Sexual Purity — Part Two

We began last Sunday evening to look together at these verses that begin in 4:1. Indeed, we began to look at verse 1 prior to last Sunday night, and we saw that the instruction which Paul was giving was directly related to this whole issue of learning to please God. And we reminded one another that we exist for God rather than that he exists for us and that our desire, once we have been set free from sin, is to live in a way that would please him.

We said that in an imaginary dialogue here through these eight verses, the imaginary person may then in turn say to the apostle Paul, “And what exactly do you have in mind in relationship to pleasing God?” And in response to that, in the opening part of verse 3, Paul directs his readers and us to this whole matter of sanctification, or holiness. If we imagine a further question, “Well, Paul, can you give to us some kind on concrete example of what you have in mind in relationship to that?” then we ended last time by noticing that his reply was equally clear: he said, “If you want to know what I have in mind, you should avoid sexual immorality,” or, in the paraphrase, “There needs to be in each of your lives a clean cut with all sexual immorality.”

And we ended last time by saying that further poses the question “How, then, is this to be accomplished?” And Paul address that as we pick it up here at the beginning of verse 4: “Each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable.” Or as Phillips paraphrases it, “Every one of you should learn to control his body, keeping it pure and treating it with respect.”

Now, we said last time that a variant translation, as in the Revised Standard Version, renders this opening section of verse 4 as follows: “that each … of you know how to take a wife for himself.” And you will, of course, be interested to know that Theodore of Mopsuestia held this view, as did Augustine, as does John Stott, as do a vast number of contemporary commentators. So, obviously, the view is not without warrant.

However, rather than dragging you into the etymology of it all, for what it’s worth and for the provoking of your own further study, let me simply say that I think the NIV has got it right—with all due deference to Theodore of Mopsuestia. And indeed, even if it has it wrong and that the correct translation is “wife,” all that that does is specify and particularize the principle which is contained here. For if in learning to control our own bodies as men, essentially, in the matter of sexuality, there will be only one outlet for that, and that will be within the framework of marriage, as we will see.

What Paul is addressing here is what he has already said in Romans 6:13—and you may like to turn to it—where he says,

Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

Again, the paraphrase:

Do not, then, allow sin to establish any power over your mortal bodies in making you give way to your lusts. Nor hand over your organs to be, as it were, weapons of evil for the devil’s purposes. But, like men rescued from certain death, put yourselves in God’s hands as weapons of good for his own purposes.[1]

A very clear and straightforward statement concerning the fact that the redeeming of our lives is a redeeming not simply of our souls, which will live forever, but the totality of who and what we are. And therefore, if our claim to have been radically changed by the power of the Spirit of God does not put restraints upon and constrain the whole matter of human sexuality, then we’re actually living in a fantasy world, and our statements are unmatched by our lifestyle.

The redeeming of our lives is a redeeming not simply of our souls, which will live forever, but the totality of who and what we are.

Now, although John Stott suggests that this should be read as “a wife” and with that we choose humbly to disagree, he makes these two very helpful statements which are hard to pass up, and I want to pass them on to you. Any time anybody makes two helpful statements—or even one, for that matter—then I, for one, am ready grab them and go with them. And in this case, these are very, very helpful. And they will serve you well if you write these down in your Bible, on the flyleaf of your Bible, in a notebook somewhere, and you take them with you throughout all your days.

Statement number one: “Sex has a God-given context—namely, “heterosexual marriage.” [2]“Sex has a God-given context”—namely, “heterosexual marriage.” It is therefore forbidden in every other context. Prior to marriage, it is referred to as fornication, irrespective of whether you’re engaged, irrespective of whether you really like this girl, you really like this guy, you really think they’re going to be your only one, la, la, blah, blah. That is absolutely verboten in Scripture. It is referred to as fornication. It is a violation of all of God’s intended purpose for sex.

It is also a violation in the realm of adultery—namely, the involvement sexually with somebody other than your marriage partner after you have been married. And it also means that homosexuality, which is an expression of sexuality which the Bible refers to as deviant, which is beyond marriage, also runs contrary to the clear instruction of these verses here. Learning “to control his own body” within the framework of God’s intended purpose means one thing and one thing only—namely, that the God-given context for sexual fulfillment, sexual intercourse experienced and enjoyed, is and only is, says the Bible, within the framework of marriage.

