Latest / Cumberland Trace Church of Christ (Formerly Lehman Ave Church of Christ) / "A Study of 1 Corinthians" by Neal Pollard - Part 5

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"A Study of 1 Corinthians" by Neal Pollard - Part 5 · Cumberland Trace Church of Christ (Formerly Lehman Ave Church of Christ)

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a pivotal, a transitional point. And I just kind of want to take you
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to where we are as we come into a study of
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what has often been touted as a difficult and
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a controversial chapter. But I think we'll find— here's
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what you're going to find probably. There's going to be some things
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that you may or may not like,
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but I don't think you're going to find it to be difficult to understand.
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I think it's difficult for people to accept. You know,
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Jesus often says that, that this is difficult to accept.
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And so, but all we can do, and all we
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can do with anything that the Bible says, is follow what it says. If we
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start going cafeteria style and we accept and embrace
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what we like and we reject what we don't just because we don't like it,
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then we might as well throw the whole thing out, and we can't do that,
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okay? Now, this letter begins, if you recall,
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with Paul, after the customary greeting, saying that
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he had heard some issues that were going on in the Corinthian church.
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And so, it seems to me that 1 Corinthians chapters
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1 through 6 is Paul kind of taking the report
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that he's gotten from Chloe's household, and he addresses those things right up front.
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And if you kind of think in review of what some of those
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would be, it would be the at the heart of it is that they're
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divided. They're not of the same mind and they're not of the same judgment,
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and he is urging them to do that. Now,
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without taking too much time, what are some of the things that they're divided
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on up to this point?
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Okay, preachers or personalities at the very least,
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those of prominence that maybe were teachers, spiritual leaders.
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Paul uses the examples of preachers to make the point So
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there's probably that layer involved as well. And they're lining up behind
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them. Their allegiance is not to
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Christ. Okay? So that's a major part of it. Anything else
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that Paul deals with in those first 6 chapters? All right,
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so we've got sexual immorality, and that's where we were last week.
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And there are some multiple issues involved in that.
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There is the major overriding issue of
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the man who has his father's wife. No doubt this is
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on Chloe's report. And so Paul says, I've got to deal with this.
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This is egregious. And not just that, but you've got to respond
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to it properly. And so he lays out the pattern of how you
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handle someone who is living an immoral lifestyle who is within the
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body of Christ. You know, he talks about that there
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is a human court system to deal with those who are outside of the body
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of Christ. But you, God's giving you the responsibility to
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You purged the leaven, and you had all the different reasons in 1 Corinthians chapter
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5 to exercise judgment and so forth. On the back of that, he starts talking
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about sexual immorality. So, we already know from the introduction that Corinth
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was a seat of immorality. And no doubt, Paul is
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getting this report from Chloe's household of the fornication
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that is going on among them. So, 1 Corinthians 5 and 6 in the report
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had to have been sexual sins in the congregation.
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Now, we're going to see a significant change in the letter,
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and it's going to be signified with the phrase, now concerning.
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It appears in the way that this formula is
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repeated by Paul, and I've given you all the references where you're going to find
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that, is that Paul is addressing questions that they have. So,
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part 1 of the letter, This is what I heard from Chloe and his household
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about what's going on there. And we got— this is emergency. Let's deal with this.
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And then also, you gave me
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several questions that we need to handle. And so let's start handling all those.
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And that formula that you see there, it's a preposition that's one word that's translated
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2 words in our English, now concerning. Every time except chapter
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8 and verse 4, Paul is introducing a
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new question that he is going to answer. And we're going to be looking
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at those all the way throughout the rest of the letter. And what
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I find interesting is that in the first, the first now
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concerning, and we're going to read it in just a
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moment, but if I know you do your homework and you read ahead, what does
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the now concerning thing concern here in chapter 7 and
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verse 1? Okay, it has to do with marriage,
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certainly.
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Okay, so, and we're in an adult class here,
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and I was going over my notes, and I had
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Carl with me this weekend. He said, is this an adult class? I said,
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yes, it is. Everyone, as far as I know, are there children in here?
