Trinitarian Discipleship: Why Discipleship Cannot Be Understood Apart From the Trinity

Jesus Was Discipled by the Father:

"Truly, truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees His Father doing; for whatever the Father does the Son also does in like manner.  For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all things that He, Himself, is doing."  -John 5:19-20

Many people might ask: "What does our understanding of the Trinity have to do with discipleship?" 

Well, this passage alone provides the answer: Jesus was 'discipled' by the Father. 

It also shows us two more things:

1) The origin of discipleship
2) How discipleship is to be done

First, true discipleship did not find its origin in the Gospels whenever Jesus called followers to Himself.  Nor did discipleship originate in the ancient rabbinical tradition even though this tradition does predate the Gospels. 

No, discipleship finds it origin in the relationship that has always existed between the Father and the Son.  It originates in the love of the Triune communion. 

Secondly, not only do the Gospels and the ancient Hebrew rabbinical traditions teach us how discipleship and disciple-making is to be done, the relationship between the Father and the Son shows us how it is to be done par excellence.  Jesus is dependent upon the Father and, because the Father loves the Son, He shows Him all the things that He, Himself, is doing. 

It is here that we can come up with a definition of what a disciple actually is: a disciple is someone who does what they see their master doing.  They imitate their master in all things.  They take on the way of like of the master wherever they go.  In all of their thoughts and actions, they never forget what they have seen in him and they have shaped their life by his.   

Thus, the goal is not just to inherit the thinking of the master but the actions of the master as well. 

It is not enough, then, to simply limit disciple-making to the classroom or to the preaching event or even to small groups (small groups involve relationships that differ from that of the master-student Way of life).  For, these venues can never fully pass on the habits and actions of the master. 

Now, of course, all of this supposes that there is a legitimate place for a 'master' or a 'spiritual father' to begin with.  I understand that many Christian traditions no longer have a place for this role, which is nothing less than an utter tragedy.  For those who have asked me my thoughts on why so many young people today are leaving the Church at large, I respond by telling them that we no longer have any spiritual fathers.  We have church programs.  We have forsaken relational ministry in the truest sense.  We have depersonalized ministry and traded the role of the spiritual guide for entrepreneurial types of ministerial programs.  As a result, our culture no longer knows how to relate to, nor receive wisdom from, those who truly do have something to offer to us.  And, most that truly do have something to offer to us don't even realize it (and, if they did, they couldn't do much about it) because there is no longer a place for them within our programmatic driven churches. 

In essence, what we have done is we have removed discipleship from our Christianity.  We have done away with the Way of the Father and the Son.  What have we done?  We have removed the Trinity and the Way of God from discipleship.  We have removed this communal Way of faith formation and turned it into individualism.

Our way of discipleship no longer reflects the Way of the Triune God in whose image we are made. 

   

(In) This Is Love...What Love Looks Like

John the Apostle and former fisherman often referred to himself as the one whom "Jesus loved."  This was not simply some smug assessment of his relationship with the Savior.  No, it was a declaration that Jesus had fulfilled his (John's) very being.  John saw himself as a man who was defined by Jesus' love.  The God Who is love had incorporated him into the dynamic love of the Triune relationship between the Father, Son and Spirit.  He had found life, a life that can only be found through Jesus' relationship to him. 

This was not a matter of bragging.  John was not trying to highlight a notion that Jesus had loved John more than anyone else.  No, he was telling us about what it truly means to live, to have Life in the fullest sense.  Life is a person after all ("I am the Way, the Truth and the Life...").  He was telling us that the fulfillment of our humanity only comes through the love of God and the relationship found therein.  This is where true life begins, where a life of freedom begins, where a life restored begins and even finds its culmination. 

It is significant to note that John is not simply saying that life is about love.  He is saying that life is love; that love gives us our very existence.  To be, "the one whom Jesus loves," is the same as saying, "the one who now truly exists."  This will become more evident throughout the course of this book (this article is from a book that I wrote called The Forrest For the Trees). 

How do we even attempt to get a handle on something as wonderfully rich and deep as love, particularly love as John talks about it?  In a recent article called, "A Fisherman on God: Three Words That Change Everything," we looked at what love is.  John tells us..."God is love."  In other words, in seeking to discover what love is, John tells us to simply look to God's existence in and of Himself.  In God we find love in its fullest and truest sense.  In this article, we want to look more deeply into what love particularly looks like as opposed to what it is.  For, if love truly is what it is that fulfills our very being, it would be very wise to not just settle for fuzzy and foggy notions of how love plays out in our lives.  Fortunate enough for us John tells us exactly what love looks like even though this verse can be a bit misleading for us:

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."  -1 John 4:10 TNIV

Before we begin to wrestle with what John is saying in this verse, I wish to draw your attention to something significant in the translation here.  To John, words mean something.  As we looked at in a previous article, his three little words, "God is love," pack more of a punch than what would seem to meet the eye.  If there is anything that we can learn from exploring John's famous little phrase it is this: even the smallest of words matter significantly whenever we seek to understand John.  The same is true of the 1 John 4:10 verse, which is why it is a shame that many Bible translations have translated it the way that the TNIV has.  In their translating, they have opted to leave out one word, but that one word makes all of the difference.  That one word is "in." 

ἐν τούτῳ ἐστὶν ἡ ἀγάπη
In--this-------is---------love

The Greek actually reads, "In this is love...," not, "This is love" as you can see above.  The difference may seem very insignificant but, again, that little word "in" shifts the focus of the verse in a monumental way.  What it comes down to is this: where does the love that John speaks of find its origin?  We Western culture Christians have been far too content with extremely shallow and muddled notions of love for so long that most of us probably will have some difficulty even grasping what is at stake here.  Perhaps even the translators themselves have settled for a far too generalized and "Western" notion of love and that is why they failed to see the difference that omitting the word "in" would actually make. 

Again, let's wrestle with this thought: where does the love that John is talking about here find its origin?  If we go with many modern translations like the TNIV, the love of God seems to find its origin in God's relationship to us.  "This is love...the dynamics of His relationship and actions towards us...", would be a good way to paraphrase what the faulty translation is actually saying.  Love, here, is something that would be primarily bound up in God's dealings with us and nothing more.  This leads to some rather massive and misleading implications:

First, if we follow the line of thought found in the common translation that reads, "this is love," we have to look at the text as though John is making an ontological claim on love.  The verse no longer can be about what love looks like but would be about what love is.  Thus, in reading it this way we are looking into what love is not what love looks like and we can't look at it in any other way. 

