Transcript: Lesson 16 - The Story of Redemption, Part 2

Friends, welcome. We are thinking about God's story in our sexuality. In the previous unit, we  talked about how marriage is meant to be the sign and pointer to God's covenant love God's  faithfulness, God's care for us in Jesus. And in this unit, we're going to think more about  singleness. And how singleness also is meant to be taken up into this larger story of who Jesus is. And to be this pointer in to to the reality of Jesus's love for us. Now, I said a few videos  back at the beginning of the last unit, that when we think about marriage, or when we think  about singleness, it's really important to frame it through the lens of God's new family. In  other words, that we recognize that marriage is not the be all and end all but that seeking  first the kingdom of God isn't that the kingdom of God is meant to orient our marriages. And  similarly, when we think about singleness, part of the reason that we understand the Christian call to singleness as a viable way of life, is because we recognize that to be single is not to be  alone. At least that's the biblical vision, to be single, is actually to be part of this broader  family. You're not lacking a family, you're not lacking brothers, sisters, fathers mothers. But as Jesus says, if you leave even your earthly families to follow Him, as many of His disciples did,  what you find there is a new family, people who surround you who support you, who love you. And so it's important to understand then, how singleness also points to the story of Jesus and  the story of Jesus's love for us. Now, in just a couple of minutes, we're going to dig into I  Corinthians 7, a passage where Paul speaks quite a bit about singleness, and about celibacy,  as well as a number of other concerns. But I would ask you just to reflect on a couple of  questions as we begin this discussion. The first is, how would you describe the attitude of our  culture, I'm thinking specifically here about North American culture, toward singleness? For  many actually, singleness, I think is preferable to marriage. In fact, what we've seen in the  last several decades is that people are waiting longer to get married or, or people might live  together and never actually get married. And so it seems like more and more people are  attracted to singleness, because it does offer a certain level of freedom, a level of  independence, a sense that I'm not really tied down to anybody. I'm not really maybe  responsible or obligated. Especially as people grow up in houses of divorce, or where maybe  they never saw a good marriage model. There's kind of a sense that I don't really know if  that's if that's for me. And so, for many people in our culture, singleness is this avenue of  freedom. But it's interesting to think about how our culture views not just singleness, but  celibate singleness. And when we talk about celibacy here, part of part of what we're  recognizing is that the biblical vision is that sex and marriage go together. And so to be  celibate, is to be not married, which means not having sex. And in our culture, so many  people view having sex as as the key to personal fulfillment as a central part of the good life,  that maybe people like yeah, I'm fine with singleness, as long as sex is included with that. But if you start talking about celibate singleness, now, people are starting to think, well, there's  something strange going on, there's something you know, that doesn't really doesn't fit with  the dominant mindset of our day that says, find personal fulfillment through sex. Your sex is  nothing more than just this physical act, and so to, to not engage with it is to somehow be,  you know, not fully human or not really, truly fulfilled, or maybe you're just repressing things,  and it's going to lead you into an unhealthy way of life. So our culture, I think, clearly in terms of singleness doesn't really know what to think or how to operate. But it's interesting as well  to think about the attitudes of many churches, towards singleness. I described in an earlier  video, the experience of many of my college students who go to you who come to a Christian  college come into Kuyper College and when they go back home and visit family or their  churches, one of the most predominant questions is this question of you know, are you dating somebody yet? Did you find somebody or if you are dating Well, when are you getting  engaged, when you get married, and so many churches have this attitude that singleness  means a kind of second class citizen that to be a single is really to be kind of on the outskirts  on the outside that even many of our churches are very focused on marriage ministries on  Family Ministries, and the single person in a lot of ways, gets left out, gets set to the side or,  or has to work a lot harder, to really be truly integrated into the life of the body. And so many  churches, I think, really struggle with how to interact with how to engage singles, even as the  number of singles grows in our culture. And this, I think, is also difficult because, you know,  we all begin life in the state of singleness. And many people in churches are widows or 

widowers, or people who have gone through divorce and who are who find themselves on the  other side of marriage and single again, and so this is not a this is not a small population. This is this is a decent number of folks within our churches. And so it's important that we reflect a  