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I don't see any. He's dealing with sexual
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matters. Now,
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this is connected, so it's interesting that he would start
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up front with this, with a sexual matter. But it's a different
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sexual matter. Sexual immorality, fornication, which is
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sexual intercourse with someone to whom you're not married.
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And we'll deal more with that when we get into the chapter. So he's
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dealt with that. We have the man with his father's wife. That's certainly
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sexual sin. We have the fornication in 1 Corinthians
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chapter 6. And now we have a new one that we've got to deal with.
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So turn your Bibles to chapter 7.
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Verse 1 through 7. Let's look at it together. Now concerning the
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things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a
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woman, but because of immoralities, each man is to have his own
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wife and each woman is to have her own husband. The husband must fulfill his
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duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband.
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The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does,
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and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body,
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but the wife does. Stop depriving one another, except by agreement
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for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer,
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and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because
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of your lack of self-control. But this I say by way of
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concession, not of command. Yet I wish that all men were
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even as I myself am. However, each man
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has his own gift from God, one in this manner and
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another in that. All right, so what is Paul's counsel here?
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Stay with your wife, stay with your
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husband. For certain, and that seems to be maybe part of what's behind their question.
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With all the sexual immorality in our culture,
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should we be married or should we not be married? We're going to see that
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in some of the successive things that the Apostle Paul has to say.
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That's part of it. Should we stay with our spouse?
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What else is he saying? Okay.
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Paul is going to begin and end the letter by saying,
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and he's going to actually say this throughout chapter 7, the ideal
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situation spiritually, in his view,
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is that if you can be, be single.
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Don't get married. And he's going to have an entire section at the end wherein
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he gives his rationale. Some of it's situational, But Paul's
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saying, that's— I have this gift, and the gift he's talking
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about is what? Controlling himself.
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I don't have to give in. I'm strong enough that I can handle any
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urges that I might have and not have to get married. Yes,
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sir.
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Right. And somebody might say that this is actually an
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overreaction in their mind because of what's going on in the culture. And we're
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going to see that in just about what we're about to look at. We're going
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to swing to another extreme, and it's an extreme
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that's unacceptable. And so Paul's going to talk about it. So let's ask the question
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in correcting this, what is the duty in verse 3?
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All right, so the duty is to be sexually intimate.
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That's what Paul is saying is if you cannot contain
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yourself and/or you make the decision to be married,
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then you have a duty.
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Now, and I think as we unpack this, that perhaps you
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wouldn't think of that as a duty, but there's a problem going on
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where some saw that as a duty rather than a God-given privilege.
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It involves surrendering authority over your own body,
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verse 4. That's a euphemism for what?
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Give your body to your spouse. It belongs to them.
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It doesn't belong to you. The husband and wife have a
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responsibility, an obligation in the marriage relationship
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to provide each other sexual fulfillment. And so that's
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what Paul is highlighting here. And then, The key
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verse, it seems to me, is in verse 5. What does verse 5 say?
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Don't deprive each other. What does that mean?
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Okay. Somebody not Bill give me an answer. What does
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it mean? Stop depriving each other. And I appreciate the answer.
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Uh-huh.
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Right. And that's going to be in his— and
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all that's true, and you're getting to the consequence, but all he's saying is don't
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withhold sex in the marriage. That's what he's saying.
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And then he's going to give us some further instruction that I want us to
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notice here. He says, he lays down the guard rules here
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because this is a question they have and they really want to know, How do
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we resolve this daily issue that apparently is in the
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culture of the congregation so that they want Paul to come to the rescue and
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help them to know what's to take place? Now, just kind of watch what he
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says. Number 1, don't do this unless by
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mutual consent, both parties agree.
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So don't deprive one another. Don't withhold from the sexual
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relationship as husband and wife.
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Unless both of you agree.
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Number 2, don't do this too long, or why?
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You're tempted to sexual immorality. Number 3, and this
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is not in the text, but this is an inference for sure, don't do this
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out of boredom, out of anger,
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out of disinterest, out of revenge,
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Now, why would I say that? But because
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we all live in community, and whether we're talking about family,
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whether we're talking about congregationally, and this is
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one of the things that crops up. This is a problem that happens.
