(Note: This sermon was introduced with the Susan Ashton song "Call of the Wild").
The song says, "The freedom he loved, he was now a prisoner of, because he answered the call of the wild." We see examples of that reality all around us, as we live in a culture that urges us to answer that call. In many ways we’re reaping the consequences of the sexual revolution as we stand at the threshold of the next century. Robert Rimmer, one of the founding fathers of the sexual revolution, promised "a new kind of society where human sexuality…become[s] the new religion."1 Margaret Sanger, patron mother of the sexual revolution and the founder of Planned Parenthood, claimed that any attempt to restrain the sexual impulse injures health and dulls the intellect.2 Yet when those seeds grew, they blossomed into sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, broken hearts, and fractured families.
Today, sex isn’t just about marital intimacy, but people use sex as a tranquilizer, as an antidepressant, as a way of venting anger, as a way of proving their worth, as a way of dominating other people and, probably most of all, as a way of finding some sort of joy or meaning out of life.3 Yet like the guy in the song we just heard about, the call of the wild merely shows us how alone a person can be, as we end up imprisoned to the very freedom we thought we had.Yet still our culture is obsessed with sexuality. A study by the Henry Kaiser Family Foundation found that two-thirds this season’s prime-time television shows have sexual content.4 Each day we’re bombarded with thousands of sexual messages through advertising, television, radio, movies, bumper stickers, t-shirts, email, and so forth.
We’re in the midst of a series called LIVING CONFIDENTLY IN UNCERTAIN TIMES. Most people would agree that the Christian faith is a belief system that’s held together by love. Yet part of our problem is that we’re confused about what real love is. Consider the motto of MTV’s popular call-in sex advice show Loveline: "Solve all your love and lust dilemmas—whether we’re talking heartbreak, sex, sexually transmitted diseases, or whatever." Is that what real love is, lust, heartbreak, sex and diseases? Or how about that ever so popular bad advice, "Real love is never having to say you’re sorry." Tina Turner told us love was nothing but a second hand emotion. Or we’re serenaded by Celine Dion in the movie Titanic that unmarried sex is the kind of love that can touch us one time and last for a lifetime and never let go till we’re gone.
What exactly is real love? And how can men and women who’ve responded to Jesus Christ’s call walk confidently with that kind of love? Today, as we prepare for communion together, we’re going to look at how to confidently express real love. We’re going to see that Bible’s description about real love is debunks three popular myths about love.1
. Respect for Sexual Boundaries (1 Thessalonians 4:1-7).
One myth our culture feeds us is that REAL LOVE IS SEX. This is the myth portrayed in movie after movie, song after song in our culture in our popular culture. This is why in 1996 Americans spent more money on pornography than they spent on Broadway plays, opera, ballet, jazz and classical concerts combined.5 This is why almost every caller who calls into MTV’s LoveLine is sexually active outside of marriage, because real love has been reduced to the physical act of sex. And of course this isn’t unique to our generation or to our culture, because every human culture in the history of civilization has had a tendency to define real love as sex.
But in light of that modern day myth, let’s look at what Paul says about real love. When Paul wrote these words there were basically two different attitudes about sex popular in ancient society. One attitude came from the Greek intellectuals, specifically the philosopher Plato. These people believed that the human body was a prison for the human soul, and that everything associated with the body--including sex--was evil and to be avoided. Since the real me is my soul, not my body, human sexuality was viewed as inherently evil and dirty, even within in the context of marriage. Unfortunately during the middle ages many Christians were influenced by this way of thinking instead of the Bible.
The other attitude was far more popular among common people, and that was that sex was simply another physical drive, like the drive to eat, drink and sleep. Most people back then viewed sexual activity as morally neutral, and however you meet your sexual needs was just fine. Of course this standard only applied to the men. The Greek writer Demosthenes reflects this attitude when he wrote, "We keep mistresses for pleasure, concubines for our day-to-day bodily needs, but we have wives to produce legitimate children and serve as trustworthy guardians of our homes."6 The only thing off limits for men back then was to be with the wife of another man. So the ancient world was a strange kind of schizophrenia between prude and pornographic.
