Dear family,
So far in our series “Biblical sexuality: some considerations” we have covered a number of things. We have noted the particular challenges that secular sexual culture brings to the “t-world”, Dan Kuehne’s term for the traditional view of sexual ethics, particularly as regards the matter of same sex relations. We have agreed that a view of sexual ethics is what most obviously separates a Christian from prevailing secular belief and practice. Although a large number of Americans still loosely claim to be “Christian” our culture is not, and Christians are clearly in the minority in the sub-cultures like academia, the media, the arts – all of which have a profound influence and effect on popular culture. What is philosophized behind academic closed doors is popularized and publicly “gutterized” by Hollywood. It is important to understand how we got to where we are (what belief premises result in what behavioral practices) and we have pressed the point that it is no good just starting with behavioral issues: that would just have us focusing on sex acts (this week self-gratification, next week fornication, next week adultery, next week pornography, next week homosexuality, etc.) and trying to decide what is kosher and what is not, and maybe organizing a league table of sexual sins. That is not to say that we do not have to deal with sexual acts, or that there may be arguably differing consequences of certain sexual sins and motives as compared to others, which may make some seem comparatively worse than others. But you cannot make those decisions without a prior understanding of biblical sexuality, about what the meaning and nature of sexuality and sexual experience is all about in God’s creational terms. When we are seeking to affirm a Christian sexual ethic, it is important to discern why there has been a loss of a sexual ethic. We have to understand the massive shifts in philosophy and belief that, aided by science, have opened the doors to such a revision of sexuality: like secularism, the privatization of sex, scientific frankness, media exposure, therapeutic values, theological liberalism, etc. So given the situational context in both the church and the world, the question arises for all of us: how can we then be sexually saved? Is there a hedge in crisis? Is there a hope in Christ?
Yes, we do have to ask questions about sexual behavior, and we will, but not before certain biblical foundations have been acknowledged. As has been often observed, by observers like John White in “Eros Defiled”, there are usually three main questions that we do pose about a sexual behavior: is it legal, is it normal, is it right, or to put it another way, is it a sin? Not all that’s legal is right. You won’t be jailed for fornication or adultery or pornography but they are not right. A behavioral scientist would consider adultery as normal, but in most societies, it can still be made a legal issue and legal grounds for divorce. So what is normal may not always be legal. In the t-world, same sex relations used to be regarded as neither normal nor right, and they were also illegal. It’s important to see how the interplay of these categories works. It is why legalization of any number of sexual preferences is used to pave the way, not only for that sexuality’s normalcy but also for its un-sinfulness. The legalization of same sex relations is but the thin edge of the wedge because the same arguments used to defend and accommodate that alternative life-style are the same arguments that are now being used to defend polygamy, and all polyamorous behavior, including pedophilia.
On Sunday we focused more on scriptural text than sexual context, having already noted in an earlier message the range of views of sexuality, of sexual experience, of sexual behavior that new Christians, from Jewish, Greek and Roman cultural backgrounds, were bringing into a Sunday morning house gathering in the Early Church? How were they responding when they listened to Paul’s letters being publicly read to the church gathering? Anyone blushing in Corinth? Anyone fidgeting in Thessalonica? Anyone wanting to give up in Ephesus? Anyone offended in Rome? It is not just the similarity of NT and current sexual cultures that should strike us, but the similarity of what we may well find in most of our churches, where people are coming in who are not socialized or acculturated to a biblical sexual ethic, many if not most coming from places of sexual brokenness and disfigurement. Even among those who come from a church background, there may not be consistency in their views of sexual behavior and sexual sin for a Christian. There is arguably a wider range of variance in sexual ethics in our church community, based on behaviors and beliefs, than we might think. We know something of who Paul taught in the pews based on 1 Cor. 6: “Neither the sexually immoral…nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders…will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were.”
When we looked at First Thessalonians (3:11-4:9) we noted that Paul’s comments about sex are prefaced by a prayer that is a fantastic summary of what we can pray for and why, when it comes to the maintaining and maturing of our sexual salvation. Equally, we have to pray our way through both scripture’s instruction, and our sexual discipleship, when surrounding culture is no friend or ally of biblical holiness, or when we are just struggling regardless with our own sense of sexual need or desire, especially when unfulfilled, or when unholy. Given that this is the first epistle that Paul ever wrote, we are getting a peep here at Paul catechizing new converts for the first time, in Christian behavior, in sexual ethics, in a way that is giving us a clue about some important principles and truths that we need to include in our treatment of sexuality. Note two important things about these instructions which apply equally to what Bo and I desire out of this series. It is given:
“in order to please God…more and more.” (v1) Here is a most obvious and necessary revelation. The basis for our sexual ethics is not fear but love: to please the Lord. It is about pleasurable relationship with the Lord, it is about spiritual intimacy, before it is ever about intimate and pleasurable relationship with anyone else. The pleasure principle is spiritual first, not physical, though physical pleasure is not denied by scripture. To do so would be to deny creational biology and psychology.