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And we're not talking about, by the way, I feel like sometimes we're
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going to just run to some exceptional situation, some kind of physical malady or
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some kind of trauma, which I don't discount any of that, but we're talking about
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on the whole, the rule with regard to that this is not something that
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needs to be taking place. And you don't— Paul's very specific
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about this taking a break, if you will. And he's going
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to follow that up by saying that it's for a particular
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purpose. You're devoting yourselves to God. And don't do it for very long.
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He then says, come back together
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again. Some folks might choose the first part of that,
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And they don't choose the second part of that. They'll deprive one another for a
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season, whether they're praying or whatever they're doing, and they don't come back together
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again. They would be outside of what Paul's instructing
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here in 1 Corinthians 7. Bottom line is
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Satan will try and exploit anything he can to hurt the family,
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to hurt the church, and this is one of the ways that he does that.
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Now, he ends up by saying that he wishes that everybody has the gift that
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he does and can remain unmarried, But if you do get
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married and you decide that you don't want or need sexual relations,
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that's not a blessing. It's not what Paul's talking about
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here, and it doesn't need to happen. And his answer to you would be,
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don't deprive or stop depriving you.
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We probably could spend more time on that. We don't typically spend a lot of
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time on that. There's— that's not the heart of what we're here to talk about
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this morning, but I wanted to make sure that we spent some time with that
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because it is a congregational problem not
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unique to Corinth that needs a biblical answer and it
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needs us to say the quiet part out loud. Okay? Yes, sir.
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Opportunity. Yes, sir. To tempt.
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That's right. That's right. He's looking for any way he can to get
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in there for sure. Any other thoughts on verse 1 through 7?
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Yes, sir. Genesis 1:28.
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God's plan,
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fruitful and multiply. And so it's his
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plan. That's right. And really with all of this discussion,
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that's a great point. It's God's plan. In chapters 5 through 7,
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Paul is dealing with sexual immorality because anytime
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you think about anything, let me give another example before I finish this.
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Material blessings, every good and perfect gift comes down from above. You think
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about how God takes care of all of our needs. That's a blessing from God.
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Is— but are material things, is money abused?
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Well, certainly it is. And you think about all the Bible talks about with greed
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and covetousness and so forth.
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Sex is a gift that God has given.
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Will Satan try to exploit any— and you think about Bill was talking
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about how that was woven into how procreation occurs. It's kind
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of like with the fact that we're not— God didn't give us a black and
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white world. He gave us a color world when he didn't have to. So,
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the thought being that God has given us a wonderful way in which
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to perpetuate the human race, and Satan will try to
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come in and exploit that. And he's already dealt with in chapter 5
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the dirtiness of your— where do you have to get in your depravity
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in your mind to take your father's wife to your bed?
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And how about going along with the culture? And we— that's
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a 21st century lesson that all of us can appreciate because we
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see sexual immorality all around us and how Satan is trying to tell us
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the only place where misery occurs in a sexual relationship
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is where? What would Satan say? Where would it be?
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Misery in sex, in marriage.
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Where is thrill and excitement and enjoyment?
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Anywhere else. And the opposite is true.
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So Paul deals with this as his first now concerning.
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Yes, yes. Would this be easier if couples decided about
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this kind of thing before marriage? That's why Hiram and I have the identical policy.
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I won't marry anybody without having premarital counseling with them.
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Now, I went— Kathy and I went through premarital counseling from a professor
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in marriage and family therapy at Faulkner University in the last semester
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right before we got married. And I mean, he really, he literally wrote the book
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on it. But, you know, I was 22 and Cathy was 20.
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She no doubt took better notes and listened better than I did.
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And that's the problem with counsel. There are a lot of times that we don't
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listen, we can't hear. And sometimes we have to go into the crucible of the
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laboratory of life and learn. But the
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way that we have guidance on how to learn best is by following
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God's Word. So Paul's just dealing with a common issue,
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a maybe an overreaction to the issues in chapters 5 and verse 6 and
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chapter 6, but he's also giving us some sage
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advice for how we deal with any sexual deviation from
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what God desires in our lives. And if we're married,
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God's given us, and we're married because we can't abstain,
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then we have an outlet and our spouse is reliant
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upon that. And it's a part of that in that
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sense, even though we're not dealing with eros, of an agape love in which we
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give and we're looking for, and it's
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a lifetime of learning and understanding one another. And I think God's
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doing so much in the marriage relationship as it involves that.
