Corinthians: Church Matters (4)

Church Matters: Correcting the Corinthians (4)

Scott Bayles, pastor

Blooming Grove Christian Church: 11/30/2014

For the past few weeks we’ve explored the book of 1st Corinthians. If we’ve learned nothing else, we’ve learned this—the Corinthians were a mess. The church in Corinth was plagued with problems ranging from humility to harmony, from immaturity to impurity, and from lawsuits to a lack of sanctification.

Up to this point, Paul has been dealing with the sin reported to be known in the Corinthians congregation. But chapter seven begins this way: “Now about those questions you asked in your last letter…” (1 Corinthians 7:1 TLB). Apparently the Corinthians were confused about some matters and wrote to Paul, asking for guidance. The first issue they ask about is marriage. That shouldn’t surprise us. Marriage can baffle the best of us. Marriage is like twirling a baton, turning handsprings or eating with chopsticks. It looks easy until you try it.

The speaker at a woman's club was lecturing on marriage and asked the audience how many of them wanted to "mother" their husbands. One member in the back row raised her hand. "You actually want to mother your husband?" the speaker asked. "Mother?" the woman echoed. "I thought you said smother."

When asked how he gets along with his in-laws, a husband once said, “Actually, my mother-in-law and I have a lot in common. We both wish my wife had married someone else.”

Once when Mark Twain was lecturing in Utah, a Mormon acquaintance argued with him on the subject of polygamy. After a long and rather heated debate, the Mormon finally said, “Can you find for me a single passage of Scripture which forbids polygamy?” “Certainly,” replied Twain. “Matthew 6:24 says ‘No man can serve two masters.’”

Someone once said, “Marriage is when you agree to spend the rest of your life sleeping in a room that’s too warm, beside someone who’s sleeping in a room that’s too cold.”

The truth is—marriage is never easy. Most of us had no idea what we were getting into when we first got married. And we’ve probably all got questions about marriage. In fact, few subjects have been as controversial and contentious in the church as the issue of marriage, divorce and remarriage. Thankfully, Paul offers a carefully reasoned discussion of the subject, in which he describes three types of marriages. The first is a successful marriage.

• SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGES

Valerie L. Bunyan, in Reader's Digest, wrote: Soon after our last child left home for college, my husband was resting next to me on the couch with his head in my lap. I carefully removed his glasses. "You know, honey," I said sweetly, "without your glasses you look like the same handsome young man I married." "Honey," he replied with a grin, "without my glasses, you still look pretty good too!"

I guess you could call that a successful marriage. But here’s how Paul describes one:

“Because there is so much sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman should have her own husband. The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs. The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife. Do not deprive each other of sexual relations, unless you both agree to refrain from sexual intimacy for a limited time so you can give yourselves more completely to prayer. Afterward, you should come together again so that Satan won’t be able to tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” (1 Corinthians 7:1-5 NLT).

This is the second chapter in a row that Paul speaks in detail about sex (and I promise it’s the last one). In chapter six, Paul decries the sexual sins of the Corinthians, including incest, prostitution, adultery, homosexuality, and sexual immorality in general. But here Paul places sex on the pedestal of marriage and honors it. In fact, this passage identifies two keys to a successful marriage. The first is sexual intimacy. The second is spiritual intimacy.

Some sophisticates would like to deny it, but sex is vitally important to a successful marriage. Willard Harley, in his best-selling book, His Needs Her Need, identifies sexual fulfillment as a man’s number one emotional need. More than that, sex was created by God as marital glue. For some reason, a lot of young people who grow up in the church get the impression that God is down on sex, but nothing could be further from the truth. Sex is a vitally important part of God’s design for marriage. In fact, the very first command God gave Adam and Eve involved having sex. He told them to be fruitful and multiply. There is an emotional, physical, and spiritual bond created by sex that the Bible calls becoming “one flesh.” This term is repeatedly used in the Bible to describe the bond created by sex. When we allow sex to fall by the wayside because we’re tired or busy or stressed or whatever that bond is weakened. The Bible encourages us: “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure” (Hebrews 13:4).