little bit on on our attitude towards singleness. Sometimes, I wonder if singleness is even a  good biblical term. Again, part of the reason that I think people might have a negative view  towards singleness is because it does. It has almost this connotation of aloneness, of  loneliness, of being single or being on your own or being apart from. And scripture actually  doesn't use this specific term, I don't necessarily think that's a good reason to use it or not  use it. But we have to recognize the part what part of the language the Scripture does use is  this language of family, that we're family with one another. Elsewhere, you have this  metaphor of we are all members of the same body. And so if if singleness has this has these  connotations of being disconnected and being set apart of being not really connected, then  that actually doesn't fit the biblical vision, which is that people both married and single, are  members of the Body of Christ are our brothers and sisters, in the family of God. And so we  have to be careful, I think it's fine to use this term, I'm not going to speak against that, I think, you know, it's, it's, we know what we're talking about. But I do think we have to be careful  here, that we don't use it and come to think of it as having kind of the second class status as  being not really connected, not being really in the family. So really well remember that  whether you're married or single, you are a member of the family, you are a member of the  Body of Christ. So with that being said, I want to look at a few verses from I Corinthians 7. And I would encourage you, maybe at this point, I'm not going to read the whole chapter. But I  would encourage you maybe even pause the video and take a few minutes to read through  maybe read through all I Corinthians 6 and 7, because Paul here is addressing the church at  Corinth and and what you start to see is that man, the church, a Corinth is confused about  how to live out their sexual lives in faithfulness to Jesus Christ. And so, you know, lest we get  any ideas in our head that, you know, the church only recently has started to struggle with  questions around sexuality or marriage, what you see is that from the very beginning at the  Church of Corinth, there were people who were in essence, who came from all different walks  of life who were involved in all kinds of different sexual sin. And Paul was really speaking to  these new Christians, who were in a lot of ways still exhibiting the these the same sexual  patterns of their life previously. And Paul's helping them to understand what does it mean, to  bring our marriages bring our singleness bring our sexuality into God's story? What what does it look like when that actually happens? And so I want to explore for a few minutes a biblical  view of celibacy. So if you want to pause the video, read through I Corinthians 6 and 7, and  then unpause, I'll make a few observations. So the first thing I want you to see in I Corinthians 7 is that Paul rejects celibacy as a standard for all. Paul is really clear here in the first few  verses of I Corinthians 7, that if you're married, you are not called to celibacy. Now, this might seem strange to us. But there were some people in their world and we even have records of  people in the first several centuries of Christianity who thought that following Jesus meant  that their marriage should be celibate, in other words meant that they would be married they  would exchange they would exchange vows. They would be officially married but they would  not have sex. Paul is clear. Not everybody is called to celibacy. If you are married, he says you are called to have sex with your spouse that's part of marriage. And so he speaks against  those who would say, the body is bad sex is bad. So I'm not even gonna have sex with my  spouse. He says, No, that's not true. And so we this is important to note, because I think for a  lot of us today, the temptation is to see singleness as kind of a second class status. Whereas  to a lot of Christian history, actually, marriage was seen as kind of a second class status and  single folks were raised up in thought of as is more holy or more righteous, more pure,  because they weren't married. And because they didn't have sex. And so it's important to  recognize that celibacy is not the standard for all. But Paul does affirm celibacy as a gift, and  a call for some. So in verse 7, he says, I wish all of you were as I am. The way says that he's  referring to the fact that he himself, Paul is single, he's not married, he says, I wish you were  as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God. One has this gift, another has that. So he says, Look, celibacy is a gift and a call. For some, for some Christians. This is important,  because oftentimes, again, maybe not in our actual teaching, but in a lot of our attitudes, we 

sort of assume that everybody is probably called to marriage, unless for some reason it  doesn't work out or, you know, maybe they just can't find somebody or whatever we look at  that as a very unfortunate situation. We unfortunately do not teach what Paul teaches here,  which is that some people are called to marriage and should expect that and look ahead to  that. And other people are called to celibacy called to singleness. And these are two equally  legitimate options for Christians to pursue. And so he doesn't say here, that marriage is the  default option. And if for some reason that doesn't work out, then he I guess you're called to  singleness. So part of part of my question for us, as we think about this is how can we  communicate the fact that marriage is something that people are called to but singleness is  also something that people are called to and that, that even as we think about, you know,  raising up children teaching youth in the church, to help them think about both equally valid  options that God may call them to. Now you see, actually several examples in Scripture, of  singleness of celibacy. One, I want to read you just a couple of verses from the prophet  Jeremiah, Jeremiah was actually not married, he was celibate, he was single. In Jeremiah 16:1- 2, Jeremiah says this then the word Lord came to me, You must not marry and have sons or  daughters in this place. And as the as this chapter goes on, part of what you see is that God  actually calls Jeremiah to