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All right, I see y'all are uncomfortable, so I'm going to move on.
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Yes, ma'am. We're not going to move on. Doris has got something to say.
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Yes, ma'am.
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Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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That's an important point. And I will say that before we leave on.
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What Miss Doris was saying is, is that there was bad teaching.
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And the case that she's mentioning with, with women, there's a lot of bad teaching.
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We're talking about the world's going to teach bad teaching that said that sex was
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dirty. And sometimes people think that that's the wholesome biblical
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point of view, and nothing could be further from the truth. Sex is
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designated by God as a gift that he wants
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us to enjoy, but then he puts the guardrails on that. And as a result,
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and I've seen this as well, there was withholding
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because it was thought to be wrong. And then you put the
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man in a very difficult situation, and her bottom line rhetorical question is,
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what is a man supposed to do? Now, you know,
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we speak in generalities, and we're talking about
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things that I know are very sensitive, like drives and the
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drive of a man and drive of a woman not being necessarily the
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same. And that's part of what God wants us to be able to negotiate and
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work out in the marriage relationship. But the answer
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is not to see that it's dirty because God gave it. That's not biblical.
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It's contrary to what the Bible says. And to understand
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that we exist in that relationship for our need
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fulfillment and our spouse's need fulfillment. Okay.
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Y'all just don't want to talk about what's this tough stuff
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next. Now, the rest of the chapter are instructions that Paul gives
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revolving around marriage. And we'll just walk through those. There's,
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I think we have 5 of these. The first, and this is pretty straightforward,
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there's instructions to the unmarried and to the widows in verse 8
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and verse 9. So, he's not totally, he's kind of transitioning into some connected
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issues that revolve around marriage. All of these that we're going to see in the
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rest of chapter 7 in some way touch on marriage. And here's what he says
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in verses 8 and 9, but I say to the unmarried and to widows that
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it is good for them if they remain even as I. What does that
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mean? Stay single. But if they
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do not have self-control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than
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to burn with passion. I think this is pretty straightforward, isn't it? The unmarried here
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have a— there are 2 unmarrieds in
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this chapter, and people who try to muddy the waters and where we're fixing
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to go next try to make these unmarried the same. There are 2 unmarrieds in
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the chapter. There are unmarrieds who can be married, and there are unmarrieds
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who must remain unmarried. Does that make sense?
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These unmarrieds are those who are eligible to be married.
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The next group are not. Okay?
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All right. And we'll
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deal— I'll deal with this in the next point. Number next, we have instructions to
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the married. Now, stay with me very carefully, especially over
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the next 5 verses, because this is where there is a lot of controversy in
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the religious world, even within the body of Christ. And people try to,
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as Peter says, twist and distort what God's Word has to
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say. All right, here's the instructions to the married. But to the married I
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give instruction, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should
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not leave her husband. That's pretty clear and straightforward, right?
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I'm giving instructions to the married, not I,
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but the Lord. What does that mean? Say it.
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Okay, so the Lord's got something to say about this. Where does the
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Lord have something to say about this? You might
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want to write this down, and I'm just going to give you Matthew's. Mark also
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and Luke, but in Matthew 5:32,
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in Matthew 19:3-9.
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So, you're going to see that these instructions in verses 10 and 11 mirror
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what Jesus has taught. And anything
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that Paul is going to say in this chapter before
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we do anything else has to be read through the filter of
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the Lord says. What does the
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Lord say? Not that to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord.
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All he's saying is, let's review for just a moment on what Jesus
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taught on this subject, that the wife should not
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leave her husband. When you are married,
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once you've made that decision, as we used to say, one husband, one wife for
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life, remain married. That's what That's what the rule that Jesus
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is giving in Matthew 19 is. But if she does leave,
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now, when you read that, I want you just to understand that when that word's
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used, it means divorce. But if she does divorce,
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she, listen, she must remain unmarried.