Secondly, this presents a massive problem for us because this verse falls right in between two instances where John flat out tells us what love is or, to put it in a better way, what is love.  He tells us that "God is love."  Ontologically, love is bound up with the very uncreated existence of God.  Love is something that God is.  How can John make another claim on love; how can he begin another line of thought claiming that "this is love" whenever he has already told us that "God is love"?  Do you see what I am getting at?  If you are having some difficulty following my line of thought so far, just think of it this way.

What is love according to John?

How confusing is it to hear John define love as that which God is but also to hear him say that love is God loving us whenever we didn't love Him? 

If we stick to the faulty translation, love actually becomes two different things and comes from two different sources. 

Rather, we should understand John's thoughts on love in this manner: that, "God is love."  Love finds its origin in God's very being and not in His actions towards us.  Love describes the dynamics of the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  This would then lead us to the natural question of, "what does this love look like for us?"  To this John anticipates such a question and answers it directly for us: "(In) this is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."  In essence, he is not talking about what love is in 1 John 4:10, but he is talking about how God's preexisting love relates to us; about how the Triune God has opened the dynamics of His communal relationship to us.  The faulty translation is about revealing something new, about defining a new notion of love, whereas John is actually speaking of a love that already exists and has always existed in God.  Again, all of this mess is here for us to deal with and sort through just because some translators decided to leave the word "in" out!

Whenever we leave "in" in the verse, however, the verse can be seen in a much greater depth and in a much more moving way.  We can see that John is not simply and solely talking about God's love towards us, but that he is talking about the manifestation of the love that takes place within the relationships within the Triune communion.  Furthermore, and very importantly, we understand from this verse that we didn't initiate God in any way but it was He who initiated us in His love.  Love is not something that started for Him whenever He created us but love has always existed within God because God has always been love since He has always been a Trinity.  Love is something that He always "had" that He is now sharing with us, not something that became a first for Him whenever He began to interact with us through the work of His Son.  The Father has always loved the Son, the Son the Father, the Spirit both...etc.  The love that has always existed between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is now being shared with us because of the work of the Son.  Just by simply seeing the verse in this light we can immediately observe that there is a much bigger picture behind Jesus' coming into the world. The added "in" means that Jesus' coming and saving work is the invitation into something that has always previously existed; communion with the Triune God.  Jesus' coming is the outworking that eternal Triune communion extended towards us.  To put it in a rather cheesy way, we have been invited into the eternal party that has always existed between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The Cappadocian Fathers likened it to being brought into an eternal dance that has always existed within the Triune communion. 

To come full circle: what, then, does love look like?  John has told us what love is by saying that God is love.  By saying, "In this is love...", he is telling us that within God's action towards us we can catch a glimpse of what love has always looked like for God.  He is telling us that we can catch a glimpse of how the Father, the Son and the Spirit have always related to each other in the way that God has related to us, as described in this verse.  He is not giving us a total picture here but is saying that: in God's action in sending His Son into the world for us whenever we didn't love Him we can peek into the dynamic of what it means for God to be love and into what it means for God to be God.  Rather than having to come up with a vague view of what it means for God to be love we can understand that in the way that God has selflessly loved us we can see how the members of the Trinity have selflessly loved one another.  Again, we can see what true and eternal love looks like by looking at what God has done through the Christ on our behalf. 

Very practically, then....what does this love look like? 

The short answer is: "Christ's coming into the world."

However, to go deeper, Jesus' coming into the world actually signifies two very important aspects of the movement of God's love towards us that are implicit in John's line of thought in the verse we've been studying: 

This love is something that doesn't wait to be initiated but it does the initiating.  God didn't wait for our love before He showed His love for us but He initiated the loving relationship between Himself and humankind by sending His Son to die for our sins.  To dive deeper into what John is saying, we can infer that there is something about this fact that unveils a part of the dynamic which exists within the Triune relationship.  It is not merely speculative to say that the members of the Trinity don't wait selfishly upon the others before they love, but each takes the initiative, so to speak.  I say it is not merely speculative because all throughout the Gospels we see that all of Jesus' actions was for the Father.  All of the Spirit's actions seem to be for the Son and, thus, also for the Father.  the Spirit's action within the Church is to point us to Christ and to purify us so that we would be formed into Christ's likeness.      

Furthermore, this love leads to the denial of self.  In seeing that God sent His Son into the world signifies the self-denial of the Father.  In seeing the Son's willingness to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins signifies His self-denial.  Even though we don't read about the Holy Spirit in the verse, the Spirit's work is always implied because Jesus' ministry is impossible to conceive of apart from the work of the Spirit.  The Spirit's service to the Son and to His Church for the Father signifies His self-denial.  Granted, self-denial is something that is difficult to get a handle on especially whenever it comes to thinking through how the members of the Trinity deny themselves for the sake of us.  However, we can understand that there is an element of self-denial whenever it comes to the relationship between the members of the Trinity, particularly whenever it comes to the Son the Spirit submitting to the Father's will. 

In conclusion: In witnessing God's love towards us; in the way that He has loved us, we can catch a glimpse of how the Triune God eternally exists as love. 

A Fisherman on God: Three Words that Change Everything

Originally Written in April, 2013

A Monumental Saying:

Perhaps the greatest words ever written by anyone anywhere at any point in history were the words written by a one-time humble fisherman so many years ago.  Whenever the Apostle John penned the tiny little saying, "God is love," his words triggered a ripple effect forever in the way notions of the Divine and God can be perceived.  That short little saying has permanently changed the way that people can and should think about God and humanity. 

Even though this short little saying may sound like nothing but fluff and even though it seems like this little saying couldn't contain the very depths of reality within it, the Church throughout the ages has declared and proven otherwise.  This little saying, "God is love," is so massive because it implies that God exists as a communion; as a network of relationships in and of Himself.  How can we say something like this?  Because love requires communion, it requires a relationship for it to even exist to begin with.  For love to take place, more than one person must be present.  For, love is something that is only shared between persons.  Where only one person is present, love cannot be.  Again, love requires communion, it requires relationships.  In fact, it is more precise to say that love actually is communion.  Love is relationship.  Whenever it comes to God, the Church has always understood this communion that God is as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

Oppositions:

Throughout the centuries, there have been occasional flurries of uprisings seeking to reject this notion.  People have wished to deny this reality; that God exists as communion, as Trinity. 

