Sermon Preached on November 4, 2018
Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.
1 Corinthians 7:25-31
I must acknowledge the obvious here. That is a wordy sermon title! If it is not read carefully and pondered, it may lose its whole effect. We use the expression “like there’s no tomorrow” to signify a kind of libertine haste, such as when someone is asked what they would do with the rest of the day today as if it were their last day on earth. The answers are revealing. But what if the question focused on a last day on earth that lasted forever? Indeed, this would actually be more like what the New Testament authors meant by the “last days” or “end of the age.” We speak of “the beginning of the end” of something, and by it we mean something ominous.
Paul has such omens in mind, yet the trouble he foreshadows to his Corinthian audience is all backdrop, whereas the new day opening up to them is supposed to come to the front of his painting. The main characters in that eschatological shadowing are husband and wife. The virtue communicated in this apostolic artistry are a law of nature. Its truth applies to everyone in every age. On the other hand, there is something situational to catch as well. Different eras in church history emphasize different parts of biblical teaching according to their times. When it comes to marriage and singleness, the early Middle Ages and contemporary America seem at two different extremes.
What we will look at today in a Part I to this concept. Think of it as the doctrinal foundation to the practical application that we will examine next week. We will see three parts to the doctrine.
This Life is Distressed
This Time is Short
This World is Passing Away
Or, summarized into a singular idea,
Doctrine. The value of marriage or singleness is relative to breaking our chains to this evil age.
At certain points, Paul relativizes his teachings, and yet this is no relativism. There is a vast difference between the relative and the relativistic. One key to the difference is the exact object that is relativized. Paul is relativizing his teaching about a secondary thing. The secondary thing is relative to the main thing. So we start this text with how he does that: ‘Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy’ (v. 25). This harkens back to the early part of the passage: those parallel parentheses: (not I but the Lord) in verse 10 and then (I, not the Lord) in verse 12. To review, we are not to receive the idea that one is more authoritatively Scripture and the other less. Not at all! Rather Paul is adding a nuance about mixed living and abandonment to what the Lord had already said. Here he gives a “judgment” (γνώμην)—not an opinion in this context, but a teaching in an area that the Lord had not specifically spoken on. Calvin says here that, “the Lord does not in any part of Scripture declare what persons ought to remain unmarried.”1
This Life is Distressed
Just like the previous passages: context, context, context! ‘I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is’ (v. 26). The fact that “person” and the personal pronoun “he” are used is good evidence that the modern translations get parthenon in verse 25 right. Some older translations will say “virgins,” but here Paul is using it to mean a male or female who is not yet married.
Notice the same ethic of contentment as we saw with racial and economic status in the previous passage: ‘Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife’ (v. 27). The action Seek here has more of the sense of “obsess” or “seek your ultimate happiness” in a spouse. Obviously Paul is not forbidding marriage for anyone not yet married; or else, no more Christians would have gotten married without sin. We know this is not true. Paul warns Timothy of those in latter times, who will teach a kind of rejection of nature itself: whether of foods or those “who forbid marriage” (1 Tim. 4:4).
‘But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that’ (v. 28). Marriage brings worldly troubles that singleness does not. Now, singleness brings worldly troubles that marriage hems us in from. But right now Paul wants us to be realistic about marriage. We will wait till next week for specific (vv. 32-35). For now just get this: One’s marriage or singleness in and of itself is not outside of God’s will. This might seem like a weird point; but many Christians on both sides have been told they must be sinning either because they are single or that “their marriage is a sin” (possibly because the way they entered the marriage was sinful — but that is very different).
Paul’s main point here is that life is filled with enough troubles for us to waste trying to chase some alter ego: whether married or single. We do not have to know what the particular “distress” was around Corinth in 55 AD for this to make sense. Marry [or not] with your identity in Christ. Now let me address this word: identity. This has been so pressed by pietists in our day that we are liable to swing the pendulum against it by saying that this is not a “biblical concept.” That is foolishness. The word need mean nothing other than how some views their ultimate worth. Use whatever word you like, and you will be stuck with a psychological concept by which people have reference to their lives having meaning. In Paul’s conception here, our earthly identities have not been eradicated, but they have been relativized. They have been subordinated to a more ultimate identity. But now Paul adds an element to this that might seem off. That element is the end of time, or at least the shortness of time.
This Time is Short
There are two problems in this passage. There is an eschatology problem and an ethical problem.
First, the eschatology problem: ‘This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short’ (v. 29a). Did Paul (and the other Apostles) believe they would be alive at the Second Coming? Critics put all their eggs in this basket:
For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep (1 Thess. 4:15)
Sometimes Paul uses the final resurrection generically: “[God] … will also raise us up by his power” (1 Cor. 6:14); and “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51). But Paul also speaks of himself as one of the dead who will be raised: “he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence” (2 Cor. 4:14). And then finally he purposely plays both sides: “[Christ] died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him” (1 Thess. 5:10). So his point is never to predict, but teach the larger principle: THE TIME IS SHORT. He speaks of the first coming of Christ as the dawning of the end of the ages: “[these things] were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Cor. 10:11).