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Now, we'll go back to Matthew 19:9 for just a moment.
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There is an exception. What's the exception?
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Fornication, sexual immorality.
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Whosoever, this is Jesus in Matthew 19:9,
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whosoever, that means everybody. Nobody's exempted from this.
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This is in within the body of Christ. And by the way,
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sometimes people like to say that Matthew 19:9 is under
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the Old Covenant. It's not New Covenant teaching. Makes no
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sense. And here's why. Jesus is teaching this,
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and in a few weeks, he's going to go to the cross, and then the
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church is going to be established. And so, do we really believe Jesus is saying,
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for the next 2 months, this is true? And so, if you're in this 2-month
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period, then this applies to you. After that, we're going to have a new covenant,
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and it's, you know, if any man's in Christ, he's a new creature. Old things
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are passed away. Behold, all things have become new. No way.
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Jesus is teaching. And by the way, what are the disciples going to teach
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when they are building on the foundation of Christ?
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John 14:26, John 16:13. What are the apostles
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going to teach? What Jesus taught them.
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This is one of those things. Whosoever puts
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away his wife— let's do it without the exception first— and marries another
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commits adultery. And whoever— and by the way,
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adultery— and Harm, you have to help me
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with this because it's Greek— present Indicative.
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Okay. Present perfect. Okay. So that
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what all that means for our purposes here is that
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it's a continual action. It's enduring that
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you continue to do this. It is not a one-time act that you can say,
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oh, I'm sorry I did that. And then you can move on.
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It's ongoing. And they would have understood it that way as they're listening
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to this. Whosoever puts away his wife and marries
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another commits adultery, and whoever marries her who has been put away commits
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adultery. There's an exception, and it doesn't hang
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on who goes to the courthouse first. It is the fact
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of, except for fornication, sexual immorality,
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unlawful sexual intercourse with someone other than your mate.
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That's what Paul is talking about in verse 10 and verse 11.
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So let's look at it again. If she does leave,
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divorce, she— and obviously,
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for a reason other than fornication. Here are
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her options. She must remain unmarried or else be
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reconciled to her husband. I say
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this— look, we're dealing with the most difficult thing. I hope you don't hear in
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my voice anger or anything, but there
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are people that people trust throughout the Lord's church
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who have convoluted this text, and people's souls are going
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to be lost because they're listening to this. The Lord's
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clear. Paul's clear. You have 2 choices.
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If you divorce, you remain unmarried,
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or you be reconciled to the person that you divorced.
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And he just makes sure that we don't miss this by saying, and the husband
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should not divorce his wife. This is true for everybody,
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husband, wife, both of these.
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And as we notice, he's saying, it's not I, but the Lord.
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This is nailed down by Christ already. So what I'm going to be dealing with
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is something that he has already dealt with. And we've already said that leave means
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separate, It's the idea of divorce. It's even used interchangeably there.
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And I want to just give you this. I don't know, I think
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the first time I saw this chart, it was Brother Winkler, and he was helping
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us when we were dealing with counseling. I think this
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one is either— this may be Dan Owen or Denny Petrillo. I want to give
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the proper credit for this.
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This is Matthew 19:9, for just a moment, before we get into what comes
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next. What Jesus is saying is whosoever,
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we can make that person A,
26:08
puts away, that's what that slash, divorces, not for fornication,
26:12
his wife, that's person B,
26:15
and marries another, that's that C, what happens when they
26:19
marry another according to Jesus? Commits adultery.
26:25
And whoever marries the one who has been put away for a reason
26:29
other than fornication, Now, Jesus is
26:32
going to deal with this in Matthew 19:12. He said that there are some who
26:35
are made eunuchs of men. That is,
26:38
somebody puts you in this situation. I think we've all known people like that,
26:42
who they didn't want to be divorced. They wanted to stay in the marriage,
26:47
but their spouse, for 1,000
26:50
reasons, whatever they are, say, nope, I don't want to be married to you anymore.
26:54
I've actually heard it said this way, I don't want to be married to you
26:57
anymore, and I want you to be clear, I'm never going to cheat on you.
27:00
And so there you go. Is that fair?