Some have wished to view God purely as a "monad" so to speak.  They have wished to view Him as a God who is only one and not one and three simultaneously.  Thus, in referring to John's little saying, they claim that God simply loves Himself in His monadic state and the claim is that John means nothing more than this.  Essentially, their view is that God is self-centered and self-oriented and that He loves Himself alone and above all else.  While there are many, many horrendous problems with such a notion, we will only focus on one for time being. 

The Apostle John used the Greek word "agape" for "love" in his little saying.  Agape is a word, a type of love, that is completely other-oriented.  It is wholly focused upon the benefit of another.  The saying of Christ elaborates on what agape is quite well: that, "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."  It is selfless love that gives itself away with no strings attached.  This being the case, the "monad" position is entirely illegitimate since the god that it promotes would have to be the exact opposite of agape in any real sense.  A god who loves himself above all else cannot be agape. 

Part of the tragedy of this position is that whatever you claim about God you are also claiming about humankind to a certain extent because humankind is "made in God's image."  Thus, if God is a selfish and ultimately self-loving being...what would that make us in turn?  In order to live up to God's image, then, we would have to also be selfish and self-loving beings.  Self-love would be our calling.   

There is another group who claims that whenever John says that, "God is love," he simply means that God loves us.  For them, John's saying means nothing more than this.  "We already know that God loves us, so it would be foolish to try to read anything else into John's words," is their claim.  Their notion is that this phrase is solely talking about God's attitude and action towards humanity.  In other words, "God is love," is synonymous with "God loves us."  While the idea that God loves us is certainly true, to attribute the love of God to us in this saying poses several problems as well. 

It is very important to point out the fact that John is talking about something that God is, not simply something that God does.  God is not just doing love...God is love.  John is positing the origin of God's love to God Himself, not to the relationship that He has with us. 

In other words, if "God is love" only describes God's love for us, it would mean that God would need us in order to be something; in order to be love.  God could not, then, be love without us.  It would mean that He ultimately needs us in order to be.  To put it bluntly: if God needs us or anything else then He is not God because His being would be reliant upon something outside of Himself.  Need belongs to the created realm and created things and beings, not to the Uncreated.  This would also mean that God hasn't always been love but that He became love.  It would mean that He became love whenever He created us.  Again, this would mean that His being was ultimately changed and this, again, would make Him not God.  Ontological change belongs to the created, not to the Uncreated.

The consequence of such a view for us again would be utterly tragic.  It would mean that we are worshipping a God who could do nothing to remedy our fallen world and our devastatingly broken situation.  It would mean that He could not conquer death; that He could not overcome nature because, according to this line of thought, God would actually be subject to the very things that we are.  God's love for us, then, would not actually be real or life changing because He ultimately has no power to love because He would ultimately need us in order to carry out such an action.  It would make God subject to love, not the Giver of it.  In other words and to put it most simply: God would be subject to something greater than Himself. 

No, God Really Is Communion

Now, we can come back to John's actual meaning by his short little phrase.  Whenever John wrote the words, "God is love," he meant that God has revealed Himself as a communion, as the Holy and Divine Trinity.  His being is literally communion.  The phrase describes the dynamics of the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It is descriptive of the love that they share in their Triune communion.  They give to one another and are defined by one another.  The Father is not the Father first and foremost because He is a Father to us.  No, He is the Father because He eternally is in relation to the Son.  He is called "Father" because He is Father to the Son and the Son is called "Son" because of His eternal relationship with the Father.  The Son has always been the Son to the Father.  The Father, then, only becomes the Father to us through the Son ("no one can come to the Father except through me...").  This is the exact reason why Jesus is the only Way to salvation.  It is only through Jesus (the Son) that we come to know the Father and that the Father comes to be known as "Abba" to us. 

Image Bearers in the Church Today:

Again, whatever we say about God we are also saying about ourselves to a certain extent because we are made in His image.  In coming to grips with the notion of God's eternal existence as Trinity, as communion, we come to gain more of an understanding of how we are wired and how life becomes fulfilling for us.  We quickly understand that, if God is a communal being then we, to, are made for and are defined ultimately by communion.  If God is love then we are also made for love.  Love would not be a secondary thing for us, then.  It would be the defining element of our very existence.  As we read the Scriptures, we can see very quickly the emphasis that is placed on this line of thought.  Genesis 1 and 2 is a very good place to start because it is in chapter 1 that we read about how we are made in God's image. 

In chapter 2, as God set out to create Adam, what did He actually say?  "Let us create humanity in our image and likeness."  Why would God speak to Himself as "us"?  Because He is an us.  God was setting out to create humankind in His Triune image. 

Furthermore, what did God say after He created Adam?  He made Adam and saw all of the other works of His hands and said, "It is not good for man to be alone."  All throughout the creation writings God made things and stated that they were "good."  In fact, after He wrapped up all of His work He even said that everything was "very good."  The only time in the whole of the creation account where something was perceived as "not good" was in terms of Adam's loneliness.  What would not be good would be a single human being.  Why is this the case?  Why was it not good (and still not good) for man to be alone?  Because God is not alone in and of Himself and we are made in His image. 

For humankind to adequately reflect God's image, there needs to be more than one of us and there needs to be more than one gender.  There needs to be more than one person because God exists as more than one person.  Thus, it is not good for man to be alone because a lone man cannot reflect the image of God and fulfill what he is created for. 

The Church Needs to Reexamine How She Relates to People:

It has often been taught or assumed that human beings are primarily thinking creatures.  This means that it is the human person's ability to be rational that sets them apart from the rest of the created realm and the animal kingdom.  However, if we are truly created in the image of a God who is communion, it would mean that we are not primarily thinking beings but that we are primarily lovers, as God is love.  To promote a notion that the human person is primarily a rational being and is ultimately defined by his or her rationality would be very deceiving and this view throughout history has led to some rather tragic places and has hampered the Church for far too long. 

Within the Church, whenever this idea is promoted, people and church leaders begin viewing the mind (viewed in a purely intellectual and rationalistic sense) as a funnel through which human action and response is initiated.  This is why so much stress has been placed upon "doctrine" (in the purely Scholastic sense) and confessions off and on throughout the course of church history.  My aim here is not to demean confessions or doctrine because I truly believe both to be important and, to a degree, necessary.  However, there is a difference between upholding our doctrines and confessions and viewing people primarily as doctrinal and confessional creatures.  Whenever we only aim at the heads of people in academic sorts of ways, we truly miss their humanness and fail to interact with them in human ways. 

