A sermon I preached on 1 Corinthians 6.9-20 on "Christian Sexuality." The notes I used for the sermon are posted below. (NOTE: The last part of the sermon where I examine the contemporary slogan "love is love" is not contained in the notes.)
Introduction
· Series on sexuality
· Our time sexual anarchy
o Our time considers itself “Progressive” and “Enlightened”
o Orthodox Christianity’s sexual ethic is considered:
§ Antiquated
§ Oppressive
§ Mere negation “Don’t do ______________ !”
· Nancy Pearcey (Love Thy Body, 156)
“When we make sexual decisions, we are not just deciding to follow a few rules. We are expressing our view of the cosmos and human nature.”
· Short series
o Can’t say and do everything
o Can’t answer every question and challenge to the Bible
o Can’t provide every nuance and qualification
· Issues of the CONTENT of the Bible on sexual ethics
· And APPLICATIONS and ATTITUDES
· Homosexuality and the differing roles of the church
a. Prophetic role
i. To our culture
ii. Focus: Ideas/philosophy that are ingrained in culture (entertainment, media, law, background assumptions)
b. Protective role
i. For the purity of the church; listen to God’s word in faithfulness
ii. Focus: False teachers
c. Pastoral role
i. For the sanctification of those in the church
ii. Focus: Spiritual compassion, guidance, and growth
· Focus Pastoral and Protective
o If we cannot articulate and defend and pass on the Christian sexual ethic in the church,then there is no hope of transforming the larger culture!
· “To attempt to change culture by merely changing its laws is at best cosmetic. Our priority is to change the hearts and minds of people. This is slow, arduous work… That is, we must begin to reseed culture from the ground up, as it were, training and educating our own in terms of broader Christian worldview thinking so we are prepared to impart values to broader culture. If we resist or ignore long-term efforts to educate and penetrate culture by changing the way people think, no amount of ‘godly legislation’—or evangelism, for that matter—will ever be able to change culture at the root. It will be the equivalent of pouring Rose Lime Juice on cancer.” --J. Daryl Charles[1]
1 Corinthians 6.9-11
· Unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God
o Eternal life is at stake
· “Do not be deceived” potential for deception on this point!
· Sin list 10 items mentioned
o 4 (40%) are sexual in nature!
§ “sexually immoral” (ESV) porneia
§ Adulterers
§ “Men who practice homosexuality” 2 Greek words
· ESV footnote: “The two Greek terms translated by this phrase refer to the passive and active partners in consensual homosexual acts.”
· Note on interpretation of texts that speak against homosexual activity
o Revise the text make it say something else; narrow the application
§ Example: exploitive same-sex relationship
o Reject the text
“The task demands intellectual honesty. I have little patience with efforts to make Scripture say something other than what it says, through appeals to linguistic or cultural subtleties. The exegetical situation is straightforward: we know what the text says. But what are we to do with what the text says? We must state our grounds for standing in tension with the clear commands of Scripture, and include in those grounds some basis in Scripture itself.”
“I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us. By so doing, we explicitly reject as well the premises of the scriptural statements condemning homosexuality—namely, that it is a vice freely chosen, a symptom of human corruption, and disobedience to God’s created order.”[2]
· Gospel is part of Paul’s message here verse 11!
o Notice the Persons of the Trinity
o Notice the elements of Salvation
§ Washed
§ Sanctified
§ Justified
o Leads into our next section…
1 Corinthians 6.12-20
1. Detailed look at 1 Corinthians 6.12-20
a. Problem: Behavior Visiting prostitutes (v. 15)
b. Problem: Theology/Ideas/Worldview
i. Faulty view of ethics
ii. Faulty view of eschatology
iii. Faulty view of the body
c. Paul’s Response
i. Paul doesn’t just say, “Stop it!”
ii. He refutes the false ideas (theology) and argues from the gospel to the truth of proper sexual behavior.
d. Corinthian Slogans
i. There are three slogans from the Corinthian church to which Paul is responding.[3]
ii. ESV translation highlights two of the three by quotation marks but on the second slogan the ESV stops short
1. ESV: “All things are lawful for me” (v. 12)
2. ESV: “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”
3. Should add in quotation marks: “and God will destroy both one and the other.”
iii. Third quotation is in verse 18: “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body.”