27:04
Of course not. It's horrible.
27:08
But if somebody comes along and marries a person who's been left in that situation,
27:12
what does Jesus say the resulting marriage is?
27:20
Now, here— just a second. That's not complicated
27:24
to understand, is it? What's complicated is, is it deals
27:28
with human lives and entanglements and hurts
27:32
that come along because of either decisions we made or that others made.
27:37
But, but I just want us to make sure we're clear. This is not ambiguous.
27:41
This is very straightforward. Yes, sir. I was just going to
27:45
say, if, uh,
27:49
and then remarried without immorality
27:54
involved, then they're committing
27:58
adultery. That's right. And look,
28:02
that's not said with any shred of
28:06
joy or
28:16
I've been raised in the church.
28:20
And I've seen so many people who
28:24
have trusted somebody who told them things,
28:28
and that in 1 Corinthians 7 is one of the places that they go to
28:32
justify what God will not
28:36
justify and with what Paul is not saying
28:39
in this chapter. And I'm walking us through it
28:43
step by step so that we don't miss this.
28:46
Because man comes along and entangles that with a lot of different teachings
28:50
that contradict the plain teaching of what the Bible says.
28:55
Now, before we go any further, I want to remind you of something that goes
28:59
beyond just this issue. Do you remember when Jesus is teaching his disciples
29:03
and he's just finished with them at Caesarea Philippi and he says, if any
29:07
man will come after me, y'all know how it goes after that, right? What must
29:11
he do? Deny himself, take up his cross.
29:16
What is that? What's take up his cross? It's not Calvary.
29:21
It's his burden. It's his collection of
29:25
burdens. And follow me.
29:29
Follow, submit. Not my will,
29:34
but God's will be done. There,
29:37
listen, there is no application of this any
29:42
harder than what we're talking about.
29:47
I want you to know that that's fully understood,
29:52
but it doesn't change truth. As soon as we
29:56
start taking out Jehoiachin's penknife and
30:00
start cutting out the things that we don't agree with,
30:05
then what does the Word of God become?
30:09
Our word and not his. Okay.
30:13
All right. Hiram, why didn't you deal with chapter 7 last week? All right.
30:18
Now, we've got to get to the instructions to the rest. I know we're running
30:21
short on time. We may not get to— I think I can summarize the last
30:25
2 sections pretty quickly, but we've got to cover this section.
30:28
Instructions to the rest, and I've defined that for you. This is believers
30:31
who are married to unbelievers. Now, before we read it, Paul's saying, all right,
30:35
here's a situation that Jesus didn't address, at least so far
30:39
as the gospel writers put it down. Now, it's possible that
30:43
he dealt with this, but Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John didn't tell us. And so
30:47
Paul's saying, here's something that I want us to, to review that
30:51
certainly deals with your situation and situations that we know about.
30:55
But to the rest I say, not the Lord, so he
30:59
hasn't covered it yet, in the scriptures, that if any brother has a wife
31:04
who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he must
31:07
not divorce her. All right, so what's Paul— what's Paul
31:11
saying? Yeah, if you're a believer and you're married
31:15
to an unbeliever and the unbeliever is content to stay with you,
31:21
stay with them. Why do you think they would have to, to cover that?
31:25
Why would Paul have to to even say that part?
31:31
Okay, maybe, maybe in a darker side, they might say, this is a
31:35
way for me to get out of a marriage I don't want to be in.
31:38
It might be hard in some ways to be married to an unbeliever. Maybe there's
31:42
even more. Yes, sir, Andy.
31:45
Issues are going to arise now that your allegiance has changed,
31:49
especially when we talk about bondage here in just a moment, slavery.
31:52
That you've got a new master and it's not your spouse, if it
31:56
ever was. Whatever your master was, it's now the Lord. And that's going
32:00
to create 2 different worldviews going 2 different directions, and that may cause problems.
32:03
Yes, sir, Ira. And you wonder,
32:07
where might they have gotten that idea? It's not really as far out
32:11
in left field as we might think. Do you remember they had access
32:14
to the Old Testament? And what— how did God deal with
32:18
that in the Old Testament? Exodus chapter 34 and the giving of the covenant.
