The sexualisation of society is not new. But the untethering of sex from all relational foundations has posed new problems. No longer is sex between a man and a woman, or even between a boyfriend and girlfriend, and nor is it even with another person you’ve met through an app; sex in our culture can now be with whomever you want, in whatever way you want—even with non-human devices.
Obviously these practices are ruled out for those of us who are Christians. But we’re still immersed in that same cultural space. Our ideas of sex and sexuality can be easily and subtly shaped and changed by the world around us.
So how do we engage these topics in this new cultural landscape? How do we cling to what God in his word says is good for sex and sexuality? How do we respond to those who say that it is time to let go of our beliefs in the name of progress?
At our 2024 May event, Philip Kern, Head of New Testament at Moore College, brought us back to what the Bible says about relationships, about our bodies and about sexuality. In this episode, we bring you the audio from that event, minus the Q&A segment, which you can find on our website: ccl.moore.edu.au. We hope you find Philip’s talk helpful.
Links referred to:
- Watch: Casual sex or sacred sexuality? Our bodies and relationships under God (Philip Kern)
- resistporn.org
- Our August event: Affluent and Christian? Material goods, the King and the kingdomwith Michael Jensen (21 August 2024)
- Our October event: Who am I? The search for identitywith Rory Shiner (23 October 2024)
- Support the work of the Centre
Runtime: 48:44 min.
Transcript
Please note: This transcript has been edited for readability.
Introduction
Peter Orr: The sexualisation of society is not new. But the untethering of sex from all relational foundations has posed new problems. No longer is sex between a man and a woman, or even between a boyfriend and girlfriend, and nor is it even with another person you’ve met through an app; sex in our culture can now be with whomever you want, in whatever way you want—even with non-human devices.
Obviously these practices are ruled out for those of us who are Christians. But we’re still immersed in that same cultural space. Our ideas of sex and sexuality can be easily and subtly shaped and changed by the world around us.
So how do we engage these topics in this new cultural landscape? How do we cling to what God in his word says is good for sex and sexuality? How do we respond to those who say that it is time to let go of our beliefs in the name of progress?
At our 2024 May event, Philip Kern, Head of New Testament at Moore College, brought us back to what the Bible says about relationships, about our bodies and about sexuality. In this episode, we bring you the audio from that event, minus the Q&A segment, which you can find on our website: ccl.moore.edu.au. We hope you find Philip’s talk helpful.
[Music]
PO: Welcome, everyone! My name is Peter Orr and I would like to welcome you to our second Centre for Christian Living live event of 2024. The Centre for Christian Living is a centre of Moore College that exists to bring biblical ethics to everyday issues.
This year, we’ve dedicated our year of four live events to exploring the idea of “Culture creep”. What do we mean by “Culture creep”? In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans in Romans 12:2, he tells his readers “not to be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind”. This year, we’re looking at different temptations we might face to be conformed to this world.
I should read the entire passage, not just the little phrase that I did:
I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom 12:1-2)
This year, we’re exploring the areas where we might feel the pressure to conform to the pattern of this world. Our first talk earlier in the year was on artificial intelligence. This evening, we are talking on the very important topic of sex and sexuality.
Before I introduce our speaker, let me lead us in prayer and commit our evening to the Lord.
Our Father,
We thank you for this opportunity to gather together and consider this very important topic, and to think about how, in this area, as in other areas, we can live faithfully to you and not conform to the pattern of this world.
We do pray for a good time as we explore your word, and we pray for Philip as he explains it to us and helps us to think through the implications.
We pray that you would be glorified and we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Our speaker Philip Kern is the Head of New Testament here at Moore College. He has been on the faculty since 1998. He’s married to Amy. Philip and Amy have four adult children, and Philip is currently working on a book examining what the New Testament says on the topic of sex, so he’s well-suited to speak to our topic tonight.
Before we hear from Philip, please permit me to provide a few details for our time together. I should say it’s wonderful to have you in the room, but we know that there are many watching online, and it’s great to have you with us in that sense. You’re very welcome.
Please join me in welcoming our speaker, Philip Kern.
[Applause]
Part 1: Casual sex or sacred sexuality? Our bodies and relationships under God
Philip Kern: Thanks, Peter. Thanks for being here this evening.
