Christian Perspective of Morality
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11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
We left off last week with
YOU ARE WASHED.
YOU ARE SANCTIFIED.
YOU ARE JUSTIFIED.
IN THE NAME OF JESUS
BY THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT
Paul was aware of the fact that some of the Corinthians were yet practicing sexual sins and were justifying themselves on the ground of Christian liberty.
Paul now deals with this problem.
Unless you really know the Lord Jesus Christ, unless you’re a Christian, unless you understand what it is to live for God, this kind of a morality is going to seem a little bit in left field. But this is what the Bible teaches.
You see, the Corinthians had rationalized their sexual activity just like people today do.
There are plenty of people who in the name of religion say, “Ah, you know, everything’s taken care, we’re free in religion, Christianity’s made us free, so we live it up.”
There are plenty of other people, don’t you hear this all the time? Say, “What’s the big deal about sex; it’s only biology, right? I mean, we’re only animals. You don’t get upset when dogs do it, why do you get upset when we do it?” You hear this all the time. “Man, it’s just a biological thing, it’s there, you do it, you don’t get all up tight about it, it’s amoral.”
Now the Corinthians had done the same thing. And, of course, they had a problem, too, because they lived in the city of Corinth and Corinth was synonymous with sex.
In fact, the verb “to corinthinize” meant to have sex with a prostitute, That’s how attached Corinth was to that kind of life.
So they were saying, “Hey, our environment is overwhelming man, we figured out theologically it’s all right and philosophically it’s just a biological act and no big deal so we’re doing it.”
So, here are the Corinthians, carrying another one of the cruddy things of their former life into the church. And this is the problem with every single difficulty the Corinthian church had.
In the first four chapters,—What problem did Paul deal with? Division in the church. You know why they were divided in the church? They were divided over human leaders and human philosophy. Both of those were carry-overs from their former life.
In chapter five, the evil in the church was the evil of failing to discipline sin. A carry-over from their former lives when they were tolerant of sin.
In chapter six, the sin that we saw the last time we studied it, was the sin of suing one another and you remember, the Corinthian society loved to have lawsuits and they just carried that over into their Christian life.
And here they were immoral before they were Christians, they just carried that over into their Christian experience.
So, all of the evils there were just dragged in from their former life. And Paul’s going to hit another one of them, here it is, he’s going to hit the sin of immorality and he’s going to take apart their rationalization.
He begins with...
The Convenience of Sins:
The Convenience of Sins:
12 All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.
People always have and always will look upon the desires and urges of the body …
• as normal functions
• as natural instincts
• as needing to be fulfilled
Therefore, they set out to fulfill the desires of their body. In fact, their body—its beauty and health and satisfaction—becomes the primary purpose of their lives. They work, eat, sleep, and socialize to fulfill the body’s desires and urges. Whatever their bodies desire is what they go after, and they see absolutely nothing wrong with satisfying their desires, for the desire is a natural function of their body.
The point is this, and it is surprising to many in the world: the Scripture not only agrees with a person’s liberty and freedom, it teaches personal liberty and freedom. Personal liberty is taught throughout Scripture under the subject of Christian liberty.
Now note the clear statement: “All things are lawful unto me.” God has made man and his body, and He has made everything in the world, and it is all good. Therefore, all things are lawful to a person.
“All things are lawful unto me but all things are not expedient.”
Stop right there. Now he says all things are possible within the area of grace but all things are not expedient.
That word comes from a Greek word, sumphero which means, “to profit,” p-r-o-f-i-t. All things are allowable but they’re not all profitable. God will forgive, but, man, the price is high.
Immorality is one of those things that God forgives. If you as a Christian do that, some of you undoubtedly have committed adultery or fornication as Christians, if you have done that, God has forgiven, totally and completely by the blood of Jesus Christ in His grace. But there’s a price to pay. There’s a high price because there’s harm built into that sin.
The Control of Sins:
The Control of Sins:
12 All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.
Look at 6:12 again. “All things are lawful for me,” in the middle of the verse,
Note the strong statement of Paul:
“but I will not be brought unto the power of any.”
The Greek verb “to be brought unto the power” means to come unto the domination of or the power of something. And it really means to enslave. I will not be enslaved. And there is no more enslaving thing than sexual evil. This thing wants to subject and it does.
No man is to become a slave to any thing on this earth. Man is supposed to control all things upon earth and to be enslaved by none of them: not food, drink, drug, substance, desire, urge, or anything else.
Man is to preserve his self-control; he is to control the substances of this earth and not be controlled by them. The health of his body and its emotions, of his mind and its intelligence, of his spirit and its destiny depends upon his controlling his body and not allowing it to become enslaved to the things of this earth.