Now, that immediately runs counter to the sex-crazed culture in which Paul was living in Corinth and to which he was writing in Thessalonica. But it obviously didn’t daunt him. It certainly is contrary to the crazy environment in which we are living today. So much of what is offered up to us as wonderful literature or wonderful cinematography is nothing other than a deviation from God’s intended plan and purpose.

Those of you who are tempted to view this latest film involving Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep, heralded as, now, a wonderful love story and a tremendous statement of mutual affection between a man and a woman, if you have not researched it at all, you should know that it is an expression of four days of adultery. And if you wish to go and watch that and allow Hollywood to define that as love and fidelity and enjoyment and beauty, then so be it. But understand this: it is directly contrary to what Paul is saying here. And the great subtlety of the Evil One is that he takes that which is poison, and he wraps it in some of the most beautiful concoctions and gildings so that the unsuspecting may eat of it and begin to die.

Whatever we may want to say about this, it is hard to deny the clarity of Paul’s expression. The sexual expression of love is within the God-given context of marriage.

“Well, what about single people?” someone immediately asks. And what a valid and vital question that is! Either someone who remains single, having never been married, or someone who, as a result of divorce, now finds themself single, or, as a result of widowhood, is now living alone and does not have the context for this fulfillment of sexual love. Well, helpfully, John Stott has lived for almost seventy years now as a single man, and he adds a statement concerning this, which I noted and quote for you now. Speaking of single people and including himself, he says,

What about us? We too must accept this apostolic teaching, however hard it may seem, as God’s good purpose both for us and for society. We shall not become a bundle of frustrations and inhibitions if we embrace God’s standard, but only if we rebel against it. Christ’s yoke is easy, provided … we submit to it. It is possible for human sexual energy to be redirected … both into affectionate relationships with friends of both sexes and into the loving service of others. Multitudes of Christian singles, both men and women, can testify to this.

And then, very tellingly, he adds this concluding sentence: “Alongside a natural loneliness, accompanied sometimes by acute pain, we can find joyful self-fulfillment in the self-giving service of God and [of] other people.”[3]

Now, that’s worth the tape just for that quote, especially if you’re wrestling with this issue as a single person. And it comes with greater impact, having been written by one who has lived for virtually seventy years in sexual purity himself.

So, “Sex has a God-given context”—namely, “heterosexual marriage.” And his second statement is that “sex has a God-given style”[4]—namely, honor and holiness and purity. That’s what he says in verse 5: he says, “In contrast to the heathen, who do not know God and who live in passionate lust, the style in relationship to the enjoyment of God’s purposes in this matter is one that is to be touched by and framed by all that is holy and honorable. Incidentally, there is a direct correlation between not knowing God and all of the chaos that follows from that.

Paul is here referring not to the fact that somehow or another these people are unfortunate enough to be in this position, but rather, he is referring to their blameworthy neglect of the revelation which has been given to them. And to address that, we need to go, as we go so many times, to Romans chapter 1. And you can read it there at your leisure, but it says concerning man, in verse 21, that “although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened,”[5] and so on, and so on. And verse 24: “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity.” One of the great indicators that a culture has turned its back on the knowledge of God that has been revealed is the sexual morass into which it falls. And it is arguable just whether the framework of Thessalonica or Corinth was any worse than that which we’re dealing with in contemporary Cleveland this evening.

The application of honor and holiness in the matter of sexuality, in living in purity, is applicable both to the single individual and is applicable within the framework of marriage itself. And for that reason, the writer of the Hebrews says, in Hebrews 13:4, “marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure.” We fall foul of this if we think somehow or another that once we have entered into marriage, we’ve passed through the threshold and are now beyond the realm in which a call to sexual purity would have any abiding and meaningful implications for us. The fact of the matter is, marriage is not a form of legalized lust. Marriage as God intended is something that is marked by holiness and honor, and that is to be part of sexual fulfillment within marriage. There is a vast distinction between the desire to possess somebody selfishly to one’s own ends and the desire to unselfishly love and cherish and respect and fulfill the needs and the longings of that individual. And honor and holiness and purity are to be the very framework and context and style of love within this physical realm.