“by the authority of the Lord Jesus…” (v2) For God’s pleasure, in Christ’s name. Again, our behavior is rooted in our belief about who God is, and how we should then live. We can adjust our behavior all we like but without belief it is nothing but a relativist situational ethic. Paul is not presenting a cultural ethic or a psychological ethic but a theological ethic that is transcultural. His starting point is not human biology or psychology but theology – who God is. Ethical teaching is not a cute pastoral suggestion for those who can hack it but a divine command. His teaching on sexuality is not a divine suggestion.
What you cannot miss in this first pastoral communication of Paul’s about sex is that it is all about a powerful argument and encouragement to holiness and wholeness. It would seem that he sees the sexual challenges they are facing as new Christians as the greatest challenge to personal holiness. It is about who we are and were made to be in our sexuality by God, and to know that we need to know who God is, since we are called to be like Him. God’s main calling card in the OT was his holiness: Hi, I’m holy! Hi, you can call me holy! Hi, my name is holy! Paul interweaves this through the passage:
• God’s will is that we should be holy (v3)
• God’s judgment is opposed to unholiness (v6)
• God’s call is to a holy life (v7)
• God’s Spirit, given to us, is holy, reproducing himself in us (v8)
Any questions about sex and sexual acts? Well actually, yes. Clearly the church of new Christians there had lots of questions, as we do. They lived in a culture where pre- and extra- marital sex was not only allowed but actively encouraged. As I said, Paul was in Corinth writing this, and we know from his letters to the Corinthians about sex that he was more than familiar with the challenges and pressures presented by sexual desire, and the desire for sex, but also, by the sense of sexual siege from contemporary sexual laxity.
He gives some very practical immediate counsel, one negative and one positive.
1. AVOID: “avoid sexual immorality” (1:3) Don’t flirt with it but flee it. Paul uses the word “porneia” that covers the whole range of sexual sin. Avoid it or evade it. Don’t battle it out if you can bale out. Avoid the places, avoid the people, avoid the publications or programs that seduce and oppose and subvert holiness.
2. CONTROL: the self-control he talks about is qualified as being “holy and honorable” and this applies to all, both married and unmarried.
Failure will lead to two dangerous consequences that have to be on our radar.
1. Disregarding God: “He who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God.” (4:8) There are huge spiritual as well as social consequences of sexual sin, which as we will see as the series progresses, are rooted in the nature of sexuality and the meaning of sexual acts. Romans 1 is Paul’s most stark presentation of the outcome of such disregard, but he shows that what ends up being expressed in a sinful sexual act that disregards the image of God in another and disregards the Creator’s intentions and instructions is premised on some other prior choices and decisions. Revisit Romans 1 and those two sets of triads we looked at, where the process of the abandonment of God, theologically, spiritually and sexually, is matched by the process of God’s abandoning of them.
2. Dishonoring another: Paul talks about us expressing our sexuality “in a way that is holy and honorable… in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him.” (4:5-6) A Christian sexual ethic cannot be understood as only a solo, individual issue. Scripture deals with it in a social, relational and community context. Our sexual decisions affect others. The good of another becomes a crucial filter for sexual behavior that could not be more opposed to the cult of personal sexual rights and fulfillment, so often at the expense of another. Sexual salvation is not singularly found in the body of another but in the body of Christ, thus emphasizing the crucial role of our fellowship and worship and sacraments in the encouragement of sexual holiness, where Christian community becomes a place where counsel can be received, and where our issues can be revealed, and healed, and where there can be repentance and restoration, and comfort and encouragement and prayer and friendship. Paul’s ethical instructions are always addressed to a community of faith, responsible for both discipleship and discipline, forbidding as well as forgiving. Paul says here “not in covetous passion” (v5) which tells us this is not about taking something for ourselves which is not our own. That’s what covetousness is. Godly sexuality is all about honoring another, which is not necessarily the same as satisfying another. You can sexually satisfy yourself and another and in the process still dishonor both of you. The dishonoring of another is the inevitable result of disregarding and therefore dishonoring God and his creational purposes for sexuality.
As I’ve often said before, we are a community of sinners, and our focus is as a community of justified sinners who are wanting to walk, not alone, but together in sexual purity. We bring to the community table a wide range of different disorders and sins that have the potential to lead us into many further sinful ways. But we want to be a place where we will submit these disorders to the ordering, healing and saving hand of the Lord. We want to be sexually saved. We are all broken and another’s brokenness is our brokenness as we choose to bear each other’s burdens, but we also share the joyful spoils of each other’s righteous exchanges with God, undoing the unrighteous ones that we have made, or that sexual secular culture tempts us to make.
Pastorally yours,
Stuart