Marriage and Singleness in a Sex-saturated Culture

1 Cor 7:1-16

If by some miracle of time travel you could travel between here in the 21st West and 1st Century Corinth, you would notice multiple differences, wouldn’t you. You’d eat differently, dress differently, work differently, travel around town differently. 

But there would be one thing that you would find very similar, and that is that whether you were living in Corinth, or here and now, you’d be living in a sex-saturated culture. And God has created you as a sexual being, and he’s made sex good, and that means that whether you’re in Corinth, like the people Paul is writing to, or here, you’re going to face temptation - temptation to live out your sexual desires in ways that are unhelpful, even destructive to you and others, and that run against God’s design for you.

So how are you supposed to live in an environment where there’s temptation on every corner or every click, whether you’re married or single? Well that was what some Christians in Corinth were wondering, and so they wrote and asked Paul, and the passage we’re looking at is his answer. 

Married in a Sex-Saturated Culture

Look at v1: ‘Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “it is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”’

One of the problems Paul faced at Corinth was how normal it was seen for men to have sex with prostitutes, and that some men in the church were continuing to do that. But others in the church were seeing that kind of behaviour, and the prevalence of sex in the culture, and responding by saying, ‘We want nothing to do with this. We’re Christians, we’re called to be different. It’s better not to have sex at all, even with your husband or wife, than be part of this.’

That often happens doesn’t it? In wanting to correct something that’s wrong, you over correct and the pendulum can swing too far the other way, can’t it? And so in the same church, where you have men sleeping with prostitutes, you have others saying, ‘we need to get as far away from that as possible, sex itself is the problem, and if we’re going to be serious about pursuing a life that honours God, and we are, we shouldn’t even sleep with our husband or wife.’

But notice what he doesn’t say. Because he doesn’t say, ‘you are so right, and you need to kill your sexual desires and be celibate.’ He says, ‘no, abstaining from sex in marriage just opens the door to further sexual temptation.’ Verse 2, ‘But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife’ and that’s a Greek euphemism for having sex with her, ‘and each woman her own husband.’ 

So it’s not sexual desire that’s wrong, any more than being thirsty is wrong. It’s how you quench that desire. Do you drink some cool, fresh water, or down a bottle of vodka? Do you make love to your husband or wife, or use a prostitute or go on line?

And so Paul is saying that marriage, and sex within marriage, is one of the big lines of defence against sexual temptation. And those who think sex is wrong or dirty put themselves and their partner at risk. It’s like standing down the army when the enemy is about to attack. It would be like  turning the air defence system, like Iron Dome, when you’re under arial bombardment. You think you’ll be more pure by avoiding sex within marriage, but the reality may just be the opposite.

Which is why Paul lights the fuse of the ethical dynamite of v3-4, ‘The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the husband does not have authority over her own body but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.’

And like we saw last week, that was revolutionary - because no one had ever suggested that the wife had as much right to have her sexual needs met as the husband, and that his body was just as much as hers as hers was his. 

But it’s no less revolutionary now is it? Because our culture isn’t just sex-saturated, it’s also highly individualistic. And you can view life and marriage through a highly self-centred lens: it’s about you getting what you want out of it. And when it comes to your body: this is my body and no-one can tell me what I can or can’t do with it.

But Paul is saying that Christian marriage is very different. It’s about giving yourself to the other. It’s not about you insisting on your rights, but you giving yourself for the good, and the pleasure, of your partner. You see, you could read what Paul writes here and think, ‘surely he’s contradicting himself’, because in Ephesians 5 Paul says the wife is to submit to the husband, that he’s the one with the authority in the marriage. And you’re right. Except the authority Paul is talking about is the authority of Christ, a self-sacrificial leadership, that just as Jesus laid his life down for us, so the husband is to lay his life down for his wife.

And so, far from husband or wife insisting ‘this is my right, and you’ve got to give it to me’, there should be this mutuality of each freely giving themselves to the other.

Which is why Paul says, v5, ‘Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourself to prayer, but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.’ 

