¹² “Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything. ¹³ “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food”—but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. ¹⁴By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. ¹⁵Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! ¹⁶Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”^a ¹⁷But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

¹⁸Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. ¹⁹Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

Most of the world sins very boldly and openly. You don’t have to look far to see that. On the other hand, we Christians keep our sins a secret. We hide our sins and hope that even God doesn’t find us out. But these believers in first century Corinth were indeed a strange bunch. Unlike us, they sinned boldly and not in secret. Many of them were visiting prostitutes and they didn’t care who knew about it. But unlike the world, they rationalized their bold sin by attempting to use Biblical justifications. In fact, to them their bold sinning was not sin at all—it was a form of Christian liberty.

So begins our short series in 1 Corinthians chapter six I’m calling, “What Would Jesus Say to Our Sex-crazed Culture?” In Corinth, the apostle Paul was confronted with some of the most serious examples of Christian libertinism ever imagined. The believers in Corinth had a slogan that they used to justify their abuse—“Everything is permissible for me”. This is libertinism. Libertinism is genuine Christian liberty taken to a gross extreme. True Christian liberty is summed up by Paul in Galatians 5. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” One commentator describes some of our freedoms in Christ.

· Freedom from the fulfillment of the demands of God’s holy law for salvation

We do have wonderful freedom in Christ which Paul powerfully argued for in Galatians. But when this true Christian liberty is abused it is called libertinism. It is also called license, as in, “I have a license to do whatever I want”. It is also where the word licentiousness came from. A licentiousness person believes they have a free license. This is the term I will be using. As the Corinthians skipped on their merry way to visit the prostitute, they would have hummed this little slogan—“Everything is permissible for me, everything is permissible for me”. They wrongly concluded that their freedom in Christ gave them freedom to do whatever they wanted to do.

But not too many years before Paul was in Corinth he had to battle the opposite problem to license which is legalism. He and Barnabus had just finished their first missionary journey and returned to their home church in Antioch. Acts 15 tells us that “Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses you cannot be saved.’” This was a virulent form of legalism that denied the power of the cross and threatened to derail the early missionary efforts. It was such a serious issue that the apostles in Jerusalem had to convene a special council to tackle the problem. Paul continued to battle these twin, but opposite evils of legalism and license his whole life. Like this chart shows, the balanced believer is one who understands and lives out genuine Christian liberty. But if the balance beam teeters to one side you get legalism and if it goes the other way you get license.

“Let me illustrate how Christianity relates to the extremes of legalism and libertinism: Christianity resembles a narrow bridge spanning a place where two streams come together. One of those streams is crystal clear, but contains treacherous and deadly rapids; it symbolizes legalism--it appears to be a source of righteousness, but you can't stay afloat in it. Legalism will smash you on its rocks. The other stream is polluted libertinism-- if you fall into it, you will drown because of its filth. Therefore, the Christian must maintain his balance on the bridge between the treachery of legalism and the filth of libertinism. Christians who have fallen into the rapids of legalism destroy the effectiveness of their spiritual lives. Those who are wallowing in the vices of libertinism put themselves in line for divine discipline. Galatians 5:13-16 tell us how to stay on the bridge.”[2]

Legalism destroys the gospel and license destroys the gospel. The tenuous balance is like this guy. In the middle of the night in1974, Philippe Petit illegally strung a cable between the two towers of the World Trade Center and walked across in the wee hours of the morning. At 1.360 feet in the air I am sure this was a world record. Mr. Petit was immediately arrested when he made it to the other side. But at that height, the key question is this: Does it matter if you fall to the right or to the left? Either way is certain death. So it is with the balance in our Christian liberty. It doesn’t matter if you fall into legalism or license. Either way is certain death.

We could and will talk more about Christian liberty in later chapters in 1 Corinthians, but for now Paul is dealing with license leading to licentiousness. I intend this to be the first part of a four-part series. The next three titles are as follows.

But in view of at least four messages on this topic, some might ask, “Why should we talk about sex in a Sunday morning sermon? After all, Christians are accused of being overly prudish, “Victorian” and “puritanical” about sex as it is, why should we add to the existing stereotype of the stiff, legalistic Christian? Not only that, but we have young people in the room listening. Should we be discussing this?”

1. There is a right way and a wrong way for Christians to understand and talk about sex. Just because many Christians get it wrong by falling into legalism or license does not mean we should not talk about it. On the contrary, the wrong attitudes and beliefs that exist are the driving force in why we need to talk about sex. You don’t counter lies by burying your head in the sand; you counter false teaching by teaching the truth. This is what I hope to do.

2. We need to talk about sex because the Bible talks about sex. The Bible is filled with examples of every kind of sin and depravity known to man. There are rapes, murders, betrayal, sexual immorality, vengeance, idolatry, witchcraft, adultery, oppression, slavery, war, genocide, drunkenness, abuse, beheadings, impalings, stabbings, castrations and mutilations, just to name a few!. If the O.T. describes a son of King David raping his half sister, we can’t just pass over it and pretend it does not exist. Believers in the church in Corinth were visiting first century brothels and paying for the services of a prostitute and then they justified it with spiritual and Biblical arguments. We have to talk about this because the Bible talks about this and we have to talk about it because like these Corinthians, we are experts at rationalizing away our sin.