Furthermore, it should be evident enough in our day that, just because somebody knows something rationally, this doesn't mean that this will lead to "proper" action.  Plenty of people know that eating fast food is terrible for them.  Yet, what do they do?  Plenty of people know that exercise is good for them.  Yet, what do they not do?  Likewise, we are not experiencing the present crises within Western Christendom because of a lack of "knowing" the right things.  That is not the dilemma.  There are plenty of people in the pews who "know" enough and who value their doctrines and confessions deeply.  The issue is that too few people emanate the love of Christ in deep and real ways.  Is this not the issue? 

As God is...So are We...

Whenever we wrestle with an understanding that we are made in the image of the Triune God, we understand, then, that we are not primarily thinking beings.  To be a thinking "thing" is not what it means to be made in the image of God.  We are primarily lovers.  We are primarily built for relationship the Way that the members of the Trinity relate to one another. 

Coming back to the Scriptures, we can now see the Greatest Commandment in a whole new light.  Whenever Jesus was asked which commandment in all of the Law was the greatest that God had ever given, He responded by saying:

"Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul and with all of your mind.  This is the first and the greatest commandment.  The second is like it; love your neighbor as yourself.  All of the Law and all of the prophets hang upon these two commandments"

To put it simply, Jesus did not say that the greatest commandment was to know our confessions, our doctrines or even our Bibles in adequate rationalistic ways.  He did not say that the Greatest Command was to believe in the right things in an intellectual and academic sort of way.  What is the two-fold command?  Love.  He said that the greatest commandment is love: love God with all that you are and love your neighbor as yourself.  Again, it is love/communion that we are made for.  To bear the image of God is to reflect the love that God is in and of Himself.  To love is to love as the Father loves the Son, the Son the Father and the Spirit to and from both. 

Human beings are made for love.  We are made to give it, receive it and be defined by it.  We were made to reflect the God who is love in our relationships with others. 

 

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son :and to the Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be :
world without end. Amen.

 

Christian Sexuality: The Consumption of Passions that Enslave is the Negligence of True Passion.

Originally Written on May 9, 2012 at 3:08pm

"Only in Christ, only as filled with the Holy Spirit and in completest surrender to Him, do men and women really find themselves, and express themselves with the truest freedom and most complete power.”

                                                                                                -Roland Allen

 Observe the Fight Between Your Body and Your Mind:

            There are several life lessons that can be learned from running.  If you don’t believe me, get up right now and go for a 3 mile run and tell me about your experience afterwards.  Rigorous exercise, like running, seems to bring out something that is deep within us to the surface.  There is a tremendous amount that I learned about human nature as a cross country runner in High School.  You learn real fast what it means to be divided within yourself, as your mind tells you to go a little bit faster and a little bit longer while your body is screaming at you to “Stop, lay down, and rest!”   

            Oftentimes, if we are truly observant we will find that there are several occasions throughout the course of daily life where the mind and the body seem to be at odds with one another, even to the point of battling one another.  Rigorous exercise seems to be one of those things that brings this underlying battle to the surface more rapidly than most other activities in our daily experience….most, not all.  More on that in a minute. 

             Do you not find this to be the case with you?  How many times have you set your mind to do something but your body/desires have led you somewhere else…or, worse yet, nowhere at all?  This sort of thing can be a daily experience for us in a variety of ways throughout the course of our lives.  Actually, it can be a source of great frustration and even depression for many of us because we can come to feel as though we cannot control who we are and what we are doing.  We can begin to feel enslaved by the things we do which we don’t want to do.  We all have experienced what the apostle Paul said about his former way of life in his letter to the Romans:

“I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”     

                                                                                                -Romans 7:15

Brother Donkey:

            I am reminded of something that St. Francis of Assissi once taught.  He called his body “Brother Donkey” because, even though his mind seemed to be steering him in the right direction, his body was as stubborn as a donkey and would not follow his mind in route.  It was always doing things that he didn’t want it to do. 

Christians With No Answers:

            Although this is a battle that seems to constantly ensue in all of us (we all have our donkeys) I have found that throughout my 11 years as a Christian, the Church has had a very limited amount to say in this area.  Call it whatever you want, it seems to me as though the Church has been quite negligent on its teachings about:  the heart vs. the head, the mind vs. the desires, reason vs. passion, head vs. donkey…etc.  Now, I don’t want to come across as a dualist because I am not one.  We should do what we can to steer clear of viewing human nature in deeply fragmented ways.  However, we should not fear addressing the divisions that various stirrings of the desires and of the mind cause within us.

            In my experience Christians tend to side with one of two views whenever it comes to this inner struggle.  Either you attempt to get rid of “passion” all together and live a desire-less life, because desire and passion lead you down the wrong road and muddle your thinking...or you admit to yourself that these things are natural to our humanity and, therefore, there is nothing that we can do about it anyway…so, live it up.  You can be as rational and as clear-headed as you want to be, but you will always succumb to your “natural” desires in the end within this line of thinking. 

            So, either Jesus will love you even though you’ve transformed yourself into a soul-less, passionless automaton or He will love you regardless of how many “oops-es” you allow yourself to have and justify yourself in having. 

            I may be poking fun here more than I should, but both views seem to miss the point so drastically.  I mean, are my only two options as a Christian man in this world in attempting to make sense of the struggle that apparently occurs between my brain and my body to either: rid myself of anything and everything that evokes emotion from me, or to simply say “everything is permissible,” even though I know such thinking will make a slave of me.  Is there not a better way of looking at things?  A way in which acknowledges the fact that letting my desires run wherever they may is not the best thing for me but a way that doesn’t want to make me less of a human being in the process?  I am reminded here of something that N.T. Wright has written in his book, “Following Jesus”:

            “The human emotions, especially those of falling in love, are so wonderfully important that an entire book of the Bible is devoted to exploring and celebrating them.  It would be bizarre if following the Jesus who made more wine for a wedding meant automatically renouncing alcohol and sex.” 

Sexual Urges: Where the Mind and the Body Most Frequently Combat One Another: 

            The Christian notion of sexuality is where we are going to turn to next.  The problem is that, for most of us, this is where the mind vs. body battle continuously and forcefully rages on within us.   This is most likely where the “brother donkey” within us is most stubborn of all.  Here, many of us stand with our donkey but with no clue as to how to “tame” it.  Perhaps many Christians in this day and age feel as though they are fumbling on this issue of what to do because the Church has had the tendency to either demonize all aspects of sexuality or, the opposite, fully condone all aspects of sexuality.  Many people find themselves straddling two worldviews at the same time while hoping that whenever the divide widens too much, they will fall somewhere in between, upon a happy medium avoiding both extremes.  As a result, many people have a foggy sense of what they are against (sexually)…but many are without a clue of what they are “for.”  Furthermore, the Church is very frequently guilty of teaching people more about what to stand against as opposed to what we, as the Church and human beings, should be standing for. 

