ABOUT MARRIAGE AND SINGLENESS
A Letter from a Pastor #2
Pastor Dennis Clanton
Woodland Church
Sunday, June 30, 2024
(1 Corinthians 6:13–20, NLT) “You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead. Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.” But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.”
(1 Corinthians 7:25–28, NCV) “Now I write about people who are not married. I have no command from the Lord about this; I give my opinion. But I can be trusted, because the Lord has shown me mercy. The present time is a time of trouble, so I think it is good for you to stay the way you are. If you have a wife, do not try to become free from her. If you are not married, do not try to find a wife. But if you decide to marry, you have not sinned. And if a girl who has never married decides to marry, she has not sinned. But those who marry will have trouble in this life, and I want you to be free from trouble.”
SINGLE LIFE
1. SEE SINGLENESS AS YOUR CALLING
2. CULTIVATE DEEP CARING RELATIONSHIPS
3. STAY PURE
“Like most spiritual disciplines chastity is best practiced in community rather than alone.” Lauren Winner
4. BE CAUTIOUS BUT OPEN TO MARRIAGE
MARRIED LIFE
(1 Corinthians 6:16) “The two are united into one.”
1. EMBRACE WHAT GOD SAYS ABOUT SEX
(1 Timothy 4:4, NLT) “Everything God created is good.”
(Hebrews 13:4, Message) “Guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband.”
(Proverbs 5:18–19, LB) “Be happy, yes, rejoice in the wife of your youth. Let her … tender embrace satisfy you. Let her love alone fill you with delight.”
(1 Corinthians 6:20, NLT) “Honor God with your body.”
2. REDEEMED SEXUALITY
(1 Corinthians 7:3–4, Message) “The marriage bed must be a place of mutuality—the husband seeking to satisfy his wife, the wife seeking to satisfy her husband. Marriage is not a place to “stand up for your rights.” Marriage is a decision to serve the other, whether in bed or out.”
3. OPEN UP TO HOPE
(1 Corinthians 7:29, NLT) “The time that remains is very short. So from now on, those with wives should not focus only on their marriage.”
(Mark 10:29–30, NIV) “No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.”
4. SEE INTO THE FUTURE
(1 Corinthians 7:31, NLT) “This world as we know it will soon pass away.”
GROWTHWORK
1. What is my gift from God?
2. Am I marrying a believer?
3. Are the circumstances such that marriage is right?
4. How will marriage affect my service for Christ?
5. Am I prepared to enter into this union for life?