singleness as a as a sign and pointer to the judgment that's going to come to Israel. In the Old Testament, He says, don't have sons and daughters, because the  sons and daughters who are born in this land are going to come under my judgment, because  of the evil and the sin that is there. And so that's a specific case where God calls somebody to singleness, partly because of God's calling on Jeremiah's life as a Prophet, his desire for  Jeremiah's life to be a sign and pointer to what God is going to do. We also see, I mean, to the  two main examples in the New Testament, we have our Jesus and Paul. And this, I think, is  this is pretty amazing when you stop and think about it. Because this is a world, the world  was Jesus and Paul live is a world where marriage is very much valued, especially in the  Jewish community. And so for, for somebody to stay single, would have been seen as, as you  know, this very abnormal thing, something that is not expected something that might raise  eyebrows are caused people to ask questions about why they're not married. And so what we  see in Jesus, I think, is really important. Jesus is fully and truly human. This is one thing that  throughout the history of Christianity, we have, we have to be clear about the identity of  Jesus. Jesus is fully divine, and he's fully human, and part of Jesus's fully human life included  not being married, including not having sex. And so we have to be really careful here. If we  make it sound like you know, to be truly human, to live the truly good human life. You have to  be married, you have to have sex. What we're essentially saying is that Jesus wasn't really  truly and fully human. That that has His life was somehow less, because it didn't include those things. I think that's something we would hopefully want to avoid and say, well that that can't  be Jesus is is the divine Son of God. He's also fully human. He's our Savior, our Messiah, our  example. But he never married then it's okay to not be married. The same thing goes for Paul, some people are aren't clear. There's some speculation that maybe Paul was a widower that  he had been married, but then was was single after his wife passed away. Or maybe even that when he converted to Christianity, his wife left him. It's not clear we don't have details from  from scripture. But we do know that in his writings, it's clear that Paul is single, he's not  married at that time. And so again, you have this this very positive, almost positive in a kind  of countercultural way that scripture looks at singleness through the lens of Jesus, through the lens of Paul. Now, in this in this discussion of celibacy, if we go back to I Corinthians 7, Paul is  clear that he actually says I in this language of gift the gift he says, of celibacy, and of  marriage. And so I Corinthians 7:7, beginning says, Each of you has your own gift, one has  this gift, another has that this language can get misunderstood. I think a lot of times. A lot of  times how people think about this is the gift of celibacy means I just have kind of the natural  ability of the predisposition to not desire marriage and not want to be married. And so people  kind of think, like, oh, do I have the gift of celibacy? I don't know. You know, like, maybe I'm an I'm an introvert, I don't like people that much, I can kind of get by on my own. So therefore, I  do have the gift of celibacy. I think we pay attention to this text, what you see is Paul's not  talking about the gift of celibacy in the sense of just kind of natural ability. But in fact, he says here, there are two gifts. And these are not, I think, to the best of my understanding, they 

should not just be seen as natural predisposition. But rather, God will give you the grace.  Whatever state you are in, if you are married, God will give you the grace to sustain that  marriage. If you are celibate, if you are not married, God will give you grace, to live out that  state that that place in life, and that these are two ways that God's grace overflows into our  lives and enables us to point to him whether that's through the mode of marriage, or whether  that's through the mode of singleness, because when you start to pay attention, again, as we  looked at marriage Christlike self giving self sacrificial marriage is not something that comes  naturally to any of us sinners. It is something that requires the grace of God. And so people  were looking to say, well, do I think I could do this on my own? Do I have the gift of what,  that's not the point? The point is that both of these states marriage or celibacy, both require  God's grace to sustain. And so we so what I want us to what I'm trying to avoid here is this  idea that that just says, well, the gift of celibacy just means my natural ability or my  propensity, my inclination, I think I can make it as a single person. Whether it's marriage or  celibacy, the life God calls us to is going to be difficult, it's also going to be rewarding because it's sustained by His grace by his gifting that's poured out on us. It's important to know, I  think, as well what Jesus says about celibacy. In Matthew 19. Jesus here is talking in the  context of marriage. But I want to flip over there so you can see what he says because he  referenced, he references those who are single, those who are celibate, but he does it in kind  of a unique way. In Matthew 19, Jesus has been explaining marriage. And Jesus actually is  there's this question about divorce, you know, can you get a divorce for any reason? And, and he essentially says, "you can only get a divorce, except in the case of sexual immorality." Like  this is really serious. It's you can't just get a divorce for any and every reason. And so  sometimes, like, wow, that's that's a, that's a really hard, saying. That's difficult. Is that is that true? Like if that's true, then it's better to stay single than to get married, which of which I  think is