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Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife… Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that… But if you do marry, you have not sinned… I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord… So then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.

The New Testament teaching about marriage is quite different from modern day encouragement. Far too often, we are led to believe that marriage is the solution to a problem. If we feel alone, if our life is disorganized, if we struggle with issues like same-sex-attraction… we might give, or be given, the erroneous advice “you just need to get married.” Marriage is a wonderful thing, but understand that it is a commitment, it is a willingness to “give up” and it is not about what you “get.” So many people get divorced because they didn’t “get” what they thought the “benefits of marriage” were supposed to be. Marriage is a vow to serve, not to be served. Thus, it is a beautiful picture of what Jesus did for us. You shouldn’t seek to be married for marriage sake. If you pine away the hours thinking: “oh… I wish I were married…” and you don’t have a person in mind, that’s not healthy for the Christian. Paul makes it clear, getting marriage isn’t a sin, you do just fine getting married, in fact, most people will get married, but if you can remain single, that’s even better. You probably won’t hear that from most Christians because they’re potential grandparents… 😉 If I can boil down Paul’s advice, it’s this: only get married if you have to, and it’s okay if you have to.

do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

There are some who want to jump through hoops to not make these words mean what they very plainly mean. This verse isn’t talking about the temptations we have, it’s not even talking about the sins we occasionally fall into in moments of weakness, it’s talking about our lifestyle. It’s talking about a person who would give in and just say: “well, this is just how I am, and that’s just how it’s going to be…” This is a scripture about people, the kind of people who will be in heaven. I know, it’s popular to quip “I’m just a sinner, saved by grace…” but that’s not true. If you’re saved, the Bible never calls you a sinner. You are either a former sinner saved by grace, or you’re a sinner in need of grace. There will be no sinners in heaven. That’s not to say saints don’t make mistakes, but our mistakes don’t define who we are, Jesus does.

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you… I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one.

There’s a subtle sin of the church we don’t like to talk about, or don’t even know is a sin… the sin of looking the other way. It’s popular to think “hey, all sins are the same, who am I to judge… I lie sometimes, I can’t say anything about Bob’s infidelity… right?” WRONG! There are sins which are worse, one of which is sexual immorality. If you’re part of a church, and you know about someone who is (brace yourself for an old fashioned phrase) “living in sin” then you have an obligation to say something. People never like it when I tell them “you need to get married or move out.” In fact, they generally have the attitude of “well, who are you to judge…” to which I’d say, not that I am their pastor, but that I am their fellow member in Christ. We all have a responsibility to keep the Church pure by regularly evaluating not only our own lives, but each other’s as well. The church is a place for repentant people, not the arrogant who think sin is no one’s business but the sinner’s. This does get tricky, because while we are called to not even associate with “Christians” who have lifestyles of sin, this is not talking about the lost. We should expect sinners to sin, and we should invite them to become part of the church… but that means they’ll change. There is no salvation without transformation… let’s hold each other to this.

I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children… I urge you, then, be imitators of me.

We might think that as Christians we don’t follow man… that’s true and not true at the same time. We do follow men and women who follow after Jesus. If you are in a position to influence people, look at what Paul did. He calls people to task, but is careful that they know he’s not just coming down on them to be negate, it’s for a reason. His remedy to their problems is to follow his example. Leaders, that means we have to be walking the walk, not just talking the talk. We follow Jesus, as well as those good examples who go before us, a long chain of followers of our Lord all the way back to Christ himself. Press on, speak up, follow Jesus!

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God.

The “new atheists” are incredibly arrogant. Don’t get me wrong, some Christians are too, but for the Believer, the proper attitude is humility and a reliance on “thus saith the Lord” not “thus saith myself.” I’ve talked with so many people who believe they have God (or the idea there is no God) so concrete… that’s not very humble. Christians, however, don’t think they’ve got it all figured out, we just have access to revealed truth, revealed in God’s word. That may seem foolish to some, but so it goes. We need to be careful where the Bible is not clear, we need to be less dogmatic. Where something is “logical” and yet not expressly stated in the Bible, we need to back-off on making that a boundary line of “true belief.” Our clever systems and nice and neat depictions of God in our very own boxes is often times very different than the One True God revealed in Holy Scripture. Real wisdom is humility in the face of revelation.