Introduction
To borrow an overworked expression, it’s a sexual revolution. Religion doesn’t determine ethics in general or sex in particular. People attach little shame to sex outside of marriage. I’m sure there are lines drawn so that certain potential sex partners are out of bounds—lines that might relate to prestige, marital status and sometimes age (though the question of age has never really been settled). But those lines aren’t thought to have a universally binding logic; they’re just a cultural expression. Few people really think that all cultures are created equal, or even, for that matter, that all people are created equal.
So it was in the Roman world: sex is widely available, and for some, it is simply a way to earn a living. For some, it is an expression of power; for others, it is the outworking of an unhealthy self-image; and for some, it is even tied up with religion itself as ancient pagan values assert themselves.
Onto this stage of sexual chaos strides the Apostle Paul. He is a revolutionary. He’s completely out of step with his world as he proclaims a Messiah crushed by his own nation and by the power of Rome. He’s revolutionary in that he calls first for a response of faith in the crucified one, but then goes on to do something religion in the first century doesn’t do: he attaches ethics and morality to belief in the divine. This would be largely unrecognisable in the Roman world, except for those who engaged with Jews, people who got their morals from the Bible and who, virtually alone of all people, held to what we might term “ethical monotheism”. In a world where religion and ethics are barely connected, biblical religion stands apart.
But Paul launched what historians can refer to as “the first sexual revolution”. As with most revolutions, these ideas don’t take hold immediately; Rome wasn’t rebuilt in a day. But within a few centuries, Christianity came to dominate the empire, and from the first days, one of the clearest expressions of Christianity’s distinct standard of behaviour was in the realm of sex. Paul the radical spoke against the sexual practices of Rome, and even against the practices of Jews—including highly observant Jews. It was indeed a revolution—one that reduced sex (if “reduced” is the right expression) to something that occurs only between husband and wife, and only with mutual consent (now that’s radical!), and only within a marriage that contains one man and one woman. In this, he was out of step with virtually everyone known to us—with the exception of Jesus himself, who, like Paul, pointed to the foundational texts of the Old Testament to discuss sexual life.
Needless to say, we’re living in another sexual revolution. The second one, like the first, took about three centuries to become widespread. We can look back to Rousseau, to the Romantics, to people like the Marquis de Sade—that is, to people who elevated the notion that reality was inside the self, and that one therefore should follow one’s true nature—what we might term “the heart”. In this, they were intentionally and knowingly undermining the teaching of the Bible.
But things done by upper class intellectuals can take a long time to filter down to the masses. For that to happen, at least in this case, what was needed was technology. Sex has a price. The price was often higher than people were willing to pay. But technology that became legal and widespread in the 1960s appeared to lower the price. Ever since, we’ve seen sex for sale—and it’s going cheap. At least, our world thinks it is.
1. Separating the body from the person
The first thing I’d like to talk about is separating the body from the person. Imagine a world where we could separate who we are as a person from our bodies. In such a scenario, our physical selves are little more than props to serve various facets of the life of the person.
Such a view, which until relatively recently would have meant nothing to anybody outside a work of science fiction, has become widely shared in contemporary culture. Here’s a quote:
No matter how advanced technology gets, it might be impossible for our bodies to go on forever. Some researchers believe there’s a limit on how long it’s physically possible to live: perhaps 125 years. But what if we don’t need our bodies at all?
Some people, including famed futurist Ray Kurzweil, believe that by 2045, we might become immortal by uploading our brains into computers. Then we could leave our bodies behind and live forever as machines.1
That’s from National Geographic Kids.
Once we separate the self from the body, the unimaginable becomes possible. For example, someone with male chromosomes and genitalia can say, “My innermost being tells me I’m a woman”, and the hearer may very well grant two assumptions: the first is that a man can know what it feels like to be a woman, and the second, that those feelings contain as much truth as a person’s biology.
Sex—for the enlightened—becomes little more than deriving pleasure from particular parts of that increasingly marginalised body—the mere gratification of the flesh. With no implications, there’s no meaning.
2. Joining the body to the person (Romans 12:1-2)
This view of the body that I’ve just alluded to has nothing in common with biblical teaching. Western culture was never entirely aligned with biblical values, but the gap grows ever wider, at least concerning the body and sex.
