“BE PURE.” ROMANS 12: 1-2; 1 CORINTHIANS 6: 9-11, 13b-20.
PLEASE OPEN YOU BIBLE TO ROMANS 12.
Dean Michael Martin at O.B.U said he recently overheard a young woman say that she was looking for a church that taught “acceptance.” In her view acceptance means that no one in the church can make moral judgments concerning anyone’s behavior. This individual expressed an attitude prevalent in our culture: No absolutes exist, and every person is free to do whatever is right in his or her own eyes.
The Book of Judges ends in Judges 21:25 with the tragic statement that “everyone did whatever he wanted,” and this reflects the guiding philosophy of many Americans today. The prevalent attitude among Americans is that each individual has the right to establish his or her own moral and ethical standards of moral and sexual purity.
Since the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, American culture has suffered the innumerable consequences of sexual activity outside of marriage. Abortion, homosexuality, sexual abuse of children, pornography, incest, adultery, sexually transmitted diseases, and premarital sex are just some of the ways sexual immorality scars the cultural landscape of our nation.
Many of the restraints in society that promoted sexual purity no longer exist. Some media, judges and academics continue to take sides with libertine movements that promote sexual immorality. Some liberal religious bodies that derive ethics from the world rather than from the Bible justify immorality.
Paul lived and wrote to believers living in the cities of Rome and Corinth where immorality was accepted. He urged Christians to separate themselves from the impurity around them and to live disciplined lives within the boundaries of sexual purity.
We will see the importance of change when we find ourselves in opposition to biblical standards. We will learn the necessity of daily offering body, soul, and spirit in obedience to God. We also will see hope for a new start in the lives of those who have broken God’s standards for sexual conduct.
PLEASE READ ROMANS 12: 1-2.
These two verses are among the most important in the N.T. They are pivotal in Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians. Here we have Paul following the pattern which he always followed when he wrote to his friends. He always ends his letters with a section of the most practical advice. He always bases duty upon doctrine; he traces life to belief; he shows that character is determined by creed.
Therefore, when in eleven chapters of his Epistle he has set forth in logical fashion the great doctrines of the Christian faith, he proceeds in vs. 1-2 to give a series of exhortations which indicate how Christian believers ought to live. How saved people are to practice their faith, in daily life.
These exhortations are in a large measure summarized by a comprehensive appeal to consecration. This appeal is linked to the preceding portion of the Epistle by a logical and significant connective “therefore.”
In vs. 1 “these mercies of God” point back to the statement that Christians have been justified by faith in Christ the Son, that they are being sanctified by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that they are to be glorified as heirs of God, the Father. The “mercies of God” refers to God’s numerous acts of mercy toward humanity in His redemptive plan as explained in Chapters. 1-11.
In view of such mercies comes the appeal to consecration. This is the real logic of Christianity. We do not serve God to win His favor but because we have received His favor we serve Him in gratitude and love.
There is nothing more important for Christians than a deepening conviction that the righteousness we have received by faith is to be demonstrated in daily living. The unanswerable testimony as to the reality of Christian experience is a Christ-like life.
“So,” Paul says, “take your body; take all the tasks that you have to do everyday; take the ordinary work and offer all that as an act of worship to God.” The word in vs. 9 which the Authorized Version has translated SERVICE and we have translated WORSHIP never means humans service; it is always used of service to and worship of God. Now here we have a most significant thing. The true worship, the really spiritual worship, is the offering of one’s body, and, all that one does every day with it, to God. Real worship is the offering of everyday life to God. Real worship is something which sees the whole world as the temple of the living God, and every common deed an act of worship.
This, Paul goes on to say in vs. 2, demands a radical change. He says we must not be conformed to the world, but we must be transformed from it. Phillip’s translation reads, “Don’t let the world squeeze you into its own mold.”
Paul did not agree with the old saying, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” The pagan pressures in Roman society were strong on Christians, especially on those who had been involved in the sins described in Rom. 1: 18-32.
Those verses describe the basic sin of turning from God with its resulting sins of strife and sexual immorality. Christians in every generation are subjected to pressures to conform to the prevailing cultural standards. We must refuse to conform.
The only effective antidote against being conformed is to be…transformed by the Spirit into the likeness of Christ. In earlier chapters Paul emphasized how guilty sinners can be justified or saved by faith in Jesus Christ. He also stressed that saved people are no longer to live in sin but to live new lives by the power of the Spirit. People can be saved in a moment, but being transformed is an ongoing process.
The words, by the renewing of your mind show that outward changes begin with internal changes. Our minds must have thoughts and attitudes shaped by God’s Word. Paul mentioned the body and the mind. Both go together.
The last part of vs. 2 deals with the doing the will of God. God wants His people to do what is commanded in vs. 1-2. The word prove means to test something in order to approve it. By living a transformed life Christians prove over and over that this is God’s will. This will is described as good and acceptable, and perfect.
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO 1 CORINTHIANS 6.
PLEASE READ 1 CORINTHIANS 6: 9-11.