Into this context, Paul tells us that God wants us to live in a way that’s pleasing to him. A God pleasing life is a life of sanctification. Now we don’t use that word "sanctification" very often, but the word Paul uses here describes the process of being changed into a more spiritual, holy, and Christlike person.7 The emphasis of this particular word is on the transforming process. So Paul’s saying God’s desire—his will—for our lives is to make progress in being like Jesus, to grow forward in our moral transformation.
Now sanctification encompasses our entire lives, but because sex is such a big issue he zeros in on how sanctification applies to our sexuality. We’re told that God’s wants us to avoid sexual immorality of every kind. To avoid means is to stay away from something, to keep our distance, like not walking on the frozen lake because of the "Thin Ice" sign. The word Paul uses for "sexual immorality" here is the Greek word porneia. It’s where we get our English word pornography from. This is a very broad, general word that describes any and every sort of illicit sexual activity that’s forbidden in the Bible. 8 This includes pre-marital sex, adultery, homosexual activity, and so forth.
The consistent Biblical model of sexuality is for sexual intimacy to be expressed in marriage alone, between a husband and wife. The Bible calls unmarried people to live as Jesus lived, a celibate life that seeks to channel sexual urges into healthy, productive ways. Historically the church often glorified the celibate single life and disparaged married people as second class citizens. The modern church has gone to the other extreme, assuming that normal people marry and that if you choose a celibate single life that there’s something wrong with you. But in the Bible both the single and married life are celebrated as legitimate, God honoring ways of living.
So Paul warns us to avoid any activity that would compromise this biblical vision for life, to abstain from pre-marital sex if you’re single and to abstain from extra-marital sex if you’re married. Separating ourselves is the negative side of our sexual sanctification.
The positive side is learning how to control our bodies. Every follower of Jesus Christ needs to learn how to gain mastery over his or her own sexual drives. This is something no one can do for you, not your parents, not your spouse, not your boyfriend or girlfriend, not your pastor. Each person must learn this for him or herself. Paul knows that if we don’t learn how to control our sexual passions, our passions will control us.
Now the Thessalonians were brand new Christians who like many of us had lived sexually promiscuous lives before coming to know Jesus, so this was really new and radical for them to hear.
When we control our sexual drives we treat God as holy and people as honorable. The vertical standard of our sexual sanctification is holiness, to be like God, to reflect his character in the way we express our sexuality. Again, holiness for the single means a life of celibacy and for the married it means a life of faithfulness to one’s spouse. Anything other than this is displeasing to God, and doesn’t reflect holiness. The horizontal dimension of this is captured in the word "honorable." This is how God wants us to treat the people we come into contact with sexually, whether it’s people we’re attracted to, people we date if we’re single, or the person we marry. Now it’s possible to be married but to not treat our spouse with honor, and many married Christians fall short of the this standard by dishonoring their spouse sexually.
So in contrast to the myth that real love is sex, how can we confidently demonstrate real love? WE DEMONSTRATE REAL LOVE BY RESPECTING GOD’S SEXUAL BOUNDARIES.
Remember that God’s one who invented sex. He’s the one who created sexuality, and he’s the one who made us as sexual beings. Some people think that God made sex because he knew that we wouldn’t reproduce unless he made the act enjoyable. But the Bible claims that God created sex as a good gift, not a begrudging concession.But with that gift God also established boundaries for how the gift was to be enjoyed. When we step over these boundaries we short circuit this good gift, and what God gave for good becomes something ugly and painful. Adultery, pre-marital sex, homosexuality, pornography, cybersex on the internet, these things go over the boundaries God intended, and that results in destruction to our relationships. As I saw in an advertisement recently, they don’t make a condom that can protect your heart. It’s like a six year old boy who thinks he’s ready to handle his dad’s hunting knife, so he grabs the knife by the blade. As he does the blade slices into his hand, and soon he finds himself bleeding all over the place and in pain. He didn’t handle it properly, and he paid the price.
