A Good Gift
1 Corinthians: The Gospel for the Church • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 38:41
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The heading above these verses in my Bible (and in the Red Pew Bible in front of you) is really pretty good— “Concerning Married Life”. This is what these verses are about; the whole of 1 Corinthians 7, really is about married life, about marriage.
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Marriage, like the Impressive Clergyman says, is what brings us together today; sort of. We’re not going to have a wedding here this morning; we’re going to read what God’s Word has to say to us about marriage and married life.
After having instructed the Corinthian Christians in regard to their sexual integrity (chapters 5-6), Paul now takes a moment to speak to marriage.
Marriage, we must remember, is God’s idea. Marriage was part of His creation before the fall of man. Marriage, as defined by God, was part of His creation before sin entered the world. It’s a Genesis 2 institution, which means marriage was around before the sin of Genesis 3. This means something. Most importantly, though: marriage is God’s idea—this makes marriage good.
Marriage has been given us by God; this makes it a gift. It’s His idea and it’s Him who has given this to us. Marriage, then, is a good gift.
Paul is teaching us—the people of God who belong to Him by faith in Jesus Christ—Paul is teaching US what marriage should look like in the Church.
Considering what marriage looks like in the world today, considering what marriage has been and how it’s been perverted over the course of history—considering what we have done to marriage, we have a deep need for instruction on marriage. And not just any instruction. Instruction from God.
If you have your Bible (and I hope you do), please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 7. If you are able and willing, please stand with me for the reading of His Holy Word, out of reverence for Christ and allegiance to Him:
1 Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”
2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.
3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.
4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.
5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
6 I say this as a concession, not as a command.
7 I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.
8 Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do.
9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband.
11 But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.
12 To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.
13 And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him.
14 For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
15 But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.
16 How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!
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Christian marriage should be characterized by:
Oneness, not Division
Oneness, not Division
I could have said “unity”, but I like the idea of oneness more. There’s something distinct about marriage, something no other institution has: oneness. Business partners can be unified. Football teams can find unity. Only marriage allows for oneness.
The text doesn’t teach the idea of oneness as such, but it assumes it. Paul’s vision of marriage is dependent upon the teaching of Jesus which, of course, has its foundation in the Genesis account of creation. Jesus was there before and during Creation, eternally existing with the Father and the Spirit, and so, naturally, the ideal of marriage is from Him.
6 “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Marriage is a one-flesh union. All other aspects of our identity take a backseat to the oneness that we share with our spouse. Relationships to one’s family, friends, the opposite sex, and even oneself change upon marriage; they have to. The most important relationship on earth is the relationship you have with your wife or husband—not the relationship you have with your kids, not your parents, not your friends. This oneness with your spouse is the single most important earthly relationship.
We see this idea of oneness expressed especially in the sexual relationship of husband and wife (verse 4):
4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.
In a healthy marriage, there is a beautiful giving-up of one’s freedom to the other. Ultimately, the oneness of a couple and is intended to be drawn from and point to their mutual relationship with the Lord. Think about it like a triangle. As each spouse moves closer to Jesus, they’ll grow closer to one another.
Oneness should characterize our marriages. Unfortunately, many couples are living separated lives.
It’s possible to be one (legally, there’s a marriage license and a wedding photo album somewhere in the house); it’s possible to be one, technically, but to live two separate lives in practice (separate beds, separate bank accounts, separate activities). In many marriages, there isn’t a shared vision for life. There are two people in every marriage, but many never understand what it means to be one.
This division often gets expressed in the realm of sex, specifically withholding their bodies from their spouses.
Paul is speaking to Christians who were withholding their bodies from their spouses because of a twisted sense of spirituality.
They wrote to Paul, regarding all the sexual immorality and the tendency to get in trouble where sex was concerned; they concluded that (verse 1): “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”
“It’s better if I don’t touch a woman, even,” the Corinthians reasoned.
Instead of being one with their own wives, some Corinthian men were causing a division there, practicing a kind of celibacy in marriage.
I haven’t encountered the “it’s better for me spiritually to not have sex with my spouse” excuse, but withholding sex to get the upper hand, a withholding of sex due to disinterest and loss of passion, a withholding of sex to manipulate the relationship—those are common. It’s the opposite of oneness; it’s division.
Paul says, “Don’t.” The Corinthians wrote him:“It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” Paul says in response:
2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.
