Well, good morning to you all.
This morning, we typically in our church,
we follow the lectionary.
And so this morning, we come to this reading
in 1 Corinthians chapter six.
And this is one of those passages
that because of all of the things
that have been attached to it in recent history,
it's almost impossible for us to understand
what this would have been like
from a first century perspective.
What was really going on when Paul wrote these words?
So what we're going to spend time doing this morning
is to look at this passage through that lens
and recognize that what we really see here,
what we're really gonna be talking about
is the sexual revolution.
When we hear the term sexual revolution,
most people think of the movement,
the events that happened in the 1960s onward in the West.
But according to Kyle Harper, the classics professor,
the first sexual revolution,
or what he would refer to as the real sexual revolution,
actually happened in the 60s,
as in in the first century onward.
And it was all the direct result of the Christian gospel.
From the moment it was first proclaimed,
the gospel began to transform
every aspect of human life,
including and really especially the realm of sexual ethics.
And the lifestyle of the early Christ followers
was a radical departure
from the surrounding cultural norms
in ways that we have a very hard time appreciating.
But it was a radical departure from the norms,
and the church grew rapidly in the first few centuries,
largely because of this.
Largely because people found this new way of life
to be breathtakingly beautiful and attractive.
Again, hard for us to imagine
with all of the lenses that we bring to this,
but that was the reality
in the first few centuries of the church.
And what this did was to lay a foundation
for much of what we take for granted
in the modern West
when it comes to everything from human dignity
to universal human rights
to justice for the vulnerable.
So what made this revolution possible?
1 Corinthians chapter six shows us
that it was a result of at least three things.
A revolutionary view of desire and identity,
a revolutionary view of sex and the body,
a revolutionary view of marriage and singleness.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you for your word,
and we recognize, we have to recognize every week
that this is your word,
and that we're here to sit under your word.
You promise that wherever your word goes,
you send it out, and it accomplishes
all that you desire for it to accomplish
in us, in the world.
It never returns to you void,
and so we pray that this word this morning
would be living and active,
that it would challenge those of us
who may be complacent,
that it would comfort those of us
who may be here
and be facing extraordinary challenges.
We pray that you would speak to us as your children
in the ways that you promise to do.
In the power of your spirit,
and in the name of Jesus, amen.
So a revolutionary view, first of all,
of desire and identity.
Our society today, in some ways,
feels very distant from the first century world,
but in many ways,
we actually have a lot in common with Corinth,
and I think arguably we have more in common
in this last century with Corinth
than many previous centuries.
In verse 12, Paul quotes a common phrase
that you might just as easily hear
on the streets of D.C. as in Corinth.
He quotes this slogan,
all things are lawful for me.
In contemporary terms,
my body is my business.
What I do is my business.
It's not anyone else's business,
and I have a right to do as I please.
Most everybody operates that way in our society.
But look at what Paul does here.
He quotes the saying,
all things are lawful for me,
and then he says this,
all things are lawful for me,
but I will not be dominated by anything.
Now that's a key insight
into the nature of desire.
He's not saying,
no, I don't want you to be free.
He's rather challenging them,
are you as free as you think you are?
Desire can be extraordinarily powerful,
and if we're not extraordinarily careful.
Our desires can,
Paul says,
come to enslave us.
And in the previous section,
verses 9 through 11,
Paul gives us a list.
And this is not meant to be comprehensive,
but it is meant to make a point.
Here's what Paul is saying with this list.
Regardless of what your particular desires
or proclivities might be,
whether we're dealing with sexual desire,
and he includes several examples
that encompass both heterosexual
and same-sex examples,
whether it's the realm of sexual desire,
whether it's the desire for other people's property,
kind of a material desire for money,
food and drink,
or whether it's the passions within you like anger,
whether it's something like anger
that leads you to revile other people,
in other words,
to speak abusively to other people.
There's always a danger, he says,
of our desires coming to dominate
and then define us.
So it may start out
with occasionally drinking too much here and there
or occasionally sort of fantasizing about adultery,
what would it be like to be with that person,
or occasionally your temper gets the better of you
and you say hurtful things
that obviously you don't mean.