What We Should Be “For”:

            While many in the Church today are preoccupied with telling the donkey, “don’t do this…and don’t do that,” my mind is more preoccupied with what we are train our donkey to do, as opposed to not to do. 

            The book of Jude is a very interesting read if you have never read it.  What I really like about Jude is that he does not beat around the bush.  He starts his letter off by admitting to his readers that, although he wanted to write a lot about the salvation in which they share, he felt compelled to address another issue: sexual immorality in the church and in the culture.

            While he says a lot of things about those who are practicing the sexual immorality that he is talking about (he is very adamant about what he, and the church, should be against), he elaborates in a very powerfully driven point what Christians should be “for.” 

            “But you, beloved, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith by praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.” 

            Even though I use the TNIV translation most of the time, I modified this version a bit (modified words in bold).  I wasn’t quite happy with the wording and felt as though this is more accurate to the Greek New Testament. 

            What does this have to do with sex and lust?  Well, read the passage (or the whole letter) before this passage and you will see that Jude is contrasting the actions of those who are not only immoral, but adamant in their sexual immorality.  “These people do this and live this way…you are to do this and live this way,” is what he is aiming at here. 

The Goal:

            The goal which Jude tells these people, and us, to shoot for is to keep ourselves in God’s love.  He is not simply saying, “believe in God’s love,” but is telling them that God’s love is something that they should be already experiencing in a very real way throughout the course of their daily lives and that His love is something that they should make a conscious effort to remain “in.”  That, if they are not careful, they will do things that would remove themselves from His love. 

The Means:

            How are we, then, to keep ourselves in God’s love?  Jude tells us to build ourselves up in our most holy faith. 

The Means For The Means:

            How, then, are we to build ourselves up in our most holy faith in order to keep ourselves in the love of God?  Jude gives us the most important answer of all here:  “by praying in the Holy Spirit.” 

            Now, I am…and I am not one of those guys that believes that prayer is the answer to everything.  While I truly believe that prayer is the most important thing that anybody can do, I have to agree with E.M. Bounds on this one that: “Not all praying is prayer.”  In other words, there is a manner in which we can pray in which we negate actual prayer, itself.  Furthermore, there is a tremendous distinction between presenting your “to do” list before God and actually “praying in the Spirit.”  The two are not automatically synonymous by any stretch of the imagination.  Prayer that just involves you talking (whether out loud or in your mind; prayer that does not involve you proactively seeking God’s face with the entirety of your being, is not true prayer. 

            Prayer that just casually lists off things that the person desires God to do for them is not prayer by the very definition of what the word “prayer” means.  People who diminish prayer down to a few recited lines or a casual offering of various numerous words should not be surprised in the least by the fact that their prayers go unattended to and that they remain in constant enslavement to their lusts and sinful desires…for they have not truly prayed.  If they have not truly prayed, what makes them think that God will truly listen?   

            The word for prayer that is most common in the New Testament is “proseuche.”  It is a word that is composed of two words, “pros” and “euche.”  “Pros” is a word that denotes intimacy and adoration.  “Pros” means being towards and immediately before something or someone.  In nearly all places in the New Testament whenever the word “pros” is used, it denotes a closeness, and intimacy. 

            The second word, “euche,” is a word that denotes the idea of “sacrificing something of value in order to gain a favorable answer from God.”  Traditionally, the person would make a vow, sacrificing something in hopes that God would hear their cry and grant their request.  Even though we can dive further into this word, I think enough has been said at this point to move forward. 

            Whenever you put “pros” and “euche” together, there are two important features that show up in their composition of “proseuche.”  First, that prayer is about intimacy and closeness with God.  It in not just words mumbled to a far off deity but it is the true understanding that God is with us throughout our daily lives and in our daily affairs, and that we should seek union with Him…we should seek Him, Himself.  Second, prayer is about sacrifice.  It means sacrificing the self in order to gain Him.  It means sacrificing, not just something, but everything to gain Him.  The very act of praying is in fact a hardship we must endure to gain union with God.  It, whenever practiced rightly, is a form of sacrifice as it cuts into our time, our energy, and most often cuts against the grain of our “natural” desires.   Prayer is about sacrificially and fervently seeking God.  Without this aspect, again, it is not true prayer.  Now you see why not all praying is true prayer. 

Back to Jude: 

            How do we withstand sexual temptation and keep ourselves in the love of God?  By praying.  Really praying.  By “praying in the Spirit,” as he has worded it.  Jude understands very well that whenever Jesus told His disciples that the “Holy Spirit would come on them with power,” He wasn’t playing around.  There is a real power in being united to God through the presence of the Holy Spirit, understanding that the Holy Spirit can do nothing but empower.  We are to pray so that we can keep ourselves in the Spirit so that He can build up faith in us so that He can keep us in the love of God. 

            Suffice it to say, those who are habitually engaged in sexual sin are those who are not truly praying in the Spirit and have not been for quite some time.  This is the main issue at hand.  This is another case where you cannot serve two masters.  In this case the sexual-habitual sin, itself, reveals who the true lord of those engaged in it really is. 

            The apostle Paul spells out something rather important in this light for us in Romans 1: 

“22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.  24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.”

            It is important that we note this.  Moral perversion (i.e. sexual immorality) is the result of God’s wrath, not the reason for it.  Listen to what Richard Hays has to say on the matter:

            “Paul is not warning his readers that they will incur the wrath of God if they do the things that he lists here; rather, speaking in Israel’s prophetic tradition, he is presenting an empirical survey of rampant human lawlessness as evidence that God’s wrath and judgment are already at work in the world.”

                                                               -The Moral Vision of the New Testament, pg 385

            Prolonged sexual immorality is a symptom, not the disease itself.  Many people look eagerly for some sort of method by which they can attempt to overcome the enslavement of their lusts…and most will find it somewhat trivial for someone to say that there is no true method, but that only prayer is the answer.  Where methods only to treat the symptoms will fail to cure the disease, we look to find the cure for the disease itself.  Jude tells that praying, proseuche, is what builds up our immunity to the disease because it keeps us in God’s love. 

            If someone feels enslaved by their sexual lust, they need to understand first and foremost that the lust itself is a symptom of God’s wrath…or, to put it another way, God’s absence.   