Marriage is not a form of legalized lust. Marriage as God intended is something that is marked by holiness and honor, and that is to be part of sexual fulfillment within marriage

Back to our imaginary dialogue: “Well,” says somebody, “that is fairly clear. In fact, it’s very clear. Isn’t, though, this matter of our sexuality just some personal and private concern?” Well, that takes us to verse 6: “And … in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him.” Phillips again: “You cannot break this rule without in some way cheating your fellow-men.”[6] It is impossible to engage in sexual sin, either in our minds or in actual physical terms, without cheating somebody else out of what is rightly theirs. And this addresses, within the framework of marriage, all the issues of voyeurism and all the stupid counsel of stupid people who, in trying to resurrect flailing and failing marriages, suggest all kinds of godless activity that would be able to restore and recreate and reenergize and renew. No. To engage in that kind of thing is to rob another of what is theirs and theirs alone.

The implication is very clear: sexual sin is not only an offense against God, against holiness, against honor, against my own body; sexual sin is an act of fraud against my brother or my sister, because in engaging in that, I take what is rightly theirs. Prior to marriage, it is referred to as fornication. C. S. Lewis puts it as graphically as any when he says, “If you want to know how much interest a man has when he says that he wants or needs a woman, watch him five minutes afterwards.” And then he says, “No one keeps the packet when they’ve smoked the cigarettes.”[7] And as soon as men and women take that which God has planned and ordered and suggested and framed within the context and the honor and the purity that he intends, it is a violation not only against him and against ourselves, but it is a violation against those from whom we steal.

And back to the dialogue: “Well, isn’t God so loving that he’ll just overlook this kind of thing? After all, there’s so much of it going on around us.” In listening to a tape of a church far from here this week, the person addressing these verses on the tape said that the people who conducted the premarital counseling within this particular church—well-known, significant evangelical church—reported to the senior pastor that of all the young couples interviewed prior to marriage, 75 percent of them had already engaged in premarital sex—within the church! And we’re certainly, here, at 50, and maybe higher.

Do you think the Bible is practical? Do you think the Bible speaks to the issues of our lives? It does. And what does it say? Verse 6b: “The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you.” Paul has already addressed this issue. Why would he address the issue? Because it was such an important issue. The people who were the believers in Thessalonica had come out of a dreadful background. They had come out of a background where worship involved prostitution, where the contemporary culture of their day was such that the only reason a man had a wife was to bring civility to his existence and to make sure that there were meals and he had children provided for. But all of his dalliance and his enjoyment was to be found beyond that.

And these people had come to faith in Jesus Christ out of that kind of background. And so he says to them, “You remember, before, I told you about this, and I warned you about this before, and I’m writing to you about it again. I want you to know how to please God. If you’re going to please God, you need to live a holy life. If you want to know what it means to live a holy life, you can’t evade the issue of sexuality. And if you want to know how to live in sexual fulfillment and freedom, then don’t do it before you get married, and only live within the framework of marriage afterwards.” We don’t need any tommyrot about safe sex. No sinful sex is safe! The issue is: God’s way, and only his way. And God will punish all who violate his commands.

Now, clearly, that will happen on the day of Pentecost. But it is already operative. That’s the whole issue there in Romans chapter 1, is it not? Part of the punishment of God upon a culture is that he gives people over to their sexual deviances:

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, [they] worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator …. [And] because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.[8]

And that led them into the realm of homosexuality: “Men committed indecent acts with other men”—now notice this—“and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.”[9]

Now, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to track this. What does God’s Word say about homosexuality? It says it is a perversion. It is not alternative lifestyle. It says that it brings punishment. And it says that even within the bodies of these individuals themselves, they received punishment for their perversion.

Loved ones, these are solemn, sacred, vital, chilling, necessary, staggering statements. And the fact that they’re all so incredibly staggering is an indication of the dire straits in which our culture tonight is to be found.

The final phrase in verse 6 makes it clear that Paul, as I say, had to keep coming back to this issue, and so do we.