In an entirely countercultural move, Christians maintain that the body matters, that therefore sexual sin matters, and that the one who engages in inappropriate sex (that is, any sex outside marriage—and even some sex within marriage) will have to give an account to God on the day of judgement.
But do such claims really derive from Scripture, or are they merely the faded baggage of a forgotten age? I said that “Christians maintain that the body matters”, but clearly not all Christians agree on sex. Our library is full of books arguing either that the Bible doesn’t really mean what you think it means, or that the Bible’s authors lacked the information we possess, and so their views shouldn’t be clumsily imposed on the 21st century. So we can’t speak of the shared view of modern Christians, or even of a consensus among Bible-believing Christians. For many people, saying that the Bible gets things wrong doesn’t stop them from claiming to be as strongly committed to the Bible as anybody else.
Let’s consider some readings of Romans 12:1-2 that I’ve encountered recently—in fact, over the last 48 hours. To keep it brief, here is an impressionistic montage I’ve cobbled together of bloggers and preachers I’ve encountered concerning these verses, with references to the body, conformity and transformation (thinking of Romans 12:1-2 in particular):
“Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice” (Rom 12:1):
“Nobody knows better than the LGB community what it means to give our bodies over to abuse and even death because of who we love. We sacrifice our place in our families, in the workplace, and in society simply to live in accordance with our nature.”
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world” (Rom 12:2):
“That’s exactly what ‘queer’ means! We are, almost by definition, those who don’t conform—who sit outside the demands and structures of your world. We don’t dance to your tune. And we pay for it every day.”2
“But be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom 12:2):
“Transformed! We put the ‘trans’ in transformed. We’re the ones who are open to the realities of the human condition, and to God’s renewing work. If only so-called Christians were less hateful and were renewed in their minds, they would see a wideness in God’s mercy that transcends their prejudices—just like when Peter overcame his preconceptions to welcome Gentiles into the people of God.”
After I’d reflected on the obvious pain that’s coursing through these statements, I was left with two questions. Firstly, is this what Paul meant when he wrote Romans 12:1-2? Secondly, what interpretive system should we ourselves lean on? That is, what authority does the Bible have, and how do we appropriate it for life and doctrine, and so on? This second question is a big one, but for now, we’ll focus on the first: what Paul means in these verses.
The second question is important, and I’m not trying to sidestep it or its implications. For time’s sake, I’ll simply make the following observations. As an evangelical of a particular type, I believe that Jesus was right when he spoke, and that Paul was inspired of God to write what he did. So I will never agree that Jesus would have said something different if only he shared our deeper insights into human psychology—or for that matter, that Paul wasn’t aware of certain types of relationships, so can’t be regarded as an ethical guide in areas where he simply lacked knowledge. My commitment—our commitment as a college—is to the Scriptures as divinely inspired and timeless truth.
So returning to Romans 12:2, what exactly did Paul mean by transformation? Was he saying—not to his original hearers, but to us, as God does new and wonderful works—that we need to change to see the expansion of grace that draws the LGBTQ+ community into our fellowship?
Furthermore, what does this have to do with the body and sex? We’ll get to the sex part in a moment, but to make sense of Romans 12:1-2’s discussion of bodies as living sacrifices, worship and transformation, we should sort out a few details.
The big picture of Romans 1-11
Let’s start with the big picture: Romans 1-11 presented the gospel in all its glory, and without overlooking its challenges. Then Romans 12, in a sense, folds the book back in on itself and revisits the presenting issue of chapter 1—only now, chapter 1’s portrait of sin, death and judgement becomes, in chapter 12, a great success story thanks to the gospel’s extraordinary power.
So the first question we might ask is, “What does Romans 1 say about the body?” There, Paul speaks of God’s wrath poured out on sin (v. 18). People denied the truth about God and worshipped idols (v. 18, 22-23). Their minds were—this is my translation—“given over to worthlessness”—and their “foolish hearts were darkened” (v. 21).
So bad worship yielded to dulled minds and senseless hearts. Furthermore (and here’s where it intersects with our topic), bad worship led to God giving them over to bad sex: “God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies” (Rom 1:24). They didn’t glorify God, and so God punished them by giving them what their hearts wanted. In other words, because of corrupt minds and consequent worship, they were consigned to sexual sin which, according to verse 27, resulted in the penalties that accompany such a lifestyle. Bad worship leads to bad hearts and minds, and where the mind goes (as I think we instinctively recognise), the body follows.