In these verses Paul beaks into a terrible catalogue of sins that is a grim commentary on the debauched civilization in which the Corinthian Church was growing up. The City of Corinth was one of the most immoral cities in the Roman Empire. The Greeks coined a verb meaning “to live like a Corinthian” to describe those whose lives were characterized by immorality and debauchery. Sexual immorality was especially rampant in Corinth. Many people visited the pagan temple prostitutes as part of their religious duties. Into this profane society the Apostle Paul introduced the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Even though the Corinthian believers were “new creations in Christ,” many were immature in their faith. In many ways they reflected the prevailing culture of their city more than they displayed the character of the Lord Jesus. The immature conduct of some of the Christians in Corinth provoked Paul to address them in 1 Corinthians 3:1 as “People of the flesh, as babies in Christ.”
First Corinthians 6 occurs in the section of the letter where Paul was dealing with reported problems in the congregation. In vs. 1-8 Paul addressed the issue of the Corinthians’ filing lawsuits against one another and depending upon pagan courts to settle internal disputes among members of the Christian community. They were guilty of acting unjustly and cheating one another.
Paul was horrified at such conduct, for it betrayed the truths he taught concerning the transforming power of the gospel. Although the Corinthian Christians had been born again, indwelt by God’s Spirit, enriched with spiritual gifts and empowered to live godly lives, they were behaving as though they had not received these blessings from God.
After dealing with the issue of the lawsuits, Paul asked: “Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit God’s Kingdom?” The question implied that the Corinthians most certainly did know this truth. The unjust refers to people who had not been justified by God. Believers have been declared righteous, that is, declared to be in a right relationship with God by faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ. Thus, unbelievers are not in a right relationship with God, and they demonstrate their unrighteousness through their lifestyles.
The problem in Corinth was that the Christians were acting like unbelievers. Although Paul was certainly aware that a genuinely saved person manifests unrighteous behavior at times, he insisted that a genuine believer would obey Jesus Christ and manifest the fruit of the Spirit as described in Gal. 5: 19-25.
Paul’s point to the Corinthians was not to question the genuineness of their salvation, as the following verses prove, but to remind them of the inconsistency of behaving as if they were people who would not inherit God’s kingdom.
In vs. 9 Paul commanded the Corinthians: “Do not be deceived.” The tense of this negative command might imply that Paul was commanding the Corinthians to cease what was already taking place: “Stop being deceived.” They were deceived about the consequences and implications of their ungodly behavior. Then Paul enumerated what he meant by the unjust who would not inherit God’s kingdom. This list of people who would not inherit the kingdom of God was not intended to be exhaustive since Paul provided other lists that have different terms.
In 1 Corinthians 6: 9-10 Paul listed 10 categories of unjust people excluded form God’s kingdom. Sexually immoral people, one word in the Greek (porno), refers to people who practice sexual sins of any kind. Adulterers specifically refers to those who are married but have not remained sexually faithful to their spouses.
Idolaters may have been included here because of the sexual sins so often connected to the worship of pagan deities in the ancient world—such as occurred regularly at the temple shrine to Aphrodite in Corinth.
The next two items in Paul’s list have elicited much debate. Some interpreters have denied that Paul referred to homosexuality at all. Others have limited Paul’s reference only to specific homosexual practices. But even though the meanings of the two words employed by Paul might be somewhat ambiguous in other contexts, when used side by side they provide strong evidence that Paul was referring to homosexual activities.
Based upon a Greek word that initially meant “soft” or “effeminate,” male prostitutes likely refers to men or bys who accepted the passive role in homosexual intercourse. The Holman Christian Standard Bible reflects a prevalent contemporary interpretation that views the word as referring predominantly to boys who sold themselves as “mistresses to older men.”
The second term, homosexuals, is frequently understood to mean a male who has intercourse with males. Together the two terms probably include the passive and the active partner in male homosexual relations.
Although this explanation is disputed by some interpreters, it is supported by many others. This verse is not Paul’s only condemnation of homosexual activity ( see Rom. 1: 26-27l; 1 Tim. 1: 1-10). Paul would have known that the O.T. condemns homosexuality in (Lev. 18: 11; 20:13), so it is not surprising that Paul was specifically including male homosexuality in this list of unjust behaviors that excludes someone from God’s kingdom.
The sin of homosexuality had swept like a cancer through Greek life and from Greece, invaded Rome. We can scarcely realize how riddled the ancient world was with this evil. Even so great a man as Socrates practiced it. Fourteen of the first fifteen Roman emperors practiced this unnatural vice.
At the time Paul wrote this letter the emperor Nero had taken a boy called Sporus and had him casterated. He then married him with a full marriage ceremony and took him home in procession to his palace and lived with him as his wife. (I thought of Rock Hudson at this point)
In this particular vice, in the time of the early church, the world was lost in shame; and there can be little doubt that this was one of the main causes of the final collapse of its civilization.
3. PLEASE READ 1 CORINTHIANS 6: 13b-20.
When the gospel confronted the sexual wilderness of ancient society, it eventually changed the basic cultural approval of sexual sins. The culture eventually adopted, at least on the surface, Christian standards of sexual behavior. When I was growing up, such standards prevailed: but, within my lifetime, a sexual revolution has taken place. We have reverted to the sexual standards of the first-century world. Casual sex is widespread. Many youth are sexually active. Many un-married couples live together. Adultery is common. Homosexuality is practiced, condoned, and celebrated. .