And it starts out like that,
but what Paul's saying is that over time,
the more you indulge those desires,
the more you let them have their way in you,
the more you will cross boundaries
and the more you will take liberties
and the more you will push limits
until one day you realize,
as you look back on your life,
you've become a full-blown alcoholic
or a serial adulterer
or a reviler,
a verbally abusive person.
And even if we're not aware
of being dominated by any particular desire,
you can hear this and think,
well, I don't see anything like that
at work in my life.
We all live kind of in this constant oscillation
between pleasure and pain.
Right?
And that's its own kind of domination.
This inescapable pendulum between pleasure and pain.
I escape the pain of sadness
with the pleasure of junk food.
I escape the pain of boredom
with the pleasure of scrolling on Instagram.
The pleasure-pain cycle is sort of never-ending.
And one of the things that set the early Christians apart
was their apparent ability
to transcend
and to overcome their desires.
It wasn't the extinguishing of desire.
This wasn't Buddhism.
It's not Stoicism.
This is something more.
This is people who have the ability
to have desires,
to choose to indulge those desires,
or to choose to not indulge.
The desires had no control over them.
They were the ones in charge.
And that was extremely appealing.
So God's desire for us is freedom.
It's true freedom.
And people in the world
begin to look at this Christian community
and realize these people seem to be free.
You know, if you want to read a great paper
on this particular point,
Father Jeff Bailey,
who's a member, part of our church,
actually wrote a fantastic paper on this.
I'm sure he'd be happy to send it to you.
But the question that we want to ask is,
how was this kind of freedom possible?
And the answer that Paul gives is very clear.
Through spiritual transformation
that brought about whole life transformation.
So Paul says, you were washed.
You were sanctified.
You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ
and by the Spirit of our God.
He's saying, you used to be dominated by these desires,
but then you came to Jesus.
You admitted your spiritual brokenness.
You admitted to Jesus that everything about you,
every part of you needs to be redeemed and healed.
And what did Jesus do?
He welcomed you in.
He forgave all of your sin because of his sacrifice.
And then he gave you a new identity.
How do you know your baptism is a marker
of that new identity?
He said, no longer belong to the world.
You no longer belong to your desires.
You belong to me now.
And in the love of Christ,
people began to find something greater
than anything they might desire
in the material world.
These lesser desires began to be displaced
by the greater desire of the love of Christ.
And then the Spirit begins to work.
He says, you were sanctified.
The Spirit begins to work this new life out in us
to sanctify us.
The early Christian church took this very seriously.
And that's why they were committed
to transcending desire
and to not being mastered by it.
So the first point is this.
God's desire for us is freedom.
True freedom.
And one of the greatest threats to our freedom
is not external.
It's not laws that determine
what we can and cannot do.
We can have lots of laws.
We can have no laws.
One of the greatest threats
to our freedom is actually in here.
It's the dominating power of desire.
And I actually think there is a longing
for this kind of freedom in our culture today.
There's a rise of what we might refer to
as neo-stoicism in our culture today.
Just one example of this,
if you look at the many young men in our culture,
and it's up to you to determine
whether or not you fit that category,
many young men follow people like Ryan Holiday
or there's a Navy SEAL, Jocko Willink,
I think is how you say his name,
or Tim Ferriss or Jordan Peterson.
And all of these gurus are advocating
for self-improvement centered on seeking
a more virtuous life.
Right?
There's a term among some people, simping.
Don't be a simp.
Right?
You know, if you're a young man,
and you know, don't show or demonstrate
or display your interest in women.
Focus on, you know, your goals.
Focus on improving yourself.
Let them come to you.
Right?
But there's a spirit,
there's an undercurrent,
right, in all of this
that people are responding to.
And what is that undercurrent?
It's people, I think,
realizing we live in a culture
where everybody around you is saying,
indulge your desires,
indulge your appetites,
let your desires define you,
give in to them.
That's what true happiness is.
And I think people on an instinctive level
know that's a lie.
And they're tired of being dominated
by their desires.