Verse 28 again points to failure to worship correctly, which resulted in a corrupted mind, which led to a cavalcade of sin now going far beyond the sexual: “Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.” This culminates in verse 32 with the reality that people continue to both do these things and approve of others who engage in them. That is, it becomes a community-building exercise centred on sin.
Romans 12
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. (Rom 12:1)
As we return to Romans 12, let’s note Paul’s interest in bad worship, the damaged mind and heart, sexual misconduct linked to the use of the body, and approval of what is destructive. All of these will reappear in chapter 12. With those four things in mind and 11 chapters of gospel resolution ringing in his readers’ ears, Paul now starts with a “therefore” and speaks of “God’s mercy”. If it all began with bad worship, Paul now comes full circle to say that within God’s extravagant kindness, our bodies are fit for sacrifice. But unlike a dead lamb or bull burned on an altar, our bodies can be living sacrifices. The body that was given over to sin and destruction has been cleansed and reappropriated so that we can now present it to God as a sacrifice.
In fact, says Paul, this is our “reasonable act of worship” (Rom 12:1). Where Romans 1 spoke of a depraved worship that attached to a depraved mind, the gospel-informed life of worship is “reasonable”. It is “logical”. It makes sense.
Not only is this new worship “reasonable”, it is holy and pleasing to the living God. It’s extraordinary! Our worship can please God. But note that this isn’t about activities in the church; it’s about what we do in and with our bodies. The body—the place that was the instrument of both condemnation and judgement in chapter 1—has become pleasing to God, the vehicle of worship. Amazing!
Paul in Romans 1 marginalised the human heart, which was full of depravity. But what of the mind? The fact of “reasonable” worship indicates something positive, and Romans 12:2 continues this hopeful line of thought. Humans in their natural state and apart from the Spirit of God live lives in line with the world around them. The Christian, though, is called to stop being squeezed into the world’s mould. What’s the alternative to conformity? Transformation—a transformation that comes about through the renewed mind. And with this new mind, the Christian can approve—there’s that word again—God’s will, his good, pleasing and perfect will. So in two verses, we find that our bodies can be transformed into pleasing sacrifices, and that this is in line with God’s pleasing will. Where chapter 1 spoke of God in his wrath giving people over to judgement, here we read twice-over that we can align with that which pleases God.
The starting point of Romans 12:1 is the bodies that we offer as sacrifices. This is a 180-degree turn from the sexual misuse of the body explicitly detailed in Romans 1. Bad worship led to bad sex; now the body can engage in good worship, and clearly enough, it moves beyond the dirt and shame that attaches to things we’ve done in the body. Some in Rome would have known a profound shame because of sins of the body, yet Paul can speak of those same bodies being holy and pleasing to God. What amazing words of grace!
So Paul’s talk of transformation doesn’t mean absorbing a community defined, at least in part, by its sexual choices. This transformation speaks to precisely the opposite: it speaks of worship, the mind, and the body that is washed of the sexual sin of Romans 1 (which was explicitly sex with people of the same gender) and brought into such a state that it now pleases God. In addition, rather than approving of those who practise such sins, the renewed mind approves of what is genuinely good.
The church is called to minister to sinners, but never by endorsing sin. Romans 1 says too much about the body and the penalty of sexual sin to misread either that chapter or what Paul says here in Romans 12.
But Paul has more to say about the body and sex. He even speaks about what sex does to the person. So we turn to 1 Corinthians to listen in on that conversation.
3. Joining one person to another (1 Corinthians 6:13-20)
1 Corinthians overlaps with the teaching of Romans, but the tone is now somewhat different. Where in Romans, Paul speaks about people who are involved in inappropriate sexual activities, in 1 Corinthians, he speaks directly to people who engage in such things.
The Corinthians think the stomach and food provide a good metaphor for sex (1 Cor 6:13). Everyone has appetites we need to satisfy. But food enters in and passes out, and we don’t attach significance to it. In fact, it has no eternal value. The Corinthians add, “God will [one day] destroy” the stomach and the food. In other words, the body is about as important as a hamburger in the bigger scheme of things. So why worry about all this? What matters is being joined with the Lord in a spiritual unity.