32:22
The Jew was not supposed to do— to do what with regard to marriage?
32:26
Can't marry a Gentile. If you did marry a Gentile and you had a child,
32:30
what kind of ramifications did that have? There's uncleanness.
32:35
Now, you know, she's going to use the word sanctify here. Maybe there's— maybe that's—
32:40
we can't say dogmatically, but maybe that's kind of the idea. They maybe read Ezra
32:44
10, Nehemiah chapter 9, and what did God do in the past in the Old
32:46
Testament when a when a child of God is
32:51
married to somebody who's not— who's a heathen, who's an idolater. You've got to get
32:55
out of those marriages. So maybe they're going, well, maybe that's what we're supposed to
32:59
do. Paul, is this what we're supposed to do? And then Paul goes and says,
33:02
no, no, no. No, if you're married to an unbeliever
33:05
and they are content, you sanctify
33:11
that. In other words, it's not an unholy situation.
33:14
And, uh, it's fine. It's okay. It doesn't
33:18
have spiritual ramifications. Yes, ma'am. Sure,
33:22
sure.
33:27
There's— yeah.
33:34
And the Corinthians were probably going to experience some
33:38
of that. And anytime in any situation you have such radically different worldviews.
33:42
One is self-centered, one is Savior-centered. There are going to be problems. Now, let's keep
33:46
reading. A woman who has an unbelieving husband and he
33:50
consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away. For the unbelieving
33:54
husband is sanctified, maybe that is pulling back to that Old Testament
33:58
language, through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through
34:02
her believing husband. For otherwise your children are unclean, again, what we just mentioned,
34:05
but now they are holy. Verse 15,
34:11
yet if the unbelieving one leaves,
34:15
let him leave. The brother or the sister is
34:19
not under bondage in such cases,
34:22
but God has called us to
34:25
peace. What is Paul saying?
34:33
So peace with the person and God. Okay, that's— I think you're right.
34:36
What does he mean when he says you're not under bondage?
34:49
Okay, yeah, I think that's good. I'm going to come back to that. Anybody ever
34:52
heard of what's called the Pauline privilege? You probably haven't heard about that language.
34:56
Here's what the position states that's taught.
35:01
2 people are married to one another and
35:04
one abandons. And to stay purely
35:08
with this teaching, Christian's married to non-Christian, non-Christian leaves
35:12
them. Paul says they
35:17
are not under bondage. And the Pauline
35:20
position says what Paul's saying is you're
35:23
not bound in God's eyes
35:27
to that person any longer. Implication, you can turn around
35:32
and you can marry someone else. They say Paul
35:36
is giving a privilege,
35:39
another exception that
35:43
Christ has not— did not give in Matthew 19:3-9.
35:47
You ever heard that or some version of that taught? Very commonly
35:51
taught. What's wrong with that position?
35:55
Okay, well, no, I agree with you. I think you already know that I agree
35:59
it's not true. Maybe a better question is, why is that not true?
36:07
Okay, we got to start right there. It contradicts verse
36:11
10 and verse 11 where the Lord is already. So here's what you would have.
36:15
You'd have Paul saying, the Lord said this, But I'm going to
36:19
tell you that that's not right. Here's the answer: cannot
36:23
work. That alone is enough, but that word bondage
36:28
is a word that's not used that many times in the New Testament. I think
36:31
9 times in this— to be enslaved is what it means. The noun form
36:36
of slave is used over 100 times.
36:39
You'll not find that ever in any context, and we can give
36:43
you a list of the few passages where it occurs, never refers to the marriage
36:47
bond. Never. And by the way, if one makes
36:50
bondage marriage and equates the two, what Paul is saying is
36:54
you were not and you are not now married, and that is not what he
36:57
is saying. And nobody accepts that position. Now,
37:01
there is a word for bound,
37:04
for marriage, that is the word bound, and Paul uses that. And if you want
37:08
that, well, maybe that is what we need to do.
37:11
Romans 7:2, listen to what Paul
37:15
says, for the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he
37:19
is living. So it's very obviously a word used for the marriage context. But if
37:23
her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband.