Verse | Slogan | Idea |
12 | “All things are lawful for me” (2x’s)
| Ethics |
13 | “Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them.” | Eschatology |
18 | “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body”
| Body |
2. Paul’s responses to the Corinthian slogans
a. “All things are lawful for me” (2x’s in v. 12)
i. “Paul, you taught we’re free from the law.”
ii. “No ethical constraints on the use of my body.”
b. Paul’s response: Christian freedom has limits (v. 12)
i. Limited by love not all things are “profitable”
“So the ethical question we have to have ask ourselves is not merely, ‘Is this or that activity okay for me to do?’ The question is, ‘Will this or that activity be a help or a hindrance to my brothers and sisters in Christ?’”[4]
ii. Limited by lordship “I will not be mastered by anything”
1. Ultimate allegiance is to Jesus Christ!
2. Not be “mastered”—lorded over—by another
c. “Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them.” (v. 13)
· 2 Arguments here from the Corinthians perspective…
i. Teleology (purpose) of the body
1. Stomach is for food.
2. Sex organs are for sex.
3. Human body’s design reveals its purpose; if it’s “natural” it must be right
4. Corinthians: “What could be wrong using the body according to its purpose?”
ii. Eschatology physical bodies give way to death
1. “Since every person must ultimately die and lost their body to the dust, God must not care much about physical bodies… From this, the Corinthians concluded that the physical body figured very little in God’s moral economy.”[5]
2. Corinthian perspective: “moral irrelevance of the body
d. Paul’s response: Union with Christ and the resurrection
i. Against their teleology argument
1. “the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body” (v. 13)
2. Paul could agree that the body is made for sex
· But this is a subordinate end/goal
· Ultimate goal of the body is for God’s glory for God’s sake
ii. Against their eschatology argument
1. Resurrection is the great hope for our bodies (v. 14)
2. Our bodies have eternal significance!
iii. Further argument against both teleology and eschatology arguments
1. The believer’s body is Christ’s
2. “When the believer engages his body in sexual immorality, he is involving Christ’s own body parts in the illicit act.”[6]
3. “one body with her” Genesis 2.24 (v. 16)
“It must not be missed that Paul grounds his sexual ethic in Genesis 2:24. When Paul (and Jesus, for that matter) sets out new covenant norms for gender and sexuality, he never appeals to polygamist kings such as David or Solomon or to polygamist patriarchs such as Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. For all the importance these Old Testament figures have in the history of redemption, Jesus and Paul do not look to any of them as the paradigm for understanding marriage. Instead, Jesus and Paul look back without exception to the pre-fall monogamous union of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 as the norm of human sexuality and marriage.”[7]
· (cf. Gen 2.24; Matt 19.5; Mark 10.7-8; 1 Cor 6.16; Eph 5.31)
e. “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body” (v. 18)
i. Idea: only motives and intentions matter; the body is irrelevant
ii. “This is not to say that the Corinthians denied the possibility of sin. Sin was possible but only on the level of motive and intention, and they refused to concede that these could be evaluated on the basis of the actions in which they were embodied. Hence, ‘every sin which a man may commit is outside the body.’”[8]
f. Paul’s response: the body is the arena of central importance
i. Body is the arena of sin: “the immoral man sins against his own body” (v. 18b)
ii. Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—interact with the body!
1. Body is a temple of the Holy Spirit
2. Body is bought by Christ (by his blood)
3. Body is to be used to glorify God
3. Christian sexuality is about a bodily reality that interfaces with God and the Gospel!
a. “Body” 8 x’s in 1 Corinthians 6.12-20
i. Our view of the body is a theological and philosophical issue
ii. Christian worldview has a distinctive view of the body
iii. Crucial concept for all that follows!
b. The Triune God interacts with us as bodily beings
i. Our lives—including our bodies—are bought with the blood of the Son.
ii. Our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit
iii. All of our bodily and sexual existence is to be lived for the glory of God
c. The gospel engages our bodies throughout time
i. Cross bought by the blood (past)
ii. Spirit indwelt by the Spirit (present)
iii. Resurrection raised up (future)
Conclusion:
· 1 Corinthians 6 chosen as our entry point…
o For its content but also for how Paul reasons
· Paul is reasoning from the Gospel—the center of the Christian worldview
· Instructive for us
· Sexuality tells a story or as Nancy Pearcey states again:
“When we make sexual decisions, we are not just deciding to follow a few rules. We are expressing our view of the cosmos and human nature.”
[1] J. Daryl Charles, Between Pacificism and Jihad: Just War and Christian Tradition (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2005), 139.
[2] Luke Timothy Johnson, “Scripture and Experience” Commonweal (June 11, 2007)—online: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/homosexuality-church-0.
[3] Not all commentators agree with this analysis of the slogans. For a defense of the use of slogans here see Denny Burk, What Is the Meaning of Sex? (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2013), 45-46. For a more technical discussion see Denny Burk, “Discerning Corinthian Slogans through Paul’s Use of the Diatribe in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20” Bulletin for Biblical Research 18.1 (2008), 99-121—online: https://www.ibr-bbr.org/files/bbr/bbr18a05_burk.pdf.