Do you agree with the Corinthians? Don’t we all think our primary need is to be one with God in spirit? That seems correct, and maybe even obvious. But the conversation between Paul and the Corinthians isn’t really about food; it is about sex. And some Corinthians don’t see how sex is a big deal if the body will one day be destroyed.
So we might ask: does sex do anything? If we set aside questions about things like pregnancy and STDs,3 what could sex actually accomplish? Isn’t that a bit like asking if eating a hamburger does something, or even if using the toilet has mysterious powers? The body engages in a range of functions. We don’t attend to most of them; they just happen. We don’t find meaning in them.
Paul rejects this line of reasoning when it comes to the body and sex. In fact, he again turns 180 degrees and takes five steps in the opposite direction, asserting that the Christian is owned by God, the Christian is made for eternity, the Christian is united with Christ, the Christian is not made for illicit unions, and the Christian is God’s temple.
a) The Christian is owned by God
You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own … (1 Cor 6:13, 19)
Step 1: Paul asserts that the Corinthians are ignoring a fundamental aspect of Christianity—namely that the body has been bought by the blood of Christ, with the result that “you are not your own” (1 Cor 6:19).
Have you considered what this means for your own life? It’s a radical claim that you aren’t your own—which suggests that your heart and your desires are not and cannot be central to living life before God. It has implications for the body, which is “not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord and the Lord for the body” (1 Cor 6:13).
Are we followers of Jesus, or do we, as the world says it, “follow our hearts”? Do we belong to him, or are we opposed to him and his instructions? Nowhere in his writings does Paul leave a middle ground, one that permits us to say, “I call him Lord, and I belong to him, but I don’t live as his servant.” When Paul applies this servant language to himself, he isn’t referring to a butler or a chambermaid; he uses the language of slavery. It’s the idiom of being owned by another person who has control, who gives instructions and who commands your every move.
b) The Christian is made for eternity
By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. (1 Cor 6:14)
Step 2: Paul asserts that along with belonging to the Lord, Christians belong to eternity. In this, humans, in some ways at least, correspond to God’s own eternal nature. We are not gods in that we are not inherently alive by our own power. Nevertheless, your body, thanks to ongoing divine activity, is fashioned for eternity: “By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also” (1 Cor 6:14). Jesus’ empty tomb teaches, among other things, that the body is raised—that is, resurrection itself is a bodily reality. So we can’t say that the body doesn’t matter because it merely forms the disposable shell of our humanity. The Bible teaches that it is the locus of our eternal existence.
In addition, just as Christ was raised, so we will be raised precisely because we are joined with him—united with Christ—in a way that means we participate in his resurrection. The biblical view isn’t that he has his resurrection and then another one happens in the future at some point. It is that the resurrection itself is an end-times event, and Jesus’ resurrection ushers in these last days. Our participation in the resurrection may be deferred, but it is welded as one onto his “end of days” resurrection from the dead.
This leads into the third step of Paul’s argument.
c) The Christian is united with Christ
Do 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! (1 Cor 6:15)
Step 3: Paul asserts that we belong to the Lord and participate in his victory over death because we are united with Christ. Building on what the Corinthians should already know, Paul reminds them that their bodies are members of Christ. We could rightly say that this is a spiritual union. But we would be wrong to say that our spiritual union with Christ sidesteps the body in an aim for some higher, non-physical plane. Because for Paul the body is part of who we are as a whole person, and because the body has end-times significance, he insists here that the body, the Christian’s body, is a member of Christ. His “Do you not know?” is his way of saying that, at some level, they do know it, but that they haven’t properly absorbed the implications of this amazing truth.
What does it mean that our physical bodies are “members of Christ himself”? First, we should note that being “members” here isn’t like being members of a club or even of a church. The term relates to the body, and points to parts, limbs or organs. So Paul is saying that Christ is the head, and the Christian makes up the body of Christ by supplying the parts, the limbs, the organs.4
Now, I’m going to take a step back and say something without really saying it. The Greek word here for “part” is melos, from which we get words like “melody”. Melos relates to music, and so in English does the word “organ”. But that’s not the kind of organ Paul is talking about. This is the first part of 1 Corinthians 6:15, the bit the Corinthians already know. But then Paul adds, with a horrible graphic image, “Will you take the organ of Christ and unite it with a prostitute?” (1 Cor 6:15). He answers his own question with what the NIV renders, “Never!” Exclamation point. That’s absurd.