Now, we’re used to things being time-limited, aren’t we. This product is available at this price for a time-limited period only. And Paul is saying, any physical, sexual separation between a husband and a wife has got to be short, time limited, and only for something like prayer, and only if both of you agree. Why? Because what a husband and wife get up to in the bedroom is part of our God given line of defence against sin and satan. You may not think of sex between a husband and wife as a form of spiritual warfare, but that’s what it is, Paul says. Because sin and satan’s use of sexual temptation, is all about corrupting the good and telling you you’ll find what you’re looking for over here. And God says, no you won’t. And the sexual relationship of a husband and wife is about undermining those lies. So, any break must be by mutual consent, for a short time. Because marriage has never been about one partner imposing their will on the other: ‘you’ve got to give this to me’ or, ‘I’m not giving this to you.’ It’s “I owe you tenderness and affection and love and pleasure, and it’s my joy to give myself to you.” Neither husband or wife has exclusive rights over his or her body.

And that means there’s no place for passive-aggressive, or just plain aggressive behaviour when it comes to sex. It’s not about manipulation or control. It’s about giving yourself.

Now, I know that this can be a painful and delicate area, because this is where our past or present hurts, and shame, and stuff we’ve imbibed from family or church or culture, all collide and make a broken mess. Su and I vividly remember the first time we did pre-marriage counselling with a young couple, years ago, back in the UK. And when it came to the session on sex, the young woman physically moved away from her fiancé on the sofa, took hold of a cushion, and held it like a barrier over her waist. It’s one of the saddest, most painful things I’ve seen. And just a few days later they broke off the engagement. Which as our first attempt at pre-marriage counselling was not a great success!

But that wall, that physical and emotional barrier we put up against our spouse can be very real, can’t it? And there can be very real and understandable reasons for that: like sins done against you, and hurt and pain and shame, and sometimes they might reach a level where you can’t work through them on your own, or as a couple, but need godly counsel from someone who knows what they’re talking about. And when it comes to adultery, it may even be grounds for divorce. But what Paul is saying here is that so-called spiritual concerns, like thinking sex itself is sinful, or beneath a Christian, or you’ve given yourself to God so you can’t give yourself to your husband or wife, those are not valid reasons. That even something as good as prayer, shouldn’t stop you having sex with your spouse for more than a short while.

And Paul says, v6: ‘Now as a concession, not a command, I say this.’ So Paul wants to be clear, he’s not suggesting a couple should take a break from sex for prayer, let alone commanding it. He’s saying, if that’s what the two of you want to do, for a short time, then ok, but keep it short. 

Ok, but none of this is because he thinks the married life is the best thing since sliced bread or the only option on the table. Verse 7, ‘I wish that all were as I myself am’ - and Paul’s single, possibly widowed. So he’s saying, there are great advantages to being married, but there are also great advantages to being single.

So, how should those who are single live in a culture like Corinth?

Single in a Sex-saturated Culture

Look at v7, ‘each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.’ And the word for ‘gift’ is the word charisma, the same word he’ll use later for describing spiritual gifts like prophecy. So just as God gives those gifts of his grace, his charis, for the building up of his church, so out of his grace he gives the gift of marriage to some and the gift of singleness to others. Both are gracious gifts of God. 

And to the single person, living in a culture where sex is everywhere, Paul says, v8, ‘To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am.’

Now, our youngest daughter Katie is currently weighing up, does she study medicine, or go into teacher training? And we could say, it’s good to be a school teacher, because kids at school need Christian teachers, so that would be a good choice Katie. But that doesn’t mean being a doctor is bad. You can say something is good without implying the alternative is morally compromised. So in calling being single good, Paul us not saying getting married is bad.

But he does see huge good in the single life. Jesus was single. And Paul knows from experience the freedom that singleness brings to serve God and others. And if someone has been given that gift, Paul says, stay as you are, don’t get married.

But that begs a question, doesn’t it? How do you know whether you’ve been given that gift or not? Well, look what he says in v9, ‘But if they [the unmarried and widows] cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.’

So if someone really wants to get married, and life and physical, sexual temptation is a continual struggle, or they long for the emotional attachment that marriage brings, they probably haven’t been given the gift of singleness, and they should get married, Paul says. But the person who has been given the gift of singleness, is happy to stay single. Like Paul, they’re content with that, they don’t feel a strong desire to be married.

And for such a person, marriage would be a distraction from their efforts to serve the Lord and others. But for another person, their desire to get married, or for a couple their desire for each other, is at the level where it’s distracting them from giving themselves to God and others, and they should get on and get married, Paul says.

So, if the single person wants to stay single and focus on the work the Lord has for them, that’s good Paul says, do it. What God does not want from singleness is sexual immorality. So, if they can stay single, stay single. If not, get married. Because marriage, not sin, is the answer to sexual temptation.

