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

1 Corinthians 7:8-9, 28 (NIV)

The story is told of a man who prayed to God for help in the middle of a rising flood. In his foolish piety, he rejected offers of assistance from a truck, a boat, and finally a helicopter, insisting that God would come to his aid. Finally confined to the roof of his house, with the water rising to his neck, he cried out: “God, I trusted you! Why didn’t you help me?” “I did,” came the reply. “I sent a truck, a boat, and a helicopter, and you refused all three!” This story teaches a powerful lesson: people often neglect God’s appointed remedies, and the result is always disaster.

In their zeal to be “spiritual,” some Corinthians concluded that Christians should not be married, since it would merely distract them from worthier, more spiritual pursuits. Writing to the apostle Paul for his opinion, they said, “It is good for a man not to marry [literally, “to touch a woman”]” (v. 1). In other words, they thought celibacy was the only acceptable lifestyle for a Christian. In part, Paul agreed. “I wish,” he said, “that all men were as I am” (v. 7). “It is good for [people] to stay unmarried, as I am” (v. 8). Why? Paul was well-aware of the demands marriage makes during difficult times. “Those who marry,” he warns, “will face many troubles in this life” (v. 28), and therefore their attention and energy will be divided necessarily between their spouse and the Lord. “I want to spare you this,” he says (v. 28). For a Christian living in times of persecution and peril, it is better to remain celibate and thus freer for service to God (vv. 32-34).

Nevertheless, Paul could not make celibacy normative for all Christians. Far from being a universal divine command, he says, celibacy is a gift God bestows on only a few (v. 7). For the rest, marriage is, among other things, a divinely-ordained remedy for sexual temptation. If a person does not have the gift of celibacy—“if they cannot control themselves”—they should be married, “for it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (v. 9). Paul is astonishingly down-to-earth. One of the reasons God gave marriage to human beings was to help them restrain their lust and give them a holy context for sexual passion.

Sexual desire is a voracious fire, and unless it is channeled into morally appropriate directions, like fire, it can destroy. Is it really surprising, then, that the attack on marriage—especially since the 1960s—has coincided with an unprecedented sexual degeneration? Television makes a mockery of marriage; cultural elites question its very utility; divorce rates are rising; and all the while homosexuality, fornication, adultery, and pornography have become pervasive in contemporary society. Marriage, the divinely appointed firewall, is being dismantled, and the flames are raging out of control.

As a people’s thinking about sexuality goes, so goes their culture. It falls to Christians, therefore, to defend the institution of marriage from those who would set it aside as a dispensable human invention. In doing so, they may well be preserving the moral life of an entire generation.
 
 
adopted from Kairios Journal

First Baptist Church is located in Perryville across from the Principio Health Center on Rt. 40.