            Whenever Paul says in Romans 1:24 that God “gave them over” to their lusts it means that God gave them over to another lordship.  They wanted nothing to do with Him, so he let go of them, literally.  That, once they were under His love, headship and lordship…now they have both desired and fallen to the lordship of their own futile sinful passions and lusts.  The most literal translation of “gave them over” is “to give into the hands of another, to deliver up one to custody.”  Whenever Jude tells his readers to keep themselves in God’s love, he doesn’t want what Paul is talking about in Romans 1:24 to happen to them.  He wants them to remain under God’s love and care, not the cruel tyranny and custody of their own lusts. 

            Here, again, we see that the solution and the problem is prayer. Jude tells us to find true passion, true love and wholeness by finding and/or remaining in the love of God by seeking Him wholeheartedly through prayer.  For Jude, God’s love is the real thing…the thing that will truly satisfy us, while the lusts of our own hearts are just cheap imitations.  

Proseuche:  Desires Transformed by the Renewing of the Mind:

            So, what do we do about that pesky head vs. heart, mind vs. body issue?  Here, I want to draw out one final verse before we close up; Romans 12:1-2

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

            To me, this is what happens whenever proseuche takes root.  Allow me to elaborate: I am an avid believer of what happens in prayer spills out into daily life.  If we distance ourselves from God by not remaining in prayer, we should not be surprised if we feel as though our spiritual lives are incredibly weak.  However, if we learn how to pray regularly and daily, seeking His face and sacrificing our own time just to be with Him, we will find ourselves fervently seeking Him and sacrificing ourselves for Him in all situations…for the Holy Spirit has trained us to do so during our times of prayer and adoration. 

            To me, Romans 12:1-2 is what bleeds out of a person who has learned to pray in a proseuche sort of way; in the true way of prayer.  They will offer their bodies to God in order to please Him.  Through prayer, and by the grace of God, their bodies and lusts are something they have gained control over…they offer it up because they are capable of doing so.  Catch the Biblical imagery here…even though God had once given them over to their own bodily lusts, they have now learned to control those lusts and offer there bodies...in fact give...their bodies back to God.  The Holy Spirit has freed them to do so in and through prayer.  In fact the Greek word here for “offer” even denotes a sense of intimacy, a sense of placing oneself before another, just as the word “pros” does in proseuche.  Again, what happens in prayer will bleed out into all aspects of life. 

            By setting their minds to pray, regardless of what their bodily desires suggest, they have learned to be transformed by the renewing of their minds…for their bodily desires have now become subservient to a mind fixated on prayer.  I hesitated saying all of these things this way out of a fear of coming across overly dualistic, but I think you catch my drift. 

            The next article that I write will be something along the lines of how to pray in holistic ways, so that the mind and body, the entire self, is engaged in the act of worship.  Furthermore, I will talk about how to guard the prayerful mind against temptation.  As always, though, I wanted to make sure that the necessary first step in overcoming temptation and sexual lusts is truly addressed, which is why I have labored on about prayer in the manner that I did.  Why?  Because, no one should forget Jesus’ own words: 

“Apart from me, you can do nothing.” 

 

Christian Sexuality: Reflections on What it Means to be Single and Married Christians in a Sex Charged Culture

Originally Written on May 1, 2012 at 4:55pm

“The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside of marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union (of marriage).”

                                                                                                                           -C.S. Lewis

 A Story:

            Last year, I read a book by a very well known pastor.  This young pastor started off with a church, the size of which could fit in somebody’s house and now the church has several thousand members.  The book was a description of how the church progressed throughout the course of gaining several thousand members over several years’ time. 

            In one of the chapters he was bemoaning the immaturity of some of the church’s early followers, and he recalled one story in particular.  It is a story that has stuck with me over the years.  In fact, it’s really the only part of the book that I recall in any amount of detail.  The story goes like this:

            One evening, a few years into his church plant, this pastor received a phone call in the middle of the night.  It was one of the men from his church and he was distraught and crying over the phone.  The pastor clearly was alarmed.  For what could cause a grown man to call him in the middle of the night sobbing?  As the pastor inquired further about what was going on, the man blurted out, “I watched some pornography and I touched myself.”  The pastor was taken aback a bit, mainly because he felt this was a discussion that could’ve at least waited until the morning.  I mean, why wake him in the night for something like this?   However, the weeping man was adamant…he wanted to get over this habit, this addiction, and asked the pastor what he could do to get over it. 

            The pastor responded by telling him something along these lines (I am paraphrasing), “Grow up, get a job so you can get a girlfriend so you can marry her…then you won’t have to worry about your little problem anymore because she will touch you, and you won’t have to.

An Aggravation:

            Now, I must admit that whenever I first read the pastor’s response I chuckled a bit in admiration of his crassness.  However, as time has gone on the story has stuck with me and over time it has left a bitter taste in my mouth.  I used to think that this was great advice.  However, I have come to believe that there is tremendous harm in looking at life: at dating, at work, at marriage, and at sex in this way.  Why? 

            First and foremost, it makes women (and men for that matter, if the shoe is on the other foot) out to be merely sexual objects, as if the only reason for working, for dating, and for marriage is sex.  

            Furthermore, the guy’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t have a wife or a girlfriend…the guy’s problem is lust, which is a problem that will not resolve itself even if he were to find a girlfriend or a wife.  In other words, merely finding a wife (or to put it more crassly, merely “getting laid” ) will not resolve his lust issue.  It will still be there when the deed is done and, like a wild beast, will work up its appetite yet again. 

            I must be honest with you up front, I am writing this article because I am in the middle of teaching on this subject at my church.  However, what is really driving me is…I must admit…anger.  This is something that I know that I need to deal with a bit more within myself but I am growing so incredibly weary of watching all of the people around me; my friends and my family, throw their bodies around like they don’t matter, like there is nothing sacred to their sexuality, like they are just pieces of meat for consumption, like they are nothing more than objects to be fondled.  Furthermore, I grow tired of everyone around me acting as though they have absolutely no control over themselves, over their lusts, over their sexuality.

            I chose the story at the beginning to portray a very common attitude amongst people today.  Now, I can only speak from a male’s perspective.  I am not going to pretend for a second that I can speak from the perspective of a woman.  However, I will venture to guess that there is a lot of cross over; that there is a great amount of commonality in what is being addressed here; that this isn’t just a “guy thing.”  Again, the opening story portrays several modes of current thinking in our culture today: that we need to find jobs so that we can fulfill (eventually) our sexual appetites, and that we need to date and marry to fulfill (eventually) our sexual appetites. 