Now someone might come back and say ‘Sure, but I, or someone I know, wants to get married and it’s just not happening. What am I supposed to do?’ And I don’t want to trivialise that, because I get that. And there may be a time when someone like that realises, reluctantly, painfully, that life in this world is not going to give them everything they want. But Su once told me of a sermon she heard when she was a teenager. And her pastor said to the young people in the church, if you want to get married and you’re not meeting anyone in this church, go and fish in a different pond. And he was giving them the freedom to look elsewhere, to try a different church, a different club, a different type of holiday. Today that might include trying a Christian on-line dating service. Because marriage doesn’t have to be an idol for someone to want it and do what they can to put themselves in a position where it might happen.

Ok, but as well as addressing marrieds and singles, Paul also addresses those who think life would be better if they were single again.

Married in an Easy-Divorce Culture

Because Corinth wasn’t just a sex-saturated culture, it was one where divorce was easy, for men and women. And there was a saying that a woman could count her age by the number of her divorces, so common was it.

So if you found yourself in a marriage that was hard, maybe your partner wasn’t a believer, or where there’s the kind of sexual tension Paul’s been describing, it seems at least some in the church were considering divorce. Verse 10-11, ‘To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.’

And when Paul says, ‘not I, but the Lord’ he’s meaning that we have Jesus’ clear, personal teaching on this in Matthew 19 and Mark 10. That divorce is simply not an option for God’s people, except in the case of sexual immorality. So Paul is saying, the answer to your problems in marriage, and the answer to the sexual tension and brokenness that comes with a sex-saturated culture, is not to go down the road all your neighbours are going down and divorce. It’s to stay married. But if you do divorce, you need to stay single afterwards, or do all you can to be reconciled to your spouse.

I’ve used this before, but in his book Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton said that the teaching, the doctrines of Christianity are like the walls of a playground. They protect the children on the inside from the dangers on the outside and that means the fun on the inside can get really wild. But what’s true of Christianity generally is especially true of what it teaches on marriage. Because the strong walls of covenant, life-long marriage, that when we get married, we’re staying married, are the walls of a playground, not a prison. The walls that give you the emotional and physical security to give yourself to your husband, or your wife.

Ok, but then Paul says, v12, ‘to the rest I say (I, not the Lord)’ because he’s going to address something that Jesus didn’t address, because it hadn’t arisen yet, and that is when a Christian is married to a non-Christian. Verse 12, ‘If any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her.’ And the same goes for a wife married to a non-Christian. 

Now, why is Paul bringing this up?

Well, firstly, it’s just plain hard being married to an unbeliever. The thing that’s most important to you, the thing that defines you, you can never share with them. And that means you either sideline Christ in your marriage, or you sideline your partner. So imagine the person who wants to take their Christian faith seriously thinking, ‘I’m married to the wrong person and I need to divorce them.’ 

But secondly, from what follows it seems like some who’d become Christians but whose spouses hadn’t, had understood just how profound and beautiful sex is, that it’s pointing us higher, to our union with Christ. And they were thinking, ‘if that’s the case, I shouldn’t be having sex with my pagan, non-Christian partner, it’s too holy, it’s too meaningful for that.’ 

And if you think about it, in the Old Testament, the unclean contaminated the holy and made it unholy. And it seems some were thinking ‘yes, and my pagan, unbelieving partner, and having sex with them, makes me unholy. So I need to end the relationship.’

And Paul says, ‘no, it’s the exact opposite’: v14, ‘for the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.’

So instead of a Christian being contaminated by staying married to their non-Christian partner, the opposite’s true. That just like Jesus touched the leper, and the leper’s uncleanness didn’t make Jesus unclean, but Jesus’ made him clean and healed him, so just one Christian in a family is enough to make that family holy, to make it different, to set it apart and bring God’s blessing into it.

But, if the non-Christian insists on leaving and they can’t be persuaded to stay, Paul says, v15, ‘let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved.’ In other words, when an unbelieving spouse is determined to quit the marriage, you don’t have to endlessly seek reconciliation, you can let them go.

But once again, he brings it back to the positive, and he gives the Christian a reason for staying in  such a marriage: v16, ‘How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?’ Because the sustained, godly, influence of a husband or wife, who’s seeking to honour Christ, and lovingly give themselves to their spouse in all the hardship of such a marriage might just, in the grace of God, be the thing that opens their eyes to the beauty and grace of Christ.

So, single or married, we live in a culture, like Corinth, that is constantly telling us things about ourselves, our bodies, sex and marriage that are untrue. But Christ calls us to something much better