Second, there is an ethical problem. He continues: ‘From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none’ (v. 29b). The reason this is puzzling should be clear. Surely he would not have us ignore or neglect earthly relations. Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 5 to husbands by itself would be enough to refute that. Peter’s teaching to husbands and wives in 1 Peter 3 would do the same. In order to get our minds wrapped around what he does mean, let us bring in our third point.
This World is Passing
‘For the present form of this world is passing away’ (v. 31b). John says the same:
And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever (1 Jn. 2:17).
The fact of the matter is that there is an everlasting you—that “soul that will never die” from the Children’s Catechism—and there is also a passing you: a version of you that if others seek after and make much of, they really would not be very loving to you. The reason is simple and was given by Jesus:
For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? (Mk. 8:36-37)
The world is a stage for God’s glory and matters exactly to that extent. That is why it matters so much! Thus to relative a thing by an ultimate thing is actually not to cheapen it, but, if that which relativizes a thing is ultimate, then that which was being treated as ultimate but was not is not being finally shown its proper dignity. Paradoxical though it might seem, the relativized thing has now been given a greater honor than it had. So the question before us is this: Which beloved do you love: the one who is forever or the one who passes away? There is a way to “love” someone that really hates them. If you say you love someone, but your love for them has little-to-no care about that which lasts forever in them, then you do not love that person as you ought to.
Now we are ready to hear Paul’s whole reasoning. If his premise is that the world is passing away, then his very troubling ethical conclusion starts to fall into place. We do not actually love our spouse if we grasp hold of them down into this world: if we need them to be for us what only God is meant to be for us, if we flatter their self-worship or use them to serve our own private interests, then what we call “love” is not. Instead the two are truly made one by passing through, and helping each other toward that end. This is really the true understanding of 1 Peter 3, that closes with,
Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered (3:7).
Your marriage has been relativized to “pilgrim status,” as you seek not a lasting home hear, but a city that is to come (cf. Heb. 13:14). It has not been downgrades to “non-spiritual status.” It is not just our relation to our spouse that is relativized, but he adds, ‘and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it’ (vv. 30-31a). The “as though” is doing a lot of abstract heavy lifting here. One still “deals” so as to not so deal. The first Christians who shared their goods and met together in houses still had houses and goods, and thus jobs to supply the income to thus provide.
Our marriage is relativized to the eternal marriage between Christ and the church. But our tears are relativized: momentary sorrow to ultimate comfort. Our enjoyment is relativized: passing pleasures tuned to everlasting and ever-increasing happiness. Our investments and possessions are relativized: from the currency of the curse to the ultimate gold standard. In other words, we relate to things, to experiences, and even each other in a way that grasps hold of only that which is traveling heavenward and trading in (at market crash speed) anything that would weigh us down on these shores.
Our doctrine is that the value of marriage or singleness is relative to breaking our chains to this world. Are you loving your spouse by (together) breaking your chains from this world? Are you single? Well then, are you in the process of choosing a spouse who has made it clear that they will help you break your chains from this world? If you cannot already say that this is one of their defining characteristics, then you have no business applying any other metric.
Practical Use of the Doctrine
Use 1. Correction. “Identity is not a Bible word.” This is ironically biblicism. All the word means is one’s personal worth or significance or sense of meaning. That is a reality. It is a reality in terms of how we evaluate others and it is a reality that one senses about themselves. The only question for the Christian is whether their ultimate identity will be who they are in Christ versus some other designation that may be appropriate to this or that part of their nature and calling, but which is not in the ultimate place. The reason this matters was captured by Augustine’s distinction, in several of his writings, between that which we are given to use and that which we rightly enjoy: “When you enjoy a man in God, it is God rather than the man whom you enjoy.”2 As it is with friendship in this respect, so with one’s spouse. Marriage is God’s design and it is the norm, but that does not make it ultimate, just as Christ’s ultimacy does not make marriage anything less than a norm. What we have on both extremes is a simple case of bad logic.
Use 2. Exhortation. Get married—or not. Get married—but not like that. Get married—and do not delay. What do I mean by each of these? The truth is, most people do not care, and yet the same people reserve the right to be quite opinionated and even offended about it. Folks who always find things odd—and I am such an oddity—find this odd. In fact, I do not find it so odd. I am only letting on. The truth is as plain as a potato. Those who do not like me talking about this are the same as those who were not very fond of Paul bringing it up to begin with. Paul gets that a lot. He had been sent by Jesus, in part, to scope out the idols of professing Christians as the prophets had been sent to read the mail of ancient Israelites. And that is what we have here, in marriage and in singleness: idols that keep us off the pace of Christ’s kingdom, if not off the field as a whole. One who is in that boat as a single will need, in the vast majority of cases, to get married as soon as possible. Paul also addressed those to whom it is given to be more focused.
In all of the pre-marital counseling I have done, this is the most important point. This passage is where I got it all from. I apologize for none of it. If I have ever held up a mirror to two intoxicated young souls and they suspected I was breaking them up, it was a mirror of eternity revealing to them what little of it was in their hearts even about themselves. Do not so despise yourself and others.
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1. Calvin, Commentaries, XX:252.
2. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, xxxiii.37
