But one of the things that’s denied today is the soul. It’s kind of an interesting thing, what’s happened in our modern culture, because they have a kind of divide that takes place. You know, the divide that takes place is with the personality. The person takes the place of the soul. They don’t believe in a material, they believe that we’re just material matter, and that’s all that we are. But when a person becomes aware of himself as a child, they become, by definition, in the modern concepts, a person. We believe that a person becomes a person when the baby not emerges from the womb, but at the place of conception itself. Personhood is there. It’s not something that develops, it’s all of it, that whole person is there.
And so because of that, you know, let me just mention, not only is material things good, but it’s important, it’s a very important thing for us to keep in mind that we do actually have a spirit that comes from God. We have a a spirit as well as a physical body. And when we die, our body dies. It’s laid to rest in the ground, one day to be resurrected. And our spirit ascends to God. So that absent from the body is present with the Lord. And yet, in that intermediate state, however that is, the time will come when God will raise our mortal bodies and it will be immortal. It will be united with with the Lord forever. Body and soul. So he says, you know, it’s a complicated question if you’re just dealing with the phrase. Is it good for a man not to touch a woman? Well, yes, sometimes.
You know, you can’t say no to that, can you? Is celibacy wrong? Well, he’s not arguing with that. So you look at the care that he takes, as he goes through this passage. As he develops this idea. He says,
Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it’s good for a man not to touch a woman.
But he says,
Because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife.
That’s a present tense commandment.
And each woman is to have her own husband.
Now, he’s making an argument, I suppose for marriage from this. And yet, this is not his primary view of marriage. You know, he’s not, he’s not presenting his concept of marriage in this passage. Nor is he even giving the basic reason for marriage. That’s found, you remember in Genesis. It’s found in passage, you know, the the exalted state of marriage is found in passages of scripture like Ephesians 5:25, when Paul explains his his understanding of marriage and he says,
Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. He gave himself up for her.
Concessions, Gifts, and Marital Duties
So it’s a it’s a picture. Physical marriage is a picture of the spiritual relationship. The relationship that we have with God. A passage in Hosea says,
I will betroth you to me in righteousness.
Talking about Israel.
I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice and in steadfast love and mercy. And I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord.
It’s a relationship, and marriage pictures that really truly exalted relationship, and Paul explains this very clearly in other places. But here, he’s dealing with the Corinthian problem and the Corinthian circumstances and situation. And we’ve just gone through a couple of chapters of immoralities and dealing with immoralities. And so in the context of the Corinthians, one really good reason for them to pursue marriage is because of the immoralities, he says in verse 2.
Each man is to have his own wife.
To avoid the temptations, to to avoid the struggles with sin that’s prevalent in the culture. They’re surrounded in the city of Corinth with all kinds of temptations, all kinds of ways to sin against God, all sorts of things. You can go to any temple, you know, and there was all sorts of alluring things to bring them into the temple prostitutes.
And so he’s giving this commandment. He says,
Because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband.
Now that’s, again, not the the thing that establishes marriage or even the greatest reason for marriage, but it’s something to consider. It’s something to consider in our day, especially as we move into a culture that is very much Corinthian. You know, it’s a it’s really amazing how we have in this state of decline, spiritually and morally as a nation, over the past few decades, now more and more. You know, it’s a today a growing number of men aren’t bothering to get married at all. And that leaves women unmarried, of course. In fact, they’re not even dating. They don’t they don’t even pursue it. And the reason for that, overall, one of the reasons for that is because of internet pornography and their addictions to it. It changes the very way they think and what they do. And on that, about two thirds of Christian men who identify as Christians, about two thirds of them admit in surveys of of watching pornography at least every month. And that’s just about exactly the same rate as people who do not claim to be Christians. One survey, 54% of pastors said that they viewed pornography within the last year. And then you have other issues like cohabitation and all these things, who are even in the church.
You interview a Gallup poll interviewing teenagers who identified as coming from conservative Christian backgrounds, almost half of them said that cohabiting before marriage was a good idea, was it was okay. So yeah, we’re in a culture, it’s not too far off from the Corinthian culture. And just in light of the sinfulness of the world, in light of not giving yourselves over to the passions and sinful passions, marriage is one of God’s provisions against that. It’s blessed and it’s holy, and that’s not may not be one of the greatest reasons to get married, but it is definitely a a legitimate reason to seek a wife and pursue it. So he says,
Because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife and each woman is to have her own husband. And the husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband.
This is this is really an interesting thing, because he’s talking specifically to the married couple and what is called here, this is called conjugal rights.
But it’s interesting, as I was thinking about this and looking at it, the motivation here isn’t any different than any other part of Christian living. Christian living together. I mean, there there’s unique things here compared to other passages of scripture describing married life in the New Testament. For example, in verse 4 it says,
The wife doesn’t have authority over her own body, but the husband. Likewise also, the husband doesn’t have authority over his own body, but the wife.