But wait a second: I don’t have any personal insights to offer at this point, but isn’t sex with a prostitute as meaningless as sex can ever be? I’ve seen TV dramas where men defend themselves by saying, “It didn’t mean anything. She was just a prostitute” or, “It was purely physical.” Presumably, the point is that sex without emotional engagement, free of love, is simply sex—casual sex—the subject of this talk.
But you, in your bodies, are “the members of Christ”. Therefore, what you do with your body matters. “But Paul, it’s the most casual of all sex! How can it mean anything?” Yet Paul has still more to say: he teaches that joining together with a prostitute has two sides to it. It generates one union and it severs another. The result is an “unjoining” of members from Christ.
Note in verse 15 the word “take”. Let me illustrate two common English meanings of the word “take”. A parent at a road crossing might say, “Take my hand” and an overly literal child might reply, “But then I’ll have three and you’ll only have one!” Paul doesn’t mean the first of those when he says “take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute” (1 Cor 6:15). He uses “take” to express “unjoining”. I can take a coin from my right pocket and put it in my left pocket. If I do that, then it is no longer in my right pocket. That’s what Paul’s word “take” means here. The threat in verse 15 is that members who join with a prostitute are “taken”, disunited and unjoined from Christ.
When I say “unjoined”, I’m using an archaic word. In modern English, we could say that joining with a prostitute means being “dismembered” from Christ. That’s confronting! It sounds like you’re not a Christian. While God offers inexhaustible grace and forgiveness, Paul lists in this same chapter in verses 9-10 ten types of people who won’t inherit the kingdom of God, and 40 percent of his list relates to sex.5 For the New Testament, sex emerges as a leading concern.
Many sneer at the Christian’s supposed preoccupation with sex—especially the sex other people are having. We could respond that this focus on sex simply mirrors the New Testament. As evidence, consider the place of porneia in Paul’s writings.6 He talks about it in nearly all of his writings, even when it has nothing to do with the argument. In Galatians, which some consider Paul’s earliest extant letter, he argues that Gentile Christians shouldn’t submit to Jewish legislative requirements. This has nothing to do with sex. But when he lists what he calls the “deeds of the flesh”, the first thing he mentions is porneia (Gal 5:19).
Most of you are saying, “Hold on: that’s not the first letter Paul wrote. It’s actually 1 Thessalonians.” You could be right. There, Paul deals with a number of issues and says virtually nothing about sex—except in 1 Thessalonians 4, where he spells out God’s will for your life, namely
that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid porneia; that each of you should learn to control your body in a way that is holy and honourable, not in passionate lust like the pagans who do not know God. (1 Thess 4:3-5)
Once again, his starting point in terms of ethical engagement is bad sex. Then in 1 Thessalonians 4:8, Paul says, “Anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God.” He couldn’t be clearer: illicit sex equates with rejecting God. He doesn’t need to spell out the dilemma and destiny of those who reject God.
d) The Christian and illicit unions
Do 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.” (1 Cor 6:16)
Step 4: again with his introductory question, Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 6:16, “Do you not know …?” This time, he advances from union with Christ to the fact that sex does something they’ve overlooked.
No doubt some in the Corinthian congregation would have thought Paul was going too far. How can mere sex transfer us from being members of Christ to being members of a prostitute? But sex, according to the Bible, joins people together. It unites a man and a woman. In this case, it joins the man with a prostitute: he becomes “one with her in body” (1 Cor 6:16). The person who claimed to be one with Christ is actually one in body with a prostitute. “Here he goes again,” the Corinthians perhaps thought, “making a big deal of the body.”
But Paul won’t back down. He leans into creation language as it applied to the first marriage: “For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh’” (1 Cor 6:16). That’s a bold move: “one flesh” throughout the Old Testament refers to family. The couple who marry form a new one. So says Genesis 2:24, which spoke of two people becoming one flesh. Even death doesn’t sever the connection: if my wife died tomorrow, my brothers-in-law would still be my brothers-in-law. So Genesis teaches more than that sex generates a “one flesh” reality. But we shouldn’t think that it conveys less than that. If we are to believe Paul, Genesis 2:24 teaches that sex, even casual sex, generates this “one flesh” reality.