Thought 1. Indulging the appetites of the body is one of the great sins of believers. No matter what society may accept and we may think, it is a gross sin to allow our bodies to become enslaved by any substance or thing on this earth.
All sin has a progressive element
All sin has a progressive element
Illustration: from holding hands to putting arm around to kissing, to going all the way.
Illustration: Cigarette smoking and marijuana are considered gateway drugs.
In the name of Christian liberty, the Corinthian Christians have lost their freedom and have become slaves to their own desires.
3 For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:
4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;
You have to get control of your body, your flesh, your urges and desires.
13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
26 I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:
27 But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.
Have you ever fought your body?
Paul says I keep under literally meaning “give a black eye”.
I have to beat my body into subjection.
Why? Because even as a preacher I could become a … what?… castaway.
Some who even once preached and because they didn’t give their body a black eye and their lusts ran away with them and they sinned, they have become castaways, set apart from usefulness to God.
Sin is a slaving thing and particularly this thing of lust becomes a driving compelling dominating passion and men are taken captive.
The Corruption of Sexual Sins:
The Corruption of Sexual Sins:
Sin not only harms, enslaves—sex sin—, but it perverts, verse 13.
Paul gives three distinct purposes and designs for our bodies that are perverted by sexual sin.
13 Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.
“Foods for the body,” verse 13, “and the body for foods.” That was their little statement. He says, “Wait a minute, but God shall destroy both it and them.”
You can’t say, “Well, look the body’s for food and food’s for the body and sex is for the body and the body’s for sex … just, that’s all there is to it. Just biological.”
You can’t say that, because God is going to destroy food and God is going to destroy stomachs, that’s the real word here, stomach. God is going to wipe that out.
But the body is not for sexual sin, it’s for the Lord and the Lord is for the body and I’ll prove it to you,
14 And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power.
because God has both raised up the Lord and will also … what?… raise up us by His power.
Do you know why your body is different?
Because your body someday is going to be what? Raised up.
Your body isn’t just a temporal commodity. There’s coming a time in this world where we’re going to be raised.
The Rapture … some … we’re just going to go, from the graves the bodies are going to be brought out of the grave.
You say, “What if there’s nothing left?” That’s no problem for God; He just makes them all come together. We’re going to be in heaven in bodies literal bodies.
And so he’s saying—Look, food-that is eating, the necessity for eating, the digestive processes of the stomach—that will all cease. God will wipe that all out. But the body, you, the total man incorporated in that flesh, that is going to be glorified and transformed into heaven. So don’t think that the biology of eating is equal to what you do with your body. In terms of its union, there’s a big difference.
Now he gives three distinct purposes. First of all,
Your Body is for the Lord
Your Body is for the Lord
13 Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.
Eating is a natural function but sex is far more than a natural function, people.
Sex, listen to his, is a spiritual union. It transcends the biological.
God says I’m going to destroy stomachs and I’m going to destroy food, but bodies? No.
The Bible never says God’s going to destroy eternally the body. That body is going to be glorified. The body of a Christian is going to spend its eternity with Jesus Christ in a glorified state our bodies are not just biological commodities. They have biological aspects and biological functions but they are far beyond that.
Between food and the stomach there is a horizontal line. Between my body, my person and the Lord, there is a vertical relationship and it must not be defiled because God wants me presented to Jesus Christ a chaste virgin, right? Spiritually.
For a Christian to commit sex sin breaks and destroys the vertical relationship. The two are incompatible.
Paul says you can’t use that argument, it doesn’t make it. Your stomach was made for food but your body wasn’t made for sex, it was made for God. And within God’s will, sex is included in marriage, outside of that you violate it. And the proof of it is in verse 14, God’s going to raise your body out of the grave.
Don’t defile that thing which was designed to spend eternity with Him. You can’t say sex is for the body and the body for sex. The body is for the Lord.
Your Body is One With Christ
Your Body is One With Christ
15 Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.
16 What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.
17 But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.
When you were saved, you were joined to Christ.
Everyone of us is a member of his Body.
22 And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church,
23 Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.
5 So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.
We’re all made one with Christ in His body. And if we are committing acts of sin, we are joining Christ to that prostitute. God forbid. Sex sin is sickening. It is unthinkable that I would use Jesus Christ in a sex relationship.
Could you imagine if Christ was on earth going to Him and saying, “Lord, I am going over here to commit adultery, would You please come and partake with me?” You say, “Bro. Donny that’s blasphemous.” You better believe it, but it’s no more blasphemous than a Christian committing adultery because he’s dragging Christ into it, right? You’re a member of Christ.