There was much opportunity for division, perhaps none more serious than sex outside the context of marriage—take, for instance, the man in 1 Corinthians 5 who was having sex with his stepmother or the people in chapter 6 who were visiting temple prostitutes.
Modern marriages are victim to the same type of thing—hopefully not the exact situations found here in 1 Corinthians, but certainly comparable situations: casual sex, multiple partners, adulterous affairs, fornication, pornography, one-night stands, sex parties, and on and on. (I thought last week was going to be the most awkward sermon in 1 Corinthians; I was wrong. And we’re just getting started).
Husband and wife are meant to be one. The world fails at this in myriad ways. Sadly, the Church isn’t much better than the world.
Marriage is good. Marriage is a gift. This good gift, within the Church and among her members, should be marked by oneness, not division.
Christian marriage should be characterized by:
Service, not Selfishness
Service, not Selfishness
It’s a beautiful thing when a husband and wife put each other’s needs before their own. When marriage is marked by selfless service, it distinguishes that marriage from so many others.
The general witness of the Bible teaches us to be more concerned about the other person’s interests before we concern ourselves with our own interests (this is true in marriage and in every relationship we have). Boy, how much better would everything go if we were more concerned about the other person than we were ourselves?
We could chat for hours and hours about how best to serve our spouses, but here in 1 Corinthians, the context of this service revolves around sex.
3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.
In the time of the Corinthians to whom Paul writes, men were in charge. In society, at home, wherever. It was a male-dominated culture. Women rose to the level of property, maybe. The needs and desires of women were rarely considered, though life was a little better for the Corinthian women than it was in other parts and at different times of the Roman Republic.
What Paul teaches here is radically progressive. Paul is claiming that women and men have equal rights in the marriage bed. Paul envisions sex as a means of serving one’s spouse.
There are some people who believe that sex for the Christian is limited to procreation. They aren’t reading this text if they claim the Bible teaches that sex is only for makin’ babies! Sex is meant to be enjoyed, it’s meant to be pleasurable for man and wife.
Married couples should have sex regularly, for mutual enjoyment and in order to remain holy.
5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Within the context of a faithful, monogamous marriage relationship between a husband and wife, sex is to be seen as selfless service. Look at verse 3 again.
3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.
Your Bible might translate marital duty as conjugal rights. There is, in other words, a debt that is owed between spouses.
Married people: you owe a debt to your spouse. You are responsible for the fulfillment of the sexual desires within the context of the marriage relationship.
Now, let’s be honest: this might be the only debt that’s fun to pay. And the one debt we can rejoice never gets paid off! This is a debt we never want to go away; a debt we want to be sure to pay.
Men, understand this: you owe it to your wife to satisfy her sexual desires. Sometimes that means sex; sometimes it means cuddling. Sometimes it means being vulnerable and conversant.
Ladies, same thing: you owe a debt to your husbands. You owe a debt to your husband to satisfy his sexual desires. Sometimes that means sex; other times it means sex.
Fulfill your marital duty, one to another. Do not deprive one another. This is the word of the Lord. This is how we serve one another within marriage. We don’t selfishly seek our own desires and needs be fulfilled; we selflessly seek to fulfill the need of our spouse.
Marriage is good. Marriage is a gift. This good gift, within the Church and among her members, should be marked by service, not selfishness.
Christian marriage should be characterized by:
Commitment, not Quitting
Commitment, not Quitting
Verses 10-16 of 1 Corinthians 7 deal with some of the extreme difficulties in marriage. Divorce, separation, differences in faith between husband and wife. The underlying teaching, however, is focused on the beautiful commitment that lies at the heart of marriage.
The Bible’s strict views on divorce stem from its even higher view of marriage.
10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11 But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.
Marriage is not to be interrupted by separation or ended in divorce. The marriage commitment works itself out with steadfast love; steadfast love that isn’t determined or altered by emotions or changes in one spouse or another.
For a married couple to stay together is not just “good”—it’s commanded by the Lord.
The burden of Christ’s command (when He spoke about divorce in the Gospels), the burden of His command was that the married should not be divorced. There are exceptions (i.e. sexual immorality (Matthew 5:31-32)). Jesus Himself mentions an exception.
But Jesus wouldn’t have said anything about marriage and divorce if He didn’t desire (and want us to desire) the married to stay married. There was already established teaching on divorce, but Jesus had something to say about it, tightening up marriage, making sure it meant more than the world made it.
Old Testament law allowed a man to divorce his wife with a certificate of divorce for about any reason, for something they found indecent—anything from a physical defect, to finding another woman more attractive, to the wife’s ruining a meal—all sufficient grounds for sending away one’s wife.