They're tired of being stuck
in the pleasure-pain cycle,
and they want a way out.
And so you have these gurus
who are offering a way out.
But the difference is,
the difference is,
there were two key factors
in the early church
that we need today
if we want to truly be free.
Number one,
they had the power
of the Holy Spirit
at work in them.
And you're not going to find
that in a book.
And then two,
they had a community
committed to this lifestyle
which made it much more plausible.
It's a lot more plausible
if all of the people around you
are advocating for the same thing
in your life
and in their lives.
So this is the first piece
of this revolution puzzle.
A revolutionary view
of identity and desire.
Number two,
a revolutionary view
of sex and the body.
People in the pre-Christian world
had a very low view
of the physical world
and the human body,
and that led to a very low view
of sex.
Paul quotes another common slogan
you might hear on the streets
of Corinth or D.C.
Food is meant for the stomach
and the stomach for food.
What does that mean?
Sex has no meaning behind it.
There's no bigger meaning.
There's no bigger story.
There's no spiritual component.
Sex is merely an appetite.
And like any other appetite,
if you have to,
satisfy it
in whatever way you see fit.
Now that really depended
on who you were in society.
If you were a high status man,
if you were a freeborn man,
a high status man,
there was no expectation
of sexual restraint
put on you.
There's actually not even a word
for male virgin
in either Greek or Latin.
Right?
The concept didn't even exist.
And so there was no word
needed for it.
So a high status man
was entitled to sleep
with his wife
or high end courtesans
or brothel prostitutes
or slaves
because they were property.
That was assumed.
Or other men
or young boys
or any combination therein.
And this was not seen
as a big deal.
Men need to satisfy
their appetites.
Food is meant for the stomach
and the stomach for food.
lower status people,
right,
in this kind of society.
Because of this,
the more vulnerable members
of society,
slaves,
women,
children,
were always at risk
of sexual exploitation.
But it was no big deal
because men have to satisfy
their appetites.
And there are,
I believe,
some clear similarities
between the ancient world
and our modern world
on this point as well.
In the name of individual freedom,
the modern sexual revolution
of the 1960s
sought to liberate sex
from all of its constraints.
And that means
disconnecting sex
from everything
that gives it meaning,
from everything
that might set limits
around it.
Right?
So,
so the modern sexual revolution
said,
there's no meaning
behind sex.
It's just a basic appetite.
And,
and the question is,
are we better off
as a society
when that's the case?
Are,
are we better off,
is the world a better place
when sex has
little to no meaning?
Louise Perry
is a feminist writer
who published a book
a couple of years ago.
And the book's called
The Case Against
the Sexual Revolution.
Very much recommend
you read it.
The main thesis
of her book is this.
She says,
the sexual revolution
was all about liberating
and empowering women.
And certainly,
she acknowledges
that there have been
many welcome changes
in the realm
of women's rights.
But if you actually
look at the data,
she says,
who are the people
who have suffered most
because of the,
the changes brought about
by the sexual revolution?
Who has suffered most?
It's women.
Who are the true
beneficiaries
of the sexual revolution
of the 1960s?
Who truly benefits?
A small number
of high status men
are the real beneficiaries.
Now, to me,
that sounds a whole lot
like first century Corinth.
You know,
we love the,
the idea of progress.
We need to recognize
and be honest
when this may actually
be regress.
Not only,
well, here's Perry's point.
When we attempt
to disenchant sex,
when we,
when we strip away
all of its meaning,
we not only deny
that it is uniquely wonderful,
that also means
we deny that it can be
uniquely violating.
And the cost of that
low view of sex
always falls disproportionately
on women
and the vulnerable
of society.
It was the same
in the first century
as it is today.
You know,
G.K. Chesterton
has this great parable
that he shares
about progress.
And he says,
you know,
there are different ways
to go about reform.
And imagine a law
or a boundary,
you know,
or a more,
imagine that as like
a fence across the road.
And he says,
there's one approach
to progress.
The person comes along
and says,
here's a fence in the road.
I don't know why
this is here.
Therefore,
we should get rid of it.
