Thursday · Jul 23
Married or Single
Look again at Paul’s teaching that your body is the same as “a temple for the Holy Spirit” ( 1 Corinthians 6:19, ERV ). Do you see that Paul teaches this idea while he is warning the church against sex sins? What is the only way we can live a holy life? (Read yesterday’s study.) Our bodies must become the same as a temple for the Holy Spirit to live in. The church must be different from the community around it. The Holy Spirit in our hearts makes that change possible.
Read 1 Corinthians 6:19–7:9 . How do these verses help us to follow the commandment not to do any “sex sins”? ( 1 Corinthians 6:18 , NLV).
We can learn important Bible truth about sex in 1 Corinthians 7 . This chapter can be divided into two parts: (1) lessons about marriage ( 1 Corinthians 7:1–24 ) and (2) lessons about being single ( 1 Corinthians 7:25–40 ). 1 Corinthians 7 helps us understand that these topics are important and necessary. So, we must talk about them.
But we must remember that Paul is answering questions about the problems in the church at Corinth. Then we will understand Paul’s ideas about marriage better. If not, we may think that Paul doesn’t respect marriage very much. But that is not true (read 1 Timothy 4:1–3; 1 Timothy 5:14; also Hebrews 13:4 ).
Also, we must remember that God made sex. But God made us to enjoy sex only in marriage. Sex is a gift. God made it for marriage between a male and a female. That is the only type of sex that the Bible accepts.
That’s why Paul warns us to “run away from every kind of wrong sex!” ( 1 Corinthians 6:18 , WE). When Paul gives us this warning, he may be thinking about the story of Joseph ( Genesis 39:6–18 ). Joseph ran away from Potiphar’s wife when she tried to have sex with him. The Bible tells us that Joseph “ran out of the house” ( Genesis 39:18 , EASY). The Bible doesn’t say so, but we can see from the story that Joseph waited to have sex only in marriage ( Genesis 41:45 ). Joseph was filled with the Holy Spirit ( Genesis 41:38 ). He wanted to do what was right in God’s eyes.
How can we, as a church, protect ourselves from wrong ideas about sex that are in our communities worldwide?