Hi! Welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for the Daily Challenge. Today’s Tuesday; it’s the day we explore in the Bible the topic that we introduced yesterday. We’re in a series called, “Reset” right now, looking at how deciding to follow Jesus resets some really important areas of our lives. We’ve looked at several and this week we’re looking at how it resets our view of sexuality and marriage.

We’re going to try to understand it using some of the words that Paul wrote to the church at Corinth. The letter is called 1 Corinthians. This is the same passage as last week, on food, but this time we’ll highlight how Paul used it as an example for sexuality gone wrong.

12 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. 13 “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16 Or do you not know that he who is joined[a] to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” 17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin[b] a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Paul has heard what’s going on in the Corinthian community. They are notorious for prostitution, as a port city. They have a reputation for sexual promiscuity, since the temple to Aphrodite (the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality) was there, and temple prostitution a common thing.

Promiscuous and unlimited sex was quite common and accepted in that culture, something the Corinthians had within their rights, or at least knew they could get away with. But Paul isn’t worried about the City of Corinth and the rights of its citizens today, he’s worried about the City of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, and its citizens.

He wrote in Chapter 5 that a church member was sleeping with his stepmother. And from this passage, we can tell that church members are involved in prostitution as well, and he alludes to all sorts of other practices where sexuality has gone wrong.

Worse, it appears they’re justifying it using Paul’s teaching, using them like slogans. They are saying things like: All things are lawful for me! I can understand Paul saying words like that – he’d have been teaching about how Jesus fulfilled the law. They no longer had to try and make themselves acceptable to God by following laws, but Jesus’ death and resurrection meant that God had made them acceptable once again.

That is great news people need to hear: Christianity is not about a list of what’s wrong, and trying to fix that before we’re right with God.

The problem is they took that too far, and basically said that God’s grace, through Jesus dying on the cross, means anything goes! They were left with no law at all.

But Jesus only said he came to fulfill the law, not throw it away.

Jesus gift of grace isn’t about saying nothing’s wrong, but it’s about what is right, what we were created for and what God has done to allow us, through his power, to experience that once again. He invites us to begin practicing what is right now, in anticipation of the day when his work is completed and we live in his kingdom.

God created us from one ancestor, a’dam, and separated a’dam into two genders, male and female. In the first allusion to sexual intercourse in the Bible, sex is the rejoining together of what was once united as one, where there is potential to reproduce and extend God’s love to create other human beings. God’s original plan for us included sex as a good part of his creation, and a necessary one. But we and all humans have rebelled against God’s plan in numerous ways, pushed God from the center of our lives, and put other things there instead. Sex is a favourite – so many people act as if sex is the center of life, taking it out of its proper place and putting it in God’s place.

Remember, sin is simply when we take something good, pretend it’s the ultimate good, and it becomes very bad. Those who take sex out of context often experience the negative consequences in the moment or in hindsight. Sin can trap us. If you have ever tried to stop sexual sin on your own, you’ll know how impossible it is and that it has relational, emotional and spiritual effects for years, if not a lifetime.

But the good news is God has begun to transform our world into the kingdom of God, to reform the world as he originally intended it. He made it possible for us to practice life as God intended it, to fully experience all he created in all its goodness, which includes experiencing sex not as a simple biological act, as exercising our rights or as a false God. He made that possible for his followers by destroying sin, which had originally separated us from God and led us to rip sexuality from its context.

The bottom line for Paul: Having acknowledged God as creator means we are free to use our gifts, including our sexual bodies, as God intended them, rather than as we wish.

I’ve got a question for you to consider today and hopefully discuss with others you know from the commute, or from work, or from home.

Question: From this passage, how do you anticipate Paul sees God’s plan for humans to use their sexuality?

Have a great discussion. Don’t forget we’re reading the Bible in sync as a community, so check our website or app to see what today’s reading is. Have a great one. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Read the Bible in Sync Today

Ryan Sim - April 1, 2014

Tuesday - Study It - Reset Death

Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I'm Ryan your host of the Daily Challenges. Here we are in nature. And that's because this week we're studying how following Jesus resets our views of death, and in fact, Jesus resets death itself. We saw yesterday how western culture ignores, delays, avoids, fears death. The result of ignoring it is that we are uninformed! We can be uninformed in a practical sense – having given and received no sense of one another’s funeral wishes, burial options, etc. until it’s too late. But we can be unprepared in a spiritual sense as well. Paul, one of first Christians leaders wrote this to the first church community in Thessalonica. 13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 1 Thess 4:13-14 First, we should deal with what he calls the dead: those who are asleep. What might he be saying? There are various theories about just HOW death is like sleep for Christians, but Paul doesn’t go that far. We can simply note that he’s talking about those who have died, and says there is something akin to sleeping happening with them. Clearly Paul and these first Christians had expected Jesus to return, usher in the full kingdom, before any of them died. The “second coming” seemed that imminent. The letter was written sooner after Jesus’ death than many other letters, and they were clearly full of anticipation and excitement. Then some died, and you can imagine the questions and discouragement as they realized their expectations were out of line. So Paul tries to explain Christian death, and says they are essentially sleeping. Why is sleeping good news? Sleeping means time passes unawares. Sleeping is peaceful. Sleeping is part of life, not death. Those who have died in Christ are in many ways alive, but at peace, and waiting patiently for God’s kingdom. Sleeping is hardly worth grieving about! When they wake, they will be in the fullness of God’s kingdom of heaven. The Bible has lots of imagery about that, but the bottom line seems to be the presence of God. That’s what makes it worthwhile, not golden roads, clouds or cream cheese. Question: How do you respond to the idea of death being a sleeplike state? How is it different from other descriptions you’ve heard? Does it give you hope, or fear?

From Series: "Reset"

When our computers get bogged down and unmanageable, we know to hit a reset button to simply start over. Wouldn't a reset button be great in life? We know it would be complicated, with all our responsibilities and routines to consider, but imagine the freedom and refreshment of a new start in life! What would you do differently? What would you pay more attention to, and what would you ignore? How would you avoid getting bogged down and broken again? The great news is, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has begun to "reset" our universe, our world, and even us. We're invited to start over with him, in what he calls his kingdom. We're invited to start a new life with a clean slate. What gets wiped clean, and lived differently, when God resets our lives? We'll explore how God resets these key areas of our lives: Reset: Goals Reset: Time Reset: Money Reset: Work Reset: Body & Food Reset: Sex & Marriage Reset: Family Reset: Compassion Reset: Nature Reset: Society Reset: Death Join us for the next several weeks, and invite God to reset your life.

Discuss

More From "Reset"

Powered by Series Engine