And he says,
but the more intelligent
reformer
would look at that
same situation
and say,
well,
because you don't know
why this fence is here,
that's the reason
you should not remove it.
Right?
Go away,
figure out
why this is here.
Only when you really
understand why
this boundary is here
can you then decide
whether or not
you want to remove it.
Now,
we're coming out
of a period of time
where for decades
the kind of
postmodern aim
has been to
eradicate as many
boundaries as possible.
And now we live
in an increasingly
boundaryless society.
But most people
who are knocking
the walls down
really have no
understanding of
why they were there
to begin with.
And Perry's saying,
listen,
you're not getting
the results
that you think you are
by breaking
all of these
boundaries down.
And in such a climate,
the Christian gospel
was staggeringly beautiful.
Paul says in verses
15 and 16,
do you not know
that when you join
yourself to another
sexually,
you become one flesh?
And here,
flesh is not just
talking about
physical union.
It means the whole person.
See,
in the ancient world
and in the modern world,
people tend to separate
the spiritual
from the physical.
They assume that
the physical
is kind of down here
and the spiritual
is up here
and that's what
really matters.
But the Bible
says something
very different
about our bodies.
The Bible says,
listen,
you're not a person
with a body.
That's what
other people believe.
You are your body.
When God created Adam,
the first human,
he didn't create Adam
and then look around
for a body
to stick him in.
You know,
like a piece of Tupperware.
Right?
He formed Adam
from the material
physicality
of the dust
and the dirt
and the mud
and then he breathed
life into him.
At that point,
Adam came into being
as a physical being.
You are your body.
You don't just have a body.
So what that means
is that what you do
with your body
is inherently spiritual.
Right?
When the Bible
uses the word soul,
it typically means
the whole person,
not just a non-physical
part of us.
So another way
to say this
or make this point
is sex is a profoundly
spiritual act.
And there is no such thing
as casual sex.
And that's why,
by the way,
casual sex
never stays casual.
while subjectively
we might be able
to say about
a particular sexual encounter,
oh, it didn't mean anything,
Paul's saying
that there is
an objective way
in which sex
always means something.
Very profound.
And your body
knows this.
You may not know it
or want to know it,
but your body
knows it.
Your body knows it.
Over time,
sexual intimacy
leads to bonding
and oxytocin
and attachments
are formed.
And the people
who become better
and better
at shirking off
those attachments,
for them,
over time,
it becomes harder
and harder
for them to ever
make attachments.
Right?
Sex is meant
to be the full giving
of one's entire person
to the one
to whom you belong.
And this is why
Paul says
to flee from
sexual immorality
in verse 18.
And the word
he uses is pornea,
which is a broad
blanket term
for any and all
forms of sexual intimacy
outside of the
covenant bond
of marriage.
He says flee anything,
any kind of sexual intimacy
outside of the
bond of marriage.
Because what he's
saying is this,
if you understand
what sex is,
if you understand
what God has given us
in this gift,
you need to understand
that it's about
giving all of yourself.
So he says flee
any situation
where you might
have physical oneness
without whole life oneness,
without social
and emotional
and economic oneness.
And this is a revolutionary
view of sex in the body.
I mean,
in a world full of people
saying sex is just
an appetite,
it's just about
self-gratification,
Paul says no,
no, no, no.
It's not just about
self-gratification.
It's not just an appetite.
It's about radical
self-donation.
It's about giving yourself
fully and completely
to another human being.
It's our God-given capacity
to give ourselves fully
and completely
to another person
to such an extent
that we are transformed
by it.
So this was very radical.
Right?
So we have a revolutionary
view of identity and desire.
We have a revolutionary
view of sex
and the body.
The third piece of this
is a revolutionary approach
to marriage
and singleness.
Marriage in the first century
Corinth was very connected
to civic duty.
You were expected
to be married
and you were expected
to produce offspring
to build the population.
And it was inconceivable
that you would be
an unmarried adult.
You were seen as a drain
on the resources
of the community.
You could be fined
for that kind of thing.
And of course,
there were completely different,
it would not be fair
to say that there were,
you know,
there were
double standards.