It’s really pretty interesting, isn’t it? Because the question there is authority. Who has authority? You know, there’s a there’s a remarkable equality that comes up in verse 4, and it comes to this relationship in marriage life. Paul isn’t saying that the the husband, in this, because this is in a world that is absolutely man-centered, writing in the First Century, where women had no power, no authority over anything.
And he’s saying, the wife has authority over her husband’s body. The husband has authority over the wife’s body. But when it works its way out, the thing is, your care, your focus is for the other. You you’re your responsibility here is to meet the needs of the other, to to to show them love. Just like you do in every other aspect of Christian life, where you prefer the other more than yourself, and you seek that. This worked out should lead to great joy in any marriage. So he says in verse 5,
Stop depriving one another.
And I presume that that is directed especially in the Corinthian church, who was practicing some form of celibacy in marriage in order to pursue some type of holiness. That idea. He said,
Don’t don’t be doing that.
He’s saying.
Except by agreement for a time so that you can devote yourselves to prayer.
Just like when you might set aside food for a time of fasting, perhaps, with the purpose of devoting that time particularly, and the period of time particularly to prayer. I think that’s the the greatest purpose of fasting is that you are devoting this whole time, all of it, even the time that you would normally eat, you’re devoting that time to prayer, because devoting yourselves to prayer it it takes some time. It takes, you have to set things aside in order to do that.
And so you can do that, he says. But, you know, be careful with that. Just do that for a time. They agreed upon time.
And then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
And so you need to be tempered in the things that you do in your marriage, by passions that people have, naturally. And your care is to be for the other. And you’re to be cultivating the rich, blessed, holy, marital life together. As you give yourselves to each other and for each other.
Singleness, Persecution, and God’s Call
Then he says,
This I say by way of concession and 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.
You know, Paul is here Paul is talking about the relationship, um, that unmarried. He’s talking specifically to unmarried people. To somebody who might be a widow, or somebody who might be unmarried, and he’s saying it’s a concession, it’s not a command. He says, you know, the the idea of unmarried is applies, I think there’s some people that try to make that just to widows or widowers, and then widows. But I think that really he’s talking about any unmarried. I I don’t think that really holds up when you look at it. So unmarried is a broad term that includes all not bound by in in a state of marriage. And widows are singled out because they have special needs. You know, so they’re particularly vulnerable. And he says that he thinks it’s a good thing if they stay in a state of singleness. It would be better for them to do that, he says, if they’re able to.
And yet, that depends on whether they can do that without without sinning. If they have the right kind of self-control. If they have the gift that he has. So he’s saying my preference is that all men were like me. You know, it’s very clear here that Paul wasn’t married, and as he wrote this, it’s not at all clear that Paul was never married. Even though whether he was married or not doesn’t really direct direct the the our understanding of the of the passage, it’s still an interesting thing. Because it it seems highly probable that at some point in Paul’s life he was married. And that’s because of his of his Jewish upbringing. And the fact that he was devoting himself in the way that he was, Saul of Tarsus, to service for the Lord. Jewish men were required to be married, and and have children. Rabbi Eliezer said, “Any man who has no wife is no proper man.” And that was the way they thought about it. Everybody who was part of the 70 rulers of Israel, the Sanhedrin. In order to occupy that place, then you had to be married to occupy that place. Some people believe that Paul was one of those men because, in Acts 26:10, when he’s talking about his life as Saul of Tarsus, he was talking about his persecution of the church, and bringing people into, having people arrested. And then he says, he cast his vote to for for their death. In passages similar to that, make makes cause some people to believe that he may have been a member of the Sanhedrin. But if he wasn’t, he was certainly striving to make that place.
So, it’s likely that he would have followed all these things and pursued marriage, because that’s part of part of all of it. But, whether whatever happened to his wife is not given. There’s no mention of his wife at all in scripture. It’s probable that if he had a wife, that she she died. But there’s no mention of that, and we don’t know. And we don’t even know if he had a wife ultimately, but it just seems highly probable. He says, it depends. If you’re like me, he says, if you have a gift so that you can can have this type of self-control, then it’s better for you if you remain single. You know, one of the things that’s taking place in First Century Corinth, and throughout the Roman world, and something that Paul had experienced over and over, was persecution. For him to serve the way that he was serving was incredibly costly. And you’re going to bring a wife and a family into that situation. How are you going to be faithful to the Lord ultimately? How are you going to devote yourself fully to the Lord? Anyone who enters into ministry, maybe not anyone, but at least in my experience, if you enter into ministry, it’s going to cost you something.
It’s going to cost you maybe quite a lot. And it’s going to cost your family something. They have to give up for it, and sacrifice. Things that you would like to have for them. That’s what Paul is will be saying in this passage. You know, you you want to please your wife and your family. If you enter into ministry, there’s going to be costs to it. And so Paul says, in many cases, devoting yourself to the service of the Lord, at a time when there’s persecution and great costs, you don’t want to see your family suffering. Better not to marry at all. Avoid that. You have the freedom. One of the things that passages like this did in the early church, is that it really brought about great holiness. You know, the Lord did this, of course, the Spirit of God, in the lives of believers, had remarkable testimonies in the early church for their faithfulness and for their purity, sexually. And it was a powerful testimony. I mean, people were martyred. Some of the early martyrs were women, slaves, who refused to to engage in fornication.