            In this article, I am going to argue that life is not all about sex.  Your job is not about sex, dating is not about sex, and marriage is not about sex (at least not all about sex).  While sex is truly great, it is not the summation of everything about you.  You are not a sexual object.  You’re humanity is composed of so much more than simply your sexual orientation, action and reaction.  Furthermore, you have a personhood that lust and premature sexual action will strip you of if you are not careful.   

            I also want to observe this: it is possible that one of the reasons it has become so tremendously hard for people to be single nowadays is that the church has overly idolized marriage and undervalued singleness when, in fact, the apostle Paul explicitly says that single life is better than married life (as does Jesus).  Now, we will begin to examine why this is the case. 

First, a Necessary Detour:

            We are going to briefly look at a few passages from 1 Corinthians 7.  However, before we dive into why singleness is better than marriage in Paul’s eyes, we need to look at a passage that is often misconstrued, 1 Corinthians 7:1-9;

“7 Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7 I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. 8 Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. 9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”

            There are a few common mistakes people often make when coming to this passage for guidance and one of these mistakes, I fear, has shaped the worldview of many people.  Initially, however, I want you to note that the quotation in verse 7 is Paul quoting the Corinthians.  He is not quoting himself here.  He is not the one saying, “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”  No, he is referring to a matter that the Corinthians wrote Paul about, in which they apparently say that it is good for people not to have sex…that abstinence is a good thing. 

            Notice how Paul doesn’t disagree with them, though.  He affirms it but adds a “but.”  “But, since sexual immorality is occurring,” each person should have sexual relations with their own spouse.  It is almost as if the Corinthians are so repulsed by sex that they want all of the Christians to do away with it all together, even amongst married couples.  But, Paul redirects them to think about it in a different way.  That, yes, it is good for people to abstain from sex.  However sex is manageable and good within marital relationships. 

            I, now, want to draw your attention to the fact that Paul does not even acknowledge sex outside of marriage.  It’s not that he forgot about it, or that he didn’t know what sex outside of marriage was…no, sex outside of marriage was not a legitimate practice in the mind of the Apostle.  Furthermore, it is not because Paul has a low view of sex, or that he sees it as evil.  No, it is because he has a very high view of sex and its consequences that he speaks the way that he does. 

            He rightfully understands that sex “yields” you, as he says in verses 4 and 5.  The husband does not have authority over his own body but he yields it to his wife.  Likewise, the wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband.  I will say it again: sex yields you.    

            I can only imagine that, in Paul’s mind, to yield ourselves to a stranger; to yield ourselves to someone we barely know; to yield ourselves to someone in which we are not sure whether or not they will manipulate us in our yielded-ness; to yield ourselves to someone who has made no commitment to us for the long haul...these would’ve been simply outrageous thoughts to him.  It should be outrageous to us as well.   

            Where we want to look at sex and say, “it’s just sex” (even though we don’t truly believe that deep down), Paul is telling us that sex demands so much more of us…that it is attached to something much bigger, much grander, that to detach sex from it’s proper context is to willingly make yourself a slave to not only your lust, but to the lust of another person.  

            That, the yielding of sex only fits within the dynamic of a relationship of two people who have already committed to and who truly are yielding themselves one to another.  A good word for that is marriage.  To seek sexual relations with someone no matter how much you love them prior to marriage is to make them a slave…it seeks only to yield a part of oneself to them, and not the whole.  The problem with sex is that it is all or nothing.  It is so consummate that it cannot belong to or adequately be controlled by those who only share partial commitment to one another. 

 Now, the Misunderstood Worldview-Warping Misinterpretation:  

“8 Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. 9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” 

            Here is the major problem that damages so many people: there is a tendency to want to project what Paul is saying here onto single people who have never been married.  This is an utter mistake. 

            First off, Paul addresses people who have never been married later on in the chapter.  So, it is clear from the context that the “unmarried” people he is referring to here is widowed men.  There wasn’t a word for them back then, so he simply calls them “unmarried” and groups them together with widows.  So, Paul is addressing the unmarried (widowed men) and widows (widowed women) in this passage, not all singles in general. 

            The problem arises, as it surfaced in the story that I told at the beginning of this article, around the idea that single people need to marry simply because they are “burning with passion.”  This is what happens whenever we say that Paul is referring to all singles, here.  This line of thinking has horrible consequences on those who submit themselves to it. 

            We must see the verse in its proper context: Paul is talking to people who once were married but now are not because their spouses have died.  As married people they would’ve most likely had sex on a regular basis with their spouses and now that their spouses are gone, that sexual gratification and yielding is now gone to.  There more missing from their lives now than just the deceased spouse.  A habit is now missing.  There is nothing there to replace that gap in their lives now.  In this passage, Paul is telling them that it is best to remain unmarried as he is (he was widowed).  However, if they find it too difficult to discipline themselves, to overcome the urges that were naturally there and practiced for so many years, then it is good for them to remarry.  Basically, if they miss what once was provided for them in marriage, they should remarry.  Since they have already experienced it, the beauty of sex and union with someone, as Paul acknowledges, it is doubly hard for them to go back to single life and he encourages them to remarry if they desire to do so. 

            He is not, again, speaking to younger people or single people who have never married.  He is NOT telling all single people that it is good to marry simply because they are horny and because they are finding it too difficult to control themselves.  There are so many people who have rushed into marriage, who have justified getting married simply because they cannot find ways to control their lusts for one another.  The results of such actions, such foolish thinking, can be utterly disastrous.  It is to base a marriage purely on sex, and not on true love.  It is to base a marriage purely on the physical, while utterly disregarding the spiritual. 

            I have even heard pastors advise young couples who cannot keep their hands off of each other to marry as quickly as possible so that they will “no longer be sinning.”  Here’s the main problem with that mentality:  It is foolish to think that simply getting married will solve any of their problems, as if getting married is the solution.  The problem with this view is that it seeks to fix an interior problem (lust, the wrath of God, selfishness) with an exterior “fix” and, in the process, turns marriage into a purely physical thing.  It neglects to understand that the man who has no respect for the boundaries of marriage will not automatically have respect for those boundaries simply because he is now married.  A man who cannot control his hornyness and lust before marriage is not going to be able to do so simply because he is now married.  In fact, it may entice him further. 