We call this a revolution because at one time everyone including the guilty knew that sex outside of marriage was wrong. Today many people condone all sexual sins. Each new technological advance is misused to promote sexual sin. It happened to television, and it is happening to the internet.
Our basic assumptions have reverted to those of first-century society. In vs. 12-13 Paul challenged two of these. Some people were saying that they were free and breaking no law. Paul was an advocate of freedom in Christ, but he knew that freedom did not mean license to do as he pleased, and he realized that undisciplined freedom could lead to moral slavery.
In vs, 13a Paul also challenged the saying, “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats.” By this people were denying that sex is a moral issue. They claimed that it is only a physical drive, such as hunger. When people get hungry, they eat. When people desire sex, they have sex.
Pagan society said that both were purely natural desires and that satisfying these desires is not a moral issue but a natural thing. Paul insisted that satisfying the sex drive is different from satisfying hunger. Eating food is a purely physical function. Having sex is more than a physical function.
Vs. 12-13a express assumptions of advocates of the sex revolution. They consider the Ten Commandments as outdated. They championed complete sexual freedom. They say that any sexual experience between consenting adults is not immoral but right and normal. Therefore, for people who believe the Bible, Paul’s challenge to these assumptions is important. Christians need to be able to explain why sex outside of marriage is wrong, and 1 Cor. 6: 12-20 is the clearest way to defend the Christiana view.
Apparently some of the Corinthians had embraced pagan teachings that denigrated the human body. Slogans such as “Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods,” reflect their view that God had provided the means by which bodily appetites could be satisfied. They extended this thinking to suggest that since God provided food to satisfy the stomach’s appetites, why not visit prostitutes to satisfy sexual appetites? Paul countered this erroneous thinking by stressing important truths about the human body in God’s redemptive plan.
First of all, Paul pointed out a basic principle: The body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. Paul refuted the pagan view that the Christian’s body could be used for sexual immorality without dishonoring the Lord. To the contrary, Paul said that the believer’s body is for the Lord.
Second, Paul affirmed that the believer’s body is destined for resurrection: God raised-up the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Our bodies will die and decay, but one day God will raise our bodies by the same power He used to raise Jesus from the dead.
Paul dealt in detail with this subject in 1 Cor. 15. This body will be the eternal expression of he person you are now in the process of decaying. Paul called the resurrected bodies, spiritual bodies.
Third, Paul asked his readers: Do you not know that your bodies are the members of Christ? Since the body of each believer is a member of Christ, Paul asked, Should I take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? The correct answer is implicit in the question: Absolutely not!
Fourth, Paul quoted Gen. 2:24 to explain that sexual intercourse with a prostitute involves a one-flesh relationship, for anyone joined to a prostitute is one body with her. This means that the sexually promiscuous person creates many one-flesh relationships. God’s intention, however, is that a person should have a one-flesh relationship only with his or her spouse.
Paul’s teaching reveals the fallacy of so-called “safe –sex.” Sex is never merely a physical act that can be engaged in safely with the proper precautions. Sexual relations always produce a one-flesh relationship and affect the participants at every level of their being: physically, spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, and mentally.
Fifth, Paul stated that anyone joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. As members of Christ we experience a spiritual unity with Him.
The proper response to sexual immorality is to flee from it. So powerful and potentially destructive is sexual immorality that we are commanded to flee from it, not to fight it or attempt to resist it. Instead---just as Joseph fled from Potiphar’s wife---run.
Paul may be repeating another slogan used by the Corinthians. Every sin a person can commit is outside the body (the interpretation by the HCSB). What follows would be Paul’s corrective response. On the contrary, the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body. Whether or not this is the correct way to understand Paul’s language, his meaning is clear: sexual immorality affects our bodies in ways unlike any other sin.
A person may inflict great harm to his or her body though gluttony or drug abuse, for example, but the one-flesh relationship produced by immoral sexual relations is a sin against one’s own body in a unique manner.
Finally, the believer’s body is a sanctuary or temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in each believer. Paul then informed his readers: “You are not your own, for you were bought at a price.”
As Christians we no longer belong to ourselves. We were purchased by the precious blood of Jesus,(1 Peter 1: 18-19), and “we have been enslaved to God” (Rom. 6: 22). Consequently, the believer is to use his or her body as an instrument to glorify God.
If we no longer belong to ourselves, then the One who owns us has the prerogative to establish the standard for moral and sexual purity that we must follow. This is a bedrock principle of the Christian faith.
There are few areas of our culture on which Christians need a clear understanding more than the subject of sexual purity and morality. Today’s lesson has looked at two passages from Paul’s letters that command believers to use their bodies in ways that honor God and serve Him instead of for sexual gratification. Christians need to hold to God’s standards in their own lives and to serve, as examples in a society that has become consistently like the pagans of ancient Corinth regarding this issue.
NEXT SUNDAY FROM EX. 1: 8-21; JER. 19:1-15, 33: 1-26; Rom. 8: 1-11.