37:27
So now here's another occasion when a person
37:31
who has been married can be married again. If their spouse
37:36
dies, they're no longer under the law of that
37:40
spouse and they can be married again. Now we've got to remember
37:44
the one that they're married to, has to be one that they can be
37:47
married to. Otherwise, you go back to the chart we had
37:51
a moment ago. But in this chapter, Paul uses this same word for
37:55
bond twice. Look at verse 27,
37:59
are you bound to a wife? Do not seek
38:03
to be released, to get out of the marriage. Are you released from a wife?
38:07
Do not seek a wife. It's unambiguous. It's very clear.
38:10
Look at verse 39, a wife is bound as long as
38:14
her husband lives. But if her husband is dead, she is free to be married—
38:17
this is Romans 7:2— to be married to whom she wishes only
38:21
in the Lord. So what Paul is saying is,
38:26
if you are married to somebody who is not a Christian and
38:31
the tension gets so bad, or more likely,
38:35
you're put into positions to where they're saying, look, you're going with me,
38:40
to the temple to worship idols.
38:43
I'm not taking no for an answer. What does that spouse
38:47
do? Are they enslaved? Do they have to go along with them with
38:51
the shackles of taking that spouse's command
38:55
over the command the Lord's already given them? Because that'd be a sin for them
38:58
to do that. Maybe that spouse would say, look, we're going to have an
39:02
open marriage, and, you know, so you're
39:06
going to go into this lifestyle with me. Because this is what we do in
39:09
Corinth or in America or whatever
39:13
you want to say. You're going to go.
39:16
No, my master is Christ.
39:22
I don't want this to sever our marriage, but if
39:26
you make me choose between forsaking my Lord and
39:30
forsaking you, the ball's in your court, but I'm not doing those things.
39:36
If they leave, and that may happen,
39:40
go back to Matthew 16:24.
39:43
God is not making you forsake his word
39:48
under any circumstance. And you'll find this concept in Ephesians 5:22,
39:55
where the wife is to be in submission to her husband in the Lord,
39:59
or Ephesians 6:1, children, obey your parents in
40:02
the Lord. You have 2 verses in Ephesians 6:5 and verse 7, where the
40:07
slave is to be subservient to their master in the Lord according
40:10
to— if there's ever a division, I think it's Acts 5:29, we ought
40:15
to obey God rather than men. That's what Paul's saying here.
40:18
He's not saying, let them go and then you can get married
40:22
again, in light of what the
40:26
Lord had already taught and in light of what he says here. Now,
40:29
I'm not going to be able to get to the unmarrieds,
40:33
Paul's just saying to the unmarrieds in verses 25 through 38,
40:38
there's a present distress. We don't know if that's a famine by Claudius
40:41
or if it's persecution, but what he's saying is,
40:45
dads— and this is a different cultural thing— who had a little bit more say
40:49
in their daughter's marriage status, tell them for whatever
40:53
this distress is, don't be married. And if they can't
40:57
though, if they have a desire to This is where Paul's going to express an
41:01
opinion. Let them do that. Let them get married because it's better for them to
41:05
marry than to burn with passion. And then verse 39 and 40, let me
41:09
just say this real quick, where Paul gives instructions to the widows. He says,
41:11
only in the Lord. There's 2 prominent views on that. Only in the Lord
41:15
is they have to be a Christian if you marry them. And I think in
41:18
context, some people build the case about all the problems you have when you're married
41:22
to an unbeliever in verse 12 through 24, or you have in the Lord,
41:26
meaning according to the Lord's teaching. I kind of incline toward
41:29
that view, but I wouldn't hold it as a fellowship issue with anyone else.
41:32
I know I didn't just do this because it was 1 Corinthians
41:36
7. I know the second bell has rung. Any questions for Hiram
41:40
next week when he cleans up this mess? Yeah.
42:09
With regard— I think that's acceptable as long
42:12
as we don't— again, they can't enter into another marriage
42:16
as a result of that, but their hands are clean in
42:20
the eyes of God. If they leave. Yep. Yep.
42:24
All right. I know this was not fun, but we, we're done with 1 Corinthians
42:28
7, I think. All right. Thank you very much for your attention.