fascinating. That when Jesus explains what real Christ centered marriage is supposed  to look like. You're like, well, I'm staying single. And so that's So again, he's calling people to  come and die. He's not saying marriage is not just like, oh, yeah, I can I think I can get along  with somebody. Like that's a hard word. But in response to that them saying, Well, it'd be  better not to marry then. Jesus says, "not everyone can accept this word but only to those to  whom it has been given for there are eunuchs who are born that way, and there are eunuchs  who've been made eunuchs by others. And there are those who choose to live like eunuchs  for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, the one who can accept this should accept it." What  are you saying here? And that's important to understand what is a eunuch? A eunuch is  essentially, in this context, a eunuch is a man who has been castrated as a man who can't  really function sexually in the way that a normal man can. And so Jesus is saying here, that  there are some people who are eunuchs and had been made that that way by others, in other words, that, that they've been treated this way. by others, they've been castrated for you to  see us in different slave classes and others in the ancient world. So he says, some people are  single, some people are celibate, through no no choice of their own, to circumstances that  they can't control. But he says there are others who are who voluntarily enter into this life of  singleness this life of celibacy, those who are eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom, that's  what he means when he says they choose to live like eunuchs, he doesn't mean that they  essentially physically castrate themselves. But he means that these are these are those who  live a life of celibacy for the sake of the kingdom that they voluntarily forego marriage, for the sake of seeking first the Kingdom. I think that's important for us to think about, even in our  context today, where we're not really talking about people who are physically unable to have  sex in the way that eunuchs would. But it is important to recognize that within the church,  there are those many who do voluntarily say, Yeah, and I really feel called to singleness to  celibacy. I'm not really seeking out marriage. And then there are other folks who are single.  But who would really like to be married, I guess it's not their choice on their own, that they're  single. But, man, if God brought the right person along, I would definitely love to get married.  And Jesus doesn't necessarily say here. He doesn't say that one of these is better than the  other, that both of these are different, different modes of celibacy, different modes of  singleness. And so even within our churches, I think we have to be careful not to say that one  kind of celibacy is better than the other somebody who just voluntarily says, Yeah, I'm going 

to stay single, I'm going to say celibate is better than somebody who maybe would rather get  married, but they're still they're still embracing the gift of the grace, that God pours out on  them to enable this life of celibacy. And to enable this, this life of singleness. The last thing I  want you to see about the biblical view of celibacy here is that Paul's commands in I  Corinthians 7 assume, a community of support. And so if you flip back to I Corinthians 7:8, he  says, "To the unmarried into the widows, I say, it's good for them to stay unmarried, as I do."  Now, part of what this is this, we have to put ourselves in their context. For people in that  day, especially for women, in a lot of ways, their economic well being their life and well being  is sustained by being connected to a household with a husband. And so if you were a widow in that context, there were no social security checks coming to you as as, as in the States,  where it's like, okay, we're going to make sure that people in this specific situation are taken  care of, by the government, they're receiving some help there, your family is your Social  Security Network. And so think about for Paul to say, stay unmarried. He is assuming that the  church is functioning like a family that the church is this social security network. I read again,  I read from Mark 10, earlier, Matthew 12, is where Jesus is people say to Jesus, you know, your mother and your brothers are here. And he says, Well, who's my mother and brother is the  person who does the will of my Father. And so again, what you see is that what's happening  here is that the church is functioning as this family of God that they're supporting one another to caring for one another. And that is precisely because they are functioning like a family. The  Paul can say, hey, it's better. If it's at all possible. It's better for you to stay unmarried. Just  like I do. and be part of this broader family know that they're going to care for you do what  you can to care for them as well. And so you can see why in our if in your church in my  church, if to be single means really, that you're kind of on your own, if it means that you're  left to fend for yourself financially, emotionally, spiritually, you can see why people would say, well, I need to get married. But if our churches are actually begin to function, like the family of God, where we are supporting each other financially, emotionally, spiritually, I think more and more people are gonna say, Well, yes, you know, if God brings the right person along, that's  fine. But But otherwise, I'm perfectly content being single. Because I'm part of this family. I'm  part of this family. So in the next video, we're going to take a little bit more about that, what  does it look like to be the family of God? How can we live that out in our local churches in our  local communities, in a way that that points to the story of Jesus that helps us see again,  God's self giving love for us. So until next time, blessings