Now why does God prohibit sex outside of marriage? Paul gives us several compelling reason why God’s will is for us to respect God’s sexual boundaries. On reason is that sexual sin reflects secular values (4:5). The non-Christian world of Paul’s day was characterized by unbridled lust, where men and women were controlled by their passions, leading them to do things that were degrading and humiliating. This was also the vision of life that drove the founders of the sexual revolution. Many people today have so bought into this model of human sexuality that they believe it’s impossible for a single person to keep him or herself sexually pure before marriage. We shouldn’t be surprised that a secular culture embraces that value. But when a follower of Jesus Christ steps beyond God’s boundaries for sex, we begin to reflect that secular world view instead of Jesus, we mirror our culture instead of mirroring God’s kingdom. We obscure the boundary between the secular world that’s ignorant of God’s ways and the call of Jesus to live differently as his followers.
Another reason is because sexual sin devalues people (4:6a). The word for "wrong" here means to step over the prescribed boundaries. The word for "take advantage" means "to exploit or use" a person. Our culture tells us that no one’s hurt when consenting adults choose to have sex outside of God’s boundaries, but this passage tells us something radically different. Sexual sin always leaves victims because by its very nature it devalues people by turning them into sexual objects. The people who buy the lie that real love is sex are victimized, as they live with shame. But we also victimize the spouse of the person we sleep with, or if they’re not married, we victimize their future spouse because we take something that’s not ours to take. An adulterous partner robs his or her partner of trust, security and intimacy. Sexual sin also victimizes the children of the people involved, as well as any child conceived as a result of their actions. In the end sexual sin reduces people to objects to be used rather than people to be valued.Sexual sin also provokes God’s justice (4:6b). Since sexual sin leaves victims, God sides with the person who’s been victimized. Because God is just, it’s his nature to come to the aid of someone who’s been wronged. Our society is filled with millions of men and women who’ve been victimized by the life that real love is sex, and God promises here that he sees that.
Finally, sexual sin rejects God’s calling (4:7-8). In the Bible God’s calling is our experience of salvation, where we hear the call to follow Jesus, and we find restoration to God through our trust in Jesus. God calls us into this relationship so we’ll grow into a fully devoted followers of Jesus who love God wholeheartedly and who love people sacrificially. When a follower of Jesus refuses to respect God’s sexual boundaries, that person refuses God’s calling in their life, acting as if God’s sexual standards don’t apply to them. This doesn’t mean that person stops being a Christian or loses their salvation, but it does mean that this person is forced to live a double life that’s miserable.
Are you respecting God’s sexual boundaries or have you been duped into thinking that real love is sex? Now I’ve spent a lot of time on this because it’s an area where a lot of us struggle, especially those of us who promiscuous before we came to know Jesus. In 1994 Promise Keepers surveyed 1,500 men and found that half of all Christian husbands struggle with sexual fantasies with women other than their spouses.9 Fifteen percent of the men surveyed had been unfaithful to their spouses, and one-third admitted to having an ongoing struggle with pornography. There are some of you here today who are involved in affairs that no one else knows about. Some of you have magazines, videos, and images on your computer that you’d be ashamed to let Jesus see. God is calling us to learn to control our sexual passions—not by ignoring them or pretending they don’t exist, but by building relationships of accountability, by seeking a life of sexual sanctification that’s holy to God and that honors people.
As we come to the table in communion in a few minutes, I urge you—no matter how much you’ve failed in this area—to come and experience God’s grace, to find a renewed resolve to live a God pleasing life because none of us is beyond temptation in this area.
2. Treating Each Other As Family (4:9-10).
The second myth about love in our culture is that REAL LOVE IS INDEPENDANCE. We try to deceive ourselves that we really don’t need anyone, that real love means we don’t rely on anyone other than ourselves. We become like the proverbial cowboy who’s self-sufficient, in need of nobody. Theologian David Wells says, "From early times, Americans have demonstrated an inclination to withdraw from the crowd…to remain fiercely independent of others." 10 Yet Wells warns us, "the more autonomous this modern person is, the more solitary he or she will be, left without a niche in the world, without any connectedness."11 That’s exactly where many people are today, left without a place to belong, without any sort of connectedness.In contrast to the myth of independence, look at what Paul writes about real love.