And so, as a result, they were brutalized. And, uh, they were denounced and eventually martyred. You an example of this, just to to give you one example, is Agathae of Syria refused several offers of marriage. That’s not the example I’m looking for. Um. Anyway, I’m not going to remember her name either. So so so sorry, I don’t have that. I’ve got this here somewhere in these notes, but I apologize. Basically, one lady, uh, slave, it was during the Diocletian persecution. She refused her master. And so, as a result, he denounced her as a Christian. And so she was brought up to be martyred. And and when that happened, one of the prospects was to to turn her over to the gladiators for their amusement. And she said, “Why don’t you just, you know, drop me slowly into some up fat of oil.” And that’s what they did. They decided to do that. And her testimony was so incredible that many people came to faith, including one of her guards, who was martyred as well. I’m sorry, I don’t have her name in front of me and I should have memorized that, but I didn’t. I’m sorry. Another example, though, is women who decided to live a life according to what Paul has just recommended here. They had the capacity to live a moral life before God in singleness, and they chose that. And that was not something that was acceptable in culture either.
So, that’s where we get Agatha of Syria. She refused several offers of marriage, especially from a Roman magistrate named Quintilian. And he tried to coerce her by announcing her as a Christian, and this was also during the Diocletian persecution. And she didn’t change her mind. She was tortured. She eventually died in prison. A woman named Lucy rejected an arranged marriage in order to devote her life to the Lord, to distribute her fortune to the poor. Her betrothed denounced her as a Christian, and she too was executed. And the reason that they did that, the reason that they chose this lifestyle, is because they believed that they would be complete in Christ, as they were. They didn’t have to be married for completion. They were, uh, saying that just like Jesus Himself, who lived a a fully human life without marriage, without sex or romance, it’s possible to do that. And they felt the calling to do that, and to honor the Lord in such a way. So the lesson, you know, is that marriage is honorable. It’s blessed. It’s wonderful. And it’s the norm. That’s why you have these commandments. It’s the absolutely the norm. And singleness is the exception.
And yet, God calls some to singleness. And one of the things that that does is that it helps us realize that, you know, we can’t set up even marriage, as wonderful as it is, as something that could become even an idol in our life. So it puts it in its place, just a little. Wonderful thing. Marriage is, uh, wonderful. And the marriage bed is honorable. So all of these things, you know, come to play. We need to think about these things. We live in a culture that is twisted as philosophically as any any Greek thought. Some of it deriving from those that very kind of thinking. So we’re in a we’re a culture that is where there is a great spiritual struggle. And so we need to weigh these things out and the choices that we make. We need to see what our gift is. And we need to make sure that we pursue godliness in life. In marriage, even or in singleness. Need to remember that sin is not something that originates in our physical body. It originates in the heart. So we have so many passages like,
Do not lust in your heart.
Or,
The heart is greedy for unjust gain.
Or, God says,
I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.
And that, and Jesus said,
All things come out of a person’s mouth, comes from the heart, and these defile him.
The heart is the thing that we have to deal with. The heart of man is what is sinful. And when we find ourselves caught up in sin, we need to come to the Lord who offers forgiveness, and more than forgiveness. He offers strength and provision in Jesus Christ for genuine repentance and for sanctification, to remove those patterns of behavior from our lives. So God has given us great counsel in this passage. Let’s lift up this to Him and ask Father, our Father, for His grace.
Closing Prayer
Lord, we thank you for your mercy and grace in Christ. I thank you, Lord, for for the provision you’ve given us. I’m grateful to you, Lord, for for the creation that you’ve created, declaring this material world good. And bringing man, bringing man and and woman, and bringing them together in holy matrimony. marriage is both sanctified and is the order for all life in this world. And yet, Father, we recognize that we are in a spiritual conflict, in a sinful world today. And because of that, you give special gifts to certain people. And you bless all marriages. All marriages that are centered on you. So we pray, Father, for each married couple that you would especially bless them in their marriage. That you would encourage the love that they have for one another that’s centered in you. And Father, we pray also for any singles among us. We recognize, Lord, that there is nothing wrong with singleness. But Father, you can equip us there as well. And so we ask, Father, for your special grace on all of us. That you would use each unique situation, the married couple to especially be able to proclaim in such an exalted, wonderful way, the nature of your love for us. The relationship that you want believers to have with you. And Father, that you would bless each single person as they devote their life to you, maybe for a time, just singleness, and then marriage. But Father, for us, whatever state we are, we pray, Lord, that you would bless us so that we will truly be your servants, that your name would be magnified and glorified. So we ask this, Father, your great blessing in the name of our Savior, Lord Jesus. Amen.