Roman law permitted either a husband or wife to initiate a divorce with no stated cause required.
For the Christian, there must be a resistance to divorce, to separation. We commit; we don’t quit. Verse 10—a wife must not separate from her husband; Verse 11—a husband must not divorce his wife; Verse 12—he must not divorce her; Verse 13—she must not divorce him.
Our marriages must be marked by commitment, not quitting...
One of my all-time favorite quotes is by a blind, 19th-Century Scottish theologian named George Matheson. He writes, “Sometimes we conquer, not in any brilliant fashion, but by continuing.”
Sometimes this life, everything it throws at us…sometimes marriage, all the ups and downs, the good and the bad, the better and the worse, sometimes we can do little more than continue and not quit; sometimes all we can do is double-down on our commitment and not give up.
“Sometimes we conquer, not in any brilliant fashion, but by continuing.”
For the Christian, we must do all we can, with all the strength we have, to maintain our marriages, even if we’re married to someone who doesn’t share our faith.
There were probably a lot of Corinthian Christians who had been converted, while their spouse hadn’t been. I imagine the scenario was repeated again and again—husband became a Christian and the wife didn’t, or vice versa. This would make for an interested dynamic in their marriages.
Paul says where the believer is concerned, don’t divorce the unbelieving spouse, but:
15 But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.
We, brothers and sisters, don’t quit. We are committed to making the marriage work, no matter what.
And, friends, here’s the thing: in the age of disposable marriage and starter marriages, when the world just moves on to the next, Christians make a stand and declare, “Hey, you know, sometimes we suffer the same painful stuff any other marriage does. We hurt our spouses, same as the world. But we believe there’s a better way; so we work at it. And Christ gives us the strength and the grace and forgiveness we need to love and forgive and build the marriage back up.”
Our marriages, our commitment, our refusal to quit are a mere shadow of Jesus’ love for us, Jesus’ commitment to us, Jesus’ grace shown to us.
Marriage is good. Marriage is a gift. This good gift, within the Church and among her members, should be marked by commitment, not quitting.
>Marriage is a good gift and we should treat it as such. Marriage is a gift, and so is singleness. Did you see what Paul said in verses 6-9?
6 I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7 I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.
8 Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. 9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
It’s likely Paul was married at one time because marriage was required of rabbis in his day. If Paul was an ordained rabbi, he must have been married for a while, but nothing is known about his wife or what happened to her. Paul is single, possibly widowed. Or it’s possible his wife left him after his conversion to Christianity.
Paul says singleness is a gift—a charisma—and so is marriage. One has this gift, another has that.
If you’re single, you are not second-class in any way. In fact, Paul recommends it; the single person is much more available and doesn’t have outside concerns—a spouse or children. It’s good…to stay unmarried.
When I got out of college and was working at a multi-staff church, one of the pastors told the music minister to go home, that she had spent too much time at the church that particular week. And then he said something that, in the moment, rubbed me the wrong way. He said, “The only one of us who can work 70-80-90 hours a week is Barrett.”
It struck me wrong, but it was the truth. I didn’t have a wife or a family. I had more freedom than any other staff member; singleness was a gift in that way.
If you’re single and don’t long for marriage; if you’re single and can remain celibate, abstaining from any sexual act, Paul says singleness is good.
Marriage=good. Singleness=good. Both are valuable in the Kingdom of God.
Bryan Crawford Loritts: “If you read the Bible, God has created 3 institutions for human flourishing. In order, the first institution He creates is marriage (Genesis 2); the second, Government; and third, the Church. These three institutions are gifted by God for human flourishing.
In other words, one of the primary weapons that God wants to use to evangelize the culture for His glory is your marriage. I want you to feel the weight of that. There is a call on your marriage, and your marriage is to tell the truth about who God is in a lost and dying world.”
Whether married or single, understand that the way we conduct ourselves will speak volumes to the world around us.
We might be in a situation where our relationship with Christ makes an impact on our spouse—who knows, you might just end up leading your husband pr your wife to the Lord? Who knows, the Lord might use you to draw your children to Himself? Who knows?
What a gift we’ve been given! Let us, the people of God, strive for oneness; may we serve our spouses well; and commit to one another, refusing to quit. And in this way, would we make it clear that we are not our own; we have been bought at a price. Whether married or single, we are Jesus’ people and He has given us this good gift.