Sex is a union of two becoming one. Thus in a Christian’s immorality there is the most gross profaning of making Christ one with that sin.
Sex is not just Biological -
Sex is Spiritual -
Sex is the Union of 2 becoming 1 that’s the way God designed it. It unites two people.
That’s why the Old Testament says when there are two single people, if a man lies with a woman then he marries her. Why? Because they’ve consummated a spiritual union.
And that’s why the Bible says that when adultery is committed, that’s grounds for divorce. Why? Because they have consummated a union outside the marriage.
Two becoming one is not just biological as the integrating of two people in the deepest parts of their being.
The Corinthians or any Christian who commits an act of sexual sin drag Jesus Christ into it.
16 What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.
When you unite with a prostitute, you become one flesh with at prostitute in the deepest sense of communion of your beings.
The sex act is not just biological, it is the uniting of two persons in the deepest most intimate sense. And when you do that with a prostitute, you’ve drawn a union with that prostitute.
When you do it with somebody outside your marriage, you’ve drawn a union with that person. And if you’re joined to Jesus Christ, you dragged Him right into it.
17 But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.
You’re one with Him. How could you ever drag Him into that? To be one with Him … The result, he says in verse 18,
18 Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.
Flee fornication = Get out of there, Do not stick around.
“Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.”
While sexual immorality is not necessarily the worse sin, it is the cost unique in its consequences.
It has a way of internally destroying a man and a woman that no other sin has.
Why? Because of all sins, it is the one sin that is the spiritual union of two persons. You can commit other sins and those other sins may be superficial, they may affect you at some level, but the sin of a sexual intimacy with somebody else is the deepest uniting of two persons therefore it has the unique kind of sin that destroys a man at the very roots of his being.
You know, it is far more destructive than alcohol.
It is far more destructive than drugs.
It is far more destructive than crime.
It is the deepest penetrating sin that a man can commit because it unites him to another person in the vileness of that sin.
All sin blackens. All sin devastates. But this sin destroys a person at the roots of his being. It harms him. It devastates him. It enslaves him and it just diametrically opposes everything God intended for the body of a Christian. It’s for the Lord and it’s one with Christ.
Your Body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit
Your Body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit
19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
What? Know ye not … that’s the sixth time he’s used that formula in this chapter, common knowledge, isn’t it common knowledge to you?… that your body is the temple, a shrine, or the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have of God?”
You didn’t induce the Holy Spirit, you didn’t earn the Holy Spirit, you didn’t seek the Holy Spirit, He was given as a gift.
And you aren’t even your own, you’re His temple. You say, “How come I’m His?” Because verse 20 says, “He bought you with a price.” And what was the price? First Peter 1:18 and 19,
18 Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;
19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:
What was the price He paid? His blood.
Listen, He bought you. You’re the shrine of the Holy Spirit. You’re the temple of the living God, he says in 2 Corinthians 6:16.
16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
You’re the temple of the living God, God dwells in you, how can you drag the Holy Spirit into this? I don’t think there’s anybody in this building who would come into this auditorium … you think of this as a place where we worship God … I don’t think there’s anybody here who would come in here and commit an act of sexual sin right here in this building.
You say, “Boy, you’ve got to be kidding.”
Well, let me tell you something, folks, that isn’t the seriousness of sex, that’s no big thing.
When you commit an act of sex sin and nobody’s around and nobody knows, you have defiled the temple of God … this is not the temple of God, this is nothing.
You are the temple of God, the living God dwells in you. You are the sacred shrine. Don’t you know that?
How could you desecrate? How could you mutilate?
How could you defile the temple of the Spirit of God? That’s … that’s who you are … the sacred shrine of the Holy Spirit.
Listen, are you defiling the temple of the Holy Spirit?
Are you dragging your union with Christ … are you dragging Jesus Christ into a … into a sinful situation?
Are you making Him one with a prostitute?
You say, ‘Well, what’s a prostitute?” Anybody who prostitutes the right meaning and use of sex.
Are you using your body for biological expression? Forget it; your body is for the Lord. You see, it’s just absurd.
And what is the result of all this?
20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
What should you do with your body? Glorify God with it, praise God with it, make it a shrine where somebody can worship.
How could you defile yourself? God will forgive you. That’s right, He’ll forgive you, He always does, but it will harm your you’ll pay a tremendous price. And it will control you and it will pervert the design God as for you. And so I say to you like Paul said to the Ephesians, “Fornication -Sex sins-, let it not once be named among you.”
WHEN YOU GIVE GOD YOUR SPIRIT,
THE BODY COMES WITH IT.