There were two completely
different rule books
for men and women.
As we said before,
the paterfamilias
paterfamilias
had complete authority
over his wife
and over his wife's body.
And the paterfamilias
could freely engage
in sex with any number
of people outside the marriage
with largely with impunity.
But for women,
of course,
sexual purity
was heavily guarded.
When a woman was raped,
the great loss,
the great crime
from a male perspective
was not the violation
or the trauma.
It was the fact
that she had lost
her virginity
and thus would not
be desirable as a wife.
So that was the lens
that they had on it.
But again,
the early Christians
brought about
a revolutionary approach
to both marriage
and singleness.
Christian marriage
was a lifelong covenant
where both husband
and wife
were expected
to remain faithful.
So if we cheat
and look at the next chapter,
chapter 7, verse 4,
Paul says that
in Christian marriage,
I mean,
just think through,
do your best to imagine
being a first century
Greco-Roman person
hearing this.
Paul says,
the wife does not
have authority
over her body,
but the husband does.
Everybody would have been like,
that's right.
Then he says,
likewise,
the husband does not
have authority
over his body,
but the wife does.
That's where
everything would have
gone silent.
You could have heard
a pin drop.
See, Roman marriage
was about power
power and subordination.
Power and subordination.
A big part of what
made you a man's man
in this world
was your ability
to dominate
and thereby express
your masculinity.
But in a Christian marriage,
you have a man
and woman
giving themselves
completely to one another,
surrendering themselves
completely to one another.
And that's because
marriage itself,
in the Christian view,
is pointing to something
bigger than itself.
In Paul's letter
to the Ephesians,
he says that marriage
between a man and a woman
is a picture
of the kind of relationship
that God wants to have
with his people.
The heavens
and the earth
joining together
as one,
right?
Christ giving himself
completely
and dying on the cross
for the sake
of those he loves.
And then our calling
to give ourselves
completely to him
and to die to ourselves,
die to the life
that we had apart from him.
And as this Christian gospel
began to redefine marriage,
because it was
redefining marriage,
this was a completely new way
to understand marriage.
As that happened,
society began to change.
Now fast forward down
through the centuries
after this revolution.
There's a book
that came out in 2020
by Joseph Henrich.
He's a Harvard anthropologist,
sort of evolutionary biologist.
He's an agnostic
when it comes to matters of faith.
But he published a book in 2020.
It's like a 700 page
doorstop of a book
called The Weirdest People
in the World.
And he says that
when we look at the modern West,
much of what we take for granted,
ranging from our economic systems
and the prosperity
that we've enjoyed
to our love of democracy,
to our moral
and psychological makeup,
he says,
a lot of this
is the direct result
of Christian marriage
and family ethics.
Right?
The fact that Christians
didn't allow people
to marry their cousins
was a big deal,
because then you couldn't
just keep it in the family.
You had to go out
and you had to form alliances
with other tribes
and people groups.
And that begins to
lay the groundwork
for urbanization
and for economies to develop
and trade,
Christians enforced
lifelong monogamy.
They didn't let people go out
and it doesn't mean
that people didn't,
but Christians discouraged
it as much as they could.
They didn't allow polygamy.
And all of these things
laid the groundwork.
This is the central argument
of the book.
They laid the groundwork
that led to massive advancements
in Western civilization.
All right,
so this is a part of our story.
And much of what we love
about the modern West
is directly related
to this first century revolution
and the centuries that followed.
So that's marriage,
but I believe perhaps
the most amazing thing
that Paul says in chapter 7
comes after the verse
we just read
when he starts talking
about singleness.
And he talks about
his own singleness
and he calls it a gift.
And he's speaking to an audience
that would have thought of it
as a curse.
And he says,
this is a gift.
As we said in the first century,
it was unthinkable
to be an unmarried adult,
but Christianity,
for the first time in history,
the world encounters a religion
where both the founder,
Jesus,
and the first theologian,
Paul,
were single and celibate
all their lives.
And Paul's attitude
is essentially this.
He says,
if you have the gift of celibacy,
as I do,
Paul's saying,
that's actually preferable
to marriage.
