Prehistoric Ideas
“Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”
Today’s Text: 1 Corinthians 7:1-16 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
At some point after I got saved, I started to feel that we, as human beings, tend to overcomplicate basic spiritual principles related to human sexuality and romantic relationships. Could it be that the overcomplication of those principles has led to the sexual revolution and the rise of the LGBTQ movement?
In these verses, Paul gets to the bare essence of the motivation for getting married, our sexual desire. In a way, we can sense how Christianity was shifting the attitudes of people in the ancient world regarding marriage, and maybe even human sexuality.
Tim Keller pointed out how, to a significant degree, marriage in the ancient world was seen as a contractual obligation between families and also as a means of advancing a family’s legacy. Men, if they could afford it, could marry more than one woman,. We also get the sense that men could sleep around with other women or men without much, if any, accountability.
Here, Paul acknowledges human sexual needs—not just with respect to men, but also with respect to women—and then restricts sexual relations to the marriage bed, and then further restricts that bed to one man and one woman.
Basically, what this is implying is that what ultimately defines the marital union between a man and a woman is not a marriage ceremony or a legal document but sexual relations between the man and woman.
In other words, according to Paul’s attitude, once you have sexual relations with someone, you are basically married to that person.
Before I got saved, that concept would have sounded positively prehistoric to me. But in truth, the prehistoric attitude is actually sleep with whomever you want.
And I’m going to sound positively prehistoric when I say, I wish that Christians today had Paul’s perspective (the biblical perspective) about the connection between sexual relations and marriage. Because the reality is that Christian attitudes today are shaped more by the corruption and the lies of the sexual revolution than they are by the Bible.
And Christians may ask the question, is the biblical perspective reasonable or even possible in our day. Christians might also ask whether the biblical attitude toward sexuality is a primary issue for the church. And finally, Christians might ask, if it is an important issue, then why. What’s the big deal?
The assumption behind those questions is that the biblical perspective about human sexuality is in some way, or to some degree, wrong. But Christians really need to change our thinking about the Bible. As Francis Chan pointed out, if there is something in the Bible we disagree with, then we should assume that we are the ones who are wrong.
————————————
ZAMBIA UPDATE
Despite feeling under-prepared yesterday for our ministry to village pastors and deacons and their wives at Liberty Bible School at Mwembeshi, God was gracious. We were expecting about 40-45, but over 70 people came for our seminar on biblical marriage.
Many who came had also attended the previous year, and everyone was so engaged and zealous for modeling biblical marriage and discipling their churches to build up healthy, biblical marriages.
Tonight, we are ministering to a group of singles from several Baptist churches in Lusaka. Carleton will be training them on the three circles evangelism tool, and CJ and I will be sharing about … the passage above. God’s timing. PTL!
Please pray for us every day: (1) for safety and health, (2) that the village pastors and wives would be able to model biblical marriage to their churches and spark revival in their churches, (3) that God would use us to help bring the gospel to the lost in Zambia, and (4) that God would use the Chromebooks being donated to grow disciples and advance the gospel in Zambia..
Love you all. Blessings
—————————————
Father, You alone are God. You know how this entire universe works. You made it so. Forgive us for thinking that we know better in anything. Give us wisdom through Your Spirit to apply our lives to Your word and to teach others to do the same. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