 Now, To Singles:          

             To sum up what we’ve said so far:  Paul agrees with Corinthians that it is good for people not to have sex, but it is not good for everyone to outlaw sex altogether.  Husbands and wives should have sexual relations on a regular basis.  Furthermore, we noted that Paul was not talking about all single people marrying just because they are burning with passion, but he was solely talking to people whose spouses have died and are having difficulty overcoming the sexual habits developed by previous marital habits. 

            Now, we move onto what Paul says to single people who have never married before in 1 Corinthians 7:25-40:

“25 Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. 26 Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. 27 Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. 28 But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this. 29 What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; 30 those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; 31 those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away. 32 I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs —how he can please the Lord. 33 But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34 and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. 35 I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.  36 If anyone is worried that he might not be acting honorably toward the virgin he is engaged to, and if his passions are too strong and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning. They should get married. 37 But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind, who is under no compulsion but has control over his own will, and who has made up his mind not to marry the virgin—this man also does the right thing. 38 So then, he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does better. 39 A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord. 40 In my judgment, she is happier if she stays as she is—and I think that I too have the Spirit of God.”

            Although this is a very lengthy passage, I want to draw your attention to a few key points. 

a)      The first of which is found in verse 26.  Paul speaks of a “present crises,” that seems to alter normal marital rules and single living quite a bit.  We aren’t entirely sure what crises he is speaking of.  However, it is well known that, during the time that Paul wrote this, his first letter to the Corinthians, there was a severe drought that had major effects on the Roman empire, particularly the areas around Corinth.  Now, if this is the crises that Paul is speaking of, abstaining from marriage would be a good idea.  Why be responsible for more mouths to feed if you can barely feed your own?  However, he does not condemn marriage…it simply seems as though he is advising people to proceed with caution if they do choose to marry.

b)      In several instances Paul actually says that it is easier to be single, and to remain single, because it will be less burdensome to the person.  “But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this,” he says.  However, always note that it is not sinful to marry in Paul’s eyes.  He is just giving general advice, not specific commands or set doctrine.  We need to be aware of the fact, though, that he is asking all single people who read his words to at least consider a life of permanent singleness.  He does this not just to spare people of the many concerns that come with marriage, but to also…

c)      …show them that single people can devote themselves entirely to the Lord’s work, since they are free from the concerns of marriage and family life.  Again, read this part of the passage over again: 

“32 I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs —how he can please the Lord. 33 But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34 and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. 35 I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.”

d)      The last observation: perhaps this is the most critical…Paul definitely thinks that lust and sexual desires can and should be mastered by single people.  Just note that it is possible in Paul’s mind.  It is not impossible to be a single person who utterly and fully abstains from sex.  In fact, it now seems so natural to Paul that he “wishes that all could be as he is,” completely satisfied in his sexless singleness.  Again, this is perhaps the most important lesson that we need to learn, and we need to learn it : It is possible to be single, happy and celibate, not just for a short duration, but for all of life. 

            It is not a restriction, its not a command; its simply a suggestion to contemplate.  His ultimate desire is for peoples’ focus in this life to be undivided…to be solely focused on the Lord and His will.  Marital life, by necessity, will oftentimes detract from that.  Again, Paul is not condemning marriage by any stretch of the imagination.  Nor does he have a low view of marriage.  For Paul to say what he has said in 7:32-35 and still say it is ok to marry means that he is upping the bar of what marriage actually is.  If marriage, in and of itself, can sidetrack one’s focus on the Lord…how much more important is it to find a spouse who maintains the same God-ward focus that you do?  This is where Paul’s theology of “yielding” comes back into play.  If you are going to yield yourself to someone sexually, how much more necessary is it to do so with someone who has a resound commitment to keep the God-ward focus in the center of the relationship?  How much more necessary is it to not just throw your body around like a sexual object?  How much more necessary is it to find a spouse with a similar resolve, someone who will acknowledge that marriage isn’t just about self-centered desires and wants but about the will of God? 

            If marriage itself can be a stumbling block to devotion to the Lord, it is of utmost importance to find someone who is committed to the long-haul, who is committed not just to their own edification, but to yours as well.  If you are going to yield your body over to someone, it is extremely important to do so with someone who understands the gravity of the act of sex, with someone who already has made a selfless commitment to you (marriage), or else you might find your life and your spirituality destroyed in the process. 

            Hear what Paul is saying: finding a companion in this life is not just some little matter…it can potentially destroy you and distract you from the things that truly count.  Don’t enter into it lightly, if you do so at all.  If you are going to marry, make sure you understand the battle before you and choose a spouse with care.  For, taking sex and marriage lightly is utterly disastrous because it will require more than you might be willing to give if you haven’t given it considerable thought.    

Heed the words of one of Solomon’s proverbs: 

 “It is better to live on a corner of a roof than share a house with a divisive spouse”

                                                                                    -Proverbs 25:24 (paraphrased)

 Or, a proverb about premarital or extra-marital sex:

“Can a man (or woman) scoop fire into his/her lap without their clothes being burned?  Can they walk on hot coals without burning their feet?  So is he/she that sleeps with another person’s spouse.”

                                                                                    -Proverbs 6:27-29

            Moral of the story: if she is not your wife; if he is not your husband, you will not be able to sleep with them without burning yourself in the process in some way, shape or form. 

            Furthermore, if you aren’t careful in selecting who you marry, one day you will wish there is a corner of your home where you can live forever apart from your spouse…it will be more desirous to live outside in the elements than inside with your divisive spouse. 

 In Conclusion: 

            I have not taken any time in this article to talk about how to master our passions and lusts, about how we can subdue the “hornyness.”  I will save that for another time.  The priority in this article is given, briefly, to Paul’s thoughts on sex, marriage and singleness. 

            Even though it almost offends our senses and our doctrines, we can see why Paul urged people to consider the single life and a life of utter abstinence from sex.  Sex is not just sex (as we all know deep down) and marriage is not just marriage (as unfortunately most people don’t seem to know deep down).  They are not to be taken lightly. 

            Lastly, to the single people out there, there is never an excuse for premarital sex.  To simply claim, “we are in love, so its ok,” and to seek sexual union with someone who is not your spouse is one of the most selfish and unloving things you could possibly do.  To engage in sexual activity with someone prior to marriage is utterly irresponsible because it seeks to acquire only a part of a person and not the whole.  Most importantly, it seeks only to give away only a piece of yourself to the other, and not the whole.  Again, sex cannot be contained in such a way…it will yield you…it will always yield you. 

For now, I leave you with the quote from C.S. Lewis that I quoted in the beginning: 

“The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union (of marriage).”