“Well,” says the imaginary dialogue, “can you give it to me in one sentence?” “Yes,” says Paul, “I can.” Verse 7: “God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.” People get all steamed up about what the call of God is in their life. They go from person to person and tape to tape and bookstore to bookstore wondering about what the call of God is in their life. The call of God in our life is really pretty straightforward. You just need to take a concordance and look up call and look at all the things he’s called us to. He calls us to salvation. He calls us to sanctification—1 Thessalonians 4. He calls us to suffering in 1 Peter chapter 3. He calls us to service in Romans chapter 12. He calls us to sacrifice. And I’m going to just tell you something in passing: that if you and I begin to focus on the clear things to which God has called us—to salvation, to sacrifice, to suffering, to sanctification, and to service—then many of the other things which are our preoccupation will actually begin to fall into line.

“Well, is this not a little extreme?” “Not at all,” says Paul. We’re at verse 8: “Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does[n’t] reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.” Phillips again: “Anyone who makes light of the matter is not making light of [a] man’s ruling but of God’s command. It is not for nothing that the Spirit God gives … is called the Holy Spirit.”[10] And the interesting thing in this is that it’s in the present tense. He doesn’t say, “Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject a man but God, who gave you his Holy Spirit”; it says, “who gives you his Holy Spirit.” In other words, in the call to sanctification, he doesn’t leave us on our own. He gives us his Holy Spirit. He enables us moment by moment, as we live in obedience to his Word; he gives us the Holy Spirit.

“And,” says Paul, “understand that the Spirit that he gives us is holy.” Therefore, when we disregard this instruction, we disregard God. It’s God who called us to sanctification. And therefore, if I disregard the call, I am not despising man, but I am despising God himself. The prohibition is divine, and the person who treats sexual sin lightly is in effect treating God as one who can be disregarded.

I do believe that many of us would do well to take the first few verses of 1 Thessalonians 4 and get away with them and get on our knees before them and, as singles and as teens, cry to God for the grace necessary to live differently. And some of us, within the framework of our marriages, need to recognize the awesome implications of this instruction as it relates to honor and as it relates to holiness and as it relates to rightness. And which of us this evening does not find ourselves before these verses struck dumb, whether as a result of failure in the distant past or in the immediate present—physical or mental? Beware the rising spirit of the Pharisee within your heart. If you find yourself saying, “I thank you that I am not as other men are, and thank you, Lord, that this is very interesting, this stuff tonight, but it doesn’t seem to have much to do with me,” you are in deep difficulty. And come again to 1 John 1: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive … our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”[11]

There is little doubt, dear ones, that in the arena of sexuality, we declare much about the state of our Christian profession. May God bring secret sins into the open in order that they might be forgiven and forsaken and that we might go on to learn how to please him.

In the arena of sexuality, we declare much about the state of our Christian profession.

Let us pray together:

Our God and our Father, these are solemn words that we read. They crash against the current of our day. They reverberate in our minds, because they’re so alien, so different from everything else that we hear, that we read, that we see. Even the way in which we instruct our young folk is radically different from this. Give us the grace, Lord, to be prepared to be thought totally nuts for the issue of moral purity, for the preserving of the lives of our children in purity for one another, for the enhancing of our marriages as you have intended, and for the ability to live within the realm of singleness—despite loneliness and acute pain, as Stott says—in a way that ultimately declares you to be Lord over all. May it be that in the baptisms which follow, in this graphic picture of men and women portraying what it means to die to self and rise to Christ, that you will find an echo in each of our hearts, saying afresh to you, “Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee; take my hands and let them move at the impulse of thy love,”[12] for your glory, for our good, and for the salvation of men who tonight are enslaved by passions and by lust. For Jesus’ sake we ask it. Amen.

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[1] Romans 6:12–14 (Phillips).

[2] John R. W. Stott, The Message of 1 and 2 Thessalonians: Preparing for the Coming King, rev. ed., The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1991), 61.

[3] Stott, 63–64.

[4] Stott, 64.

[5] Romans 1:21 (NIV 1984).

[6] 1 Thessalonians 4:6 (Phillips).

[7] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (1960). Paraphrased.

[8] Romans 1:24–26 (NIV 1984).

[9] Romans 1:27 (NIV 1984).

[10] 1 Thessalonians 4:8 (Phillips).

[11] 1 John 1:9 (KJV).

[12] Frances Ridley Havergal, “Take My Life and Let It Be” (1874).