3. We need to correct the false idea about Puritans and sex. Whenever Christians question the sexual mores of society the blunt reply is always “Oh stop being so puritanical!” as if ‘puritanical’ were somehow equivalent to ‘tyrannical’. Most people believe H.L. Mencken's statement that Puritanism was "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.” Garrison Keillor joked about the Puritans saying, “the Puritans sailed to America in the hopes of discovering greater restrictions than were permissible under English Law.” These are all false stereotypes of the God-fearing Puritans in particular and of Christian sexual ethics in general. On the contrary, one true historian gave this report: “One of their greatest joys was sex: so long as it was within marriage. The Puritans believed sex was necessary, wonderful, and to be practiced often. Indeed, when one man refused to have sex with his wife, he was excommunicated from the Church!”[3] How’s that for a combination of church discipline and sex! Another wrote “Cotton Mather, the celebrated Puritan minister, condemned a married couple who had abstained from sex in order to achieve a higher spirituality. They were the victims, he wrote, of a "blind zeal." Finally, a pastor who did his PhD dissertation on the Puritans said this. “The Puritans put strict parameters around sex because they valued it so highly.”[4]

I especially love this quote. If you grow and tend a beautiful flower garden in a crowded neighborhood, what do you do? You must put a fence around it so that it will not be trampled under by careless feet. The illustration of sex being like a fenced garden comes from the O.T. book Song of Songs. Listen to how Solomon described his bride on their wedding night. “You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain.” The garden of his bride was fenced and locked up tight. This is a great illustration and call to lock up our own fences. I don’t have to be indiscreet for you to understand what this means. To the married and the unmarried alike I say, lock up your garden in every possible way! But as we know, there is a proper time for unlocking the garden. After Solomon and his bride had consummated their relationship, Solomon said “I have come into my garden. My sister, my bride.” Like us, the Corinthians did not live in a culture that locked up their beautiful sexual gardens. Most people trample down the blessing of sex with no regard for its exquisite beauty and intimacy. But the Puritans understood what God was doing. God put fences around sex because he values it and he values us so highly. God knows that the inherent beauty of sex is also what makes it powerful and captivating. This power is what drives us to unlock the gate of our garden when it should not be. Therefore, we protect what is good and lovely.

4. The fourth reason this is so important is that if we are to be true to the right intention of preaching expository messages and the whole counsel of God, we will have to tackle difficult subjects like church discipline and sexual immorality. If I am picking and choosing my topics at my own discretion, I can skip over all the hot button topics. But if we seek to preach through a book like 1 Corinthians, we must be true to God’s intention for writing it.

5. This topic is so amazingly relevant to our every day lives. When I read the daily news I read about the same things I see in the Bible: rapes, murders, betrayal, sexual immorality, vengeance, idolatry, witchcraft, adultery, oppression, slavery, war, genocide, drunkenness, abuse, beheadings, impalings, stabbings, castrations and mutilations. Often reading the Bible is like watching the evening news. This is so relevant because when I stand in the grocery line at Walmart I am exposed to immodesty and immorality (and so are your kids!). When I turn on the internet there are 260 million pages of pornography that I can find with a single click of the mouse. When your kids go to school or hang out with their friends, the topic of sex will come up eventually. It may be very subtle or very overt and nasty, but it will come up. Adults, where did you learn about sex? I can’t tell you all the ways I learned about sex, but I can tell you this—it wasn’t from my parents or my pastor. But it should have been! The sex drive is so basic to our created bodies, so ripe with God-given pleasure and intimacy, but it also so prone to abuse and who but our parents and our pastors should teach about this vital subject. One resource I would recommend is this book called Sex and the Supremacy of Christ. This is a conference that was turned into a book. Our church has these audio messages in the church library and you can watch the videos online for free.

6. The sixth reason is that first century battles between license and legalism continue to be modern battles in the church and in the home. It’s easy to slip into license or legalism but is is especially easy to drift into these two errors in the area of sex. Christian liberty requires that keep our gardens locked appropriately, but legalism will kill just as surely as license and licentiousness will kill.

7. Finally, we should preach about sexual morality because it is fundamentally a matter of the heart. Jesus elevates sexual morality to the highest possible plane. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus was so puritanical, wasn’t he?! J Sexual morality is a matter of the heart and since the Bible was written to authoritatively address matters of the heart, then this subject rightly belongs in Sunday morning messages. Does anyone have any doubts about this?

The Corinthians confidently declared “Everything is permissible for me”. They wanted to be the final authority in their lives, but Paul responded, “but not everything is beneficial.” As we will see next week ,what the Corinthians thought was total freedom was actually an awful kind of slavery and bondage.

^aGen. 2:24

[1] http://www.scionofzion.com/christianliberty.htm

[2] Liberty in Christ, What is Christian Liberty?, by John MacArthur.

[3] Puritans at Play, Bruce Daniels

[4] Christian Hedonists or Religious Prudes? The Puritans on Sex, Mark Dever, 2004.