Paul uses the image of a family, where brothers and sisters are living in loving, mutually supportive relationships. This is real love, not pretending like don’t need anyone, but by demonstrating brotherly and sisterly love to each other. For many of us from messed up families, this is hard. I confess to you that as an only child from a family that went through two divorces, my natural inclination is to be self sufficient, to pretend like I don’t need anyone. Yet that’s destructive to real love, it short circuits the way God intended me to function, and it hinders the way God intended his church to function.
Here we find a second way to demonstrate real love. WE DEMONSTRATE REAL LOVE BY TREATING EACH OTHER AS FAMILY.
This is why the Christian faith has always been a faith expressed in community, not a solitary faith. We need each other, and without each other we are powerless to live God pleasing lives. That’s hard for me to admit, and it’s probably hard for some of you to admit too. In fact, I bet there are some guys who are planning on not coming to the Men’s Retreat because they’re afraid of this very kind of thing. They’re afraid of letting a brother in Christ into their lives, afraid to let down their guard.
When we take communion in a few minutes we remind ourselves that as followers of Jesus, none of us is truly independent. We need each other, and to remind ourselves of that we take the elements of communion together, not in isolation, but as a community, as a congregation. Real love’s not independence, but learning how to live as a loving family.
3. Striving For Responsible Lives (4:11-12)
Now the final myth I want to talk about is the opposite of independence, and that’s that REAL LOVE IS DEPENDENCE. Some people reason, "If we truly need each other in the Christian community, the more we rely on others to help us, the more loving we are."
Yet that’s not true, because unhealthy dependence causes us to use other people and take advantage of them. In fact modern day psychology has identified something called co-dependence, where many of us are drawn to people who are dependent on us in unhealthy ways, and when we meet their needs we inadvertently end up hurting them rather than loving them. This is the wife who covers up her husband’s binge drinking. This is what my adoptive father did when I failed five out of six courses in 9th grade, and he pulled the right strings to make sure I went on to 10th grade. Bailing me out was well intended, but it wasn’t real love because it fostered dependence.
In contrast to unhealthy dependence, look at what Paul says. Apparently some of the Thessalonian Christians had stopped working, and were sponging off the other members of the congregation. This was scandalizing the testimony of the church to the rest of the Thessalonian community. So Paul commands them to live quite lives, to mind their own business, and to get a job. Unhealthy dependence isn’t love, but it’s manipulation that takes advantage of others.
Here we find a final way of demonstrating real love. WE DEMONSTRATE REAL LOVE BY STRIVING TO LIVE A RESPONSIBLE LIFE.
Paul’s urging us to lives of responsibility here, lives where we don’t become a burden on those around us, lives where we don’t meddle where we have no business. By living responsible lives they’ll communicate the message of Christ to the watching world. Now we obviously do need each other at times—sometimes we have deep needs—but a life of responsibility will not allow others to do for that which we can do for ourselves.
Conclusion
Do you know what real love is? Real love isn’t sex, but it’s respect for sexual boundaries; real love’s not independence but treating each other as family; it’s not dependence but striving for responsibility.
We’ve got a lot to learn about real love. When we look around to discover love, we tend to turn on our television, or rent the latest video, or listen to our favorite band. We’re bombarded with messages about love from thousands of advertisements each day. It’s a confusing, bewildering array of conflicting voices.
Yet every month we also take communion together to be reminded of what real love is: "This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we’re talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loves us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God" (1 John 4:7-10 The Message).
Notes
1. Cited in C. Colson, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1999), p. 241.
2. Colson, How Now Shall We Live?, p. 238.
3. Archibald Hart, The Sexual Man, (Dallas: Word Books, 1994), p. 50.
4. "Sex On TV Is…Not Sexy" Time (9/2/99).U. S. News & World Report (2/10/97).
5. Demosthenes, Against Neaera, cited in F. F. Bruce, 1 and 2 Thessalonians (Word Biblical Commentary: Dallas, Word Books, 1989), p. 86-87.
6. Hiebert, 1 and 2 Thessalonians (BMH Books, 199?), p. 178.
7. J. P. Louw and E. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1989), CD rom version, 88.271; Michael Holmes 1 and 2 Thessalonians, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), p.125.
8. New Man (November/December, 1994), p. 8
9. David Wells, No Place For Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 150.
10. Wells, p. 159.
