Sex and Marriage 1 Corinthians 7:1-9

Sex and Marriage 1 Corinthians 7:1-9

“Present Distress” 7:26  “The present form of this world is passing away” 7:31

A little context is needed here. Christians are being persecuted under Nero, they have suffered limited persecution under Caligula and Claudius. But now the Roman political world is headed for civil war which occurs around 65 AD. If we place the writing of 1 Corinthians around 55 AD. We can understand why Paul is saying the time is short, and the world as they know it is passing away.

Corinth also is a place of sexual immorality. The people in Corinth have written a letter to Paul with questions they were dealing with. Vs 1&6 gives us a clue to what was going on. It appears that some people were promoting celibacy as more spiritual than marriage. In the present situation Paul concedes that singleness has some plus sides, it also has its dangers.

Let’s look at marriage in the Bible. First is that God made woman to complete man. Together they form a complete unit. God also gave the desire to have this completion to our mind and heart. Genesis 2:20-25. Sex is part of that desire for completion. In people’s heart, they want not only sex but the emotional and psychological relationship that goes with it. In Matthew 19:3-8 Jesus presents marriage as a life time situation.

Paul’s answer to the marriage question is simple. If God made you able to be single and celibate, then you can be fully devoted to the Lord. If God did not create you this way, then you should marry. Sex belongs in the context of marriage. In 6:19&20 Paul says “you are not your own, you belong to God.” Here in our passage he say “You are not your own you belong to your spouse.”

Because of this God given desire and to keep it in the context God designed it to be in couples are to serve their spouses needs for intimacy. The church has often taken one of two ideas about sex. First is that it is not talked about at all. The other is that of being too casual about it.

It is ironic that in a world that treats both marriage and sex in casual ways, people are making more noise about sexual misconduct and divorces are messy and damaging things. People wield sex and marriage like a child playing with a gun, with no idea of the lasting damage that results.

Sex outside of marriage effects the way you experience it within marriage. The intimacy and trust needed to build a strong marriage is not there. A relationship you are meant to count on for your life becomes a conditional relationship. This relationship is there to help you deal with temptation and to give you place of strength and safety in your life. The whole relationship is to bring joy and peace to our lives.

This in turn effects children, they look to their parents’ marriage as a stable place in the midst of a changing and confusing time in life. It gives them stability in the chaos around them. If the marriage of the parents is not something they can count on, they lose their reference point for life.

Yes, some are given the ability to be single and celibate, but to the rest of us God has given us a person who is to complete us, without whom we can never be whole. Sex and marriage are meant to be part of our lives and when neglected they give temptation more power than it should have. Within marriage we should find the joy, peace and stability for life that intimacy is supposed to bring.