And he just straight up says,
I wish everybody
had this gift.
Now,
he's not denigrating marriage.
He has a very high view
of marriage.
We just talked about that.
What does he do?
He's elevating singleness.
Not only is singleness
a valid lifestyle,
in Paul's view,
it's actually superior
in some ways.
Down in verse 28,
he says,
you know,
married people,
they tend to be consumed
with worldly troubles.
I don't have to spend time
illustrating that.
You know exactly
what I'm talking about.
He says,
but if you're single,
you can devote yourself
much more fully
to the Lord.
He's not saying
that if you're single,
you don't have worldly troubles,
but what he's saying
is that married life
can tend to just
completely overwhelm you,
and you can tend
to just feel like
you're just doing your best
just to stay afloat
and just to keep
your head above water.
And, you know,
what's that,
is it Jim Gaffigan
who said that,
you know,
what's it like
having a third kid?
He's like,
well, imagine,
like, holding a baby,
you know,
having a baby,
or imagine you're drowning
and then somebody
throws you a baby,
right?
You can be overwhelmed
by worldly troubles.
He said,
if you're single,
you don't have
those distractions.
And what we see
in the subsequent centuries
is,
according to Kyle Harper again,
in the first few centuries,
the plausibility
of lifelong celibacy
as a viable lifestyle
in the church
was, as he says,
a blaring advertisement
for Christianity.
People say,
you mean I can,
this is an option for me?
And people flock
to the church
because of it.
So in Christianity,
what we see is that
we see a view
that holds a high view
of both marriage
and singleness
as lifelong vocations.
And Christianity says
you have,
either one
or the other calling,
right?
But they're both vocations.
And they both put
the gospel on display.
Marriage is a picture
of the union
between Christ
and the church.
But singleness
is a picture
of the single-minded devotion
that Christ had
to his Father's will.
And that was,
and I think,
continues to be revolutionary.
So let's pull
all this together.
The first sexual revolution
happened as a direct result
of the Christian gospel.
And it radically reshaped
all of society.
And it laid the foundation
for much of what we love
about the modern West.
Now certainly,
the church has failed
along the way
many, many times.
the sex abuse scandals
and cover-ups,
the misguided,
shame-inducing efforts
of the purity culture,
the stigmatizing
of anyone
not fitting the mold
of married with two kids
and a dog.
But I would say this,
the worst failure
by far
would be for us
to abandon the gospel
and the freedom
that it offers.
in the name of what?
Progress or relevance?
For all of the talk
of sexual liberation,
what has the modern
sexual revolution
actually given us?
A 20-year-old young man
who is incapable
of feeling desire
for another human being
because his brain
has literally been rewired
by years of pornography use.
A 38-year-old woman
who is watching
her biological clock
tick away
while stuck
in the purgatory
of a situationship
with a man
who feels no pressure
to commit to anything
beyond his own
immediate gratification.
Rapidly declining
birth rates
that will eventually
lead to collapse
in countries
around the world,
including ours.
What I believe
is that we have
something to offer
the world
that it desperately needs.
And we know that
because we've seen
a lot of this before.
We have a gospel-centered
sexual ethic.
We have a community
that makes
such an ethic
plausible
as a lifestyle.
And we have
the spiritual power
to live it out.
And I believe
that in our lifetime,
we're going to see
a growing hunger
and longing
for the freedom
that this brings,
just as we saw
in the first century
Greco-Roman world.
So as Paul says,
may we glorify God
in our bodies.
May we live lives
that provoke questions
only the gospel
can answer.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you
for your word
and we thank you
for the freedom
that you bring.
And we pray, Lord,
in the power
of your Holy Spirit
that there would be
a possibility
in our community
that would not be possible
with merely human effort,
that we would have
the kind of spiritual power
and oneness
that would make it possible
for us to embody
this otherworldly way
of being human,
that it would put on display
a way of being human
that people instinctively long for.
We pray that this would be
a community
where freedom
is taken seriously
and celebrated
and sought after
for the great
and precious gift
that it is.
We pray this
in your son's holy name.
Amen.