Though I don’t say this with great confidence, I doubt that Paul thinks sex with a prostitute means you’re married to her—that you are now a family. But he is saying that sex from the beginning of creation itself was always associated with oneness—with a physical union that goes beyond the physical, and even beyond the two people involved. To reduce this to the smallest possible meaning within Paul’s argument, he is saying that sex does something, even if you think it doesn’t. Furthermore, at least part of what inappropriate sex does is create a union that undercuts your union with Christ.
Let me add a sidebar at this point: the words Paul and Jesus cite (“The two will become one flesh”) connect “leaving and cleaving”. Premarital sex, even among committed, possibly engaged couples fully devoted to one another, doesn’t involve these interconnected elements. “Leaving”, which includes the transfer of loyalties from one home and family to a new one, is a defining reality of marriage, but is missing from premarital sex—meaning that premarital sex falls outside of what is biblically permissible.
Note too that Paul doesn’t say anything here about sex being wrong because it involves adultery—that is, it’s wrong because at least one of the participants belongs to someone else. Every one of his points relates to sex as sex, and therefore applies more broadly. Once we exhaust the applicability of these teachings, we will realise that the only place left where sex is virtuous and filled with blessing is within marriage. All other sex damages, destroys and excludes.
Returning to our main line, Paul cites words that refer to the original marriage in order to highlight the exclusivity of monogamous, heterosexual relations as ordained by the creator God himself. They therefore also speak of marriage as the only appropriate place for sex.7 Now Paul says sex with a prostitute generates a corresponding “one flesh” reality (1 Cor 6:16).
The word Paul uses twice here to express “unite” in verses 16 and again in 17 is used in the Greek Old Testament in two ways. It is used to speak of “holding fast” to the Lord (Deut 10:20; 2 Kgs 18:6) and is also used of sex. That is, it communicates “spiritual unions” and “sexual unions”.8 In 1 Corinthians 6:16-17, Paul depends on both meanings, the first referring to sex and the second to being one with the Lord.
Those who think that the body doesn’t matter—that they can have sex without implications—are, in 1 Corinthians 6:16, said to be one body with a prostitute. And those who recognise the Lord’s claims and live out that reality are, according to 1 Corinthians 6:17, one with the Lord in Spirit. The Corinthians, like many today, might think that life in the Spirit is sufficient and the body, therefore, doesn’t matter. Paul refuses to separate the two: misdeeds in the body sever them from Christ, the life-giving Spirit. But those who obey in the body are joined with the Lord’s Spirit.
In 1 Corinthians 6:11, after having listed sins that exclude from the kingdom, Paul mentions Jesus and then the Spirit as the source of cleansing and justification: “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” Now he ends another section with a reference to the Spirit. Those who think the body doesn’t matter and that the spiritual side of the person is all-important are being told that bodily sin separates from the body of Christ, and that only through unity with Christ is one “one with him in spirit” (1 Cor 6:17)—that is, united to God in both body and spirit. The Corinthians have presumed upon a spiritual reality that is denied to those who overlook the realities of the body.
e) The Christian is God’s temple
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. (1 Cor 6:18-20)
Step 5 (the final step): Sexual sin is doubly dangerous in that it sins against the body. The body is not a disposable element of our humanity and therefore of no consequence to God. Indeed, the Spirit that Paul has been discussing dwells in us in our bodies as a temple.
Notice that 1 Corinthians 6:19 speaks of your body as a temple because the Holy Spirit dwells there. Then Paul says that the Spirit is “in you”. So the Spirit is in your body and is “in you”. That is, he uses “you” and “body” interchangeably. The body is not entirely the sum of who we are, but at least at this point in the argument, Paul implies that with respect to sex, they come awfully close to being one and the same.
His next line, found at the end of verse 19, is “You are not your own”, and for the moment, it is clear at least that the “you” in view is centred on your body. Maybe it’s not only the body, but certainly including your body. What you do with your body matters, because it forms both the members of Christ and the temple of God himself. And (and this could be written in all upper case) you aren’t your own precisely because you’ve been bought by the blood of Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 6:11, you were washed by Jesus and the Spirit. Here, you are bought at a price and indwelt by the Spirit of God.
What is a temple for? That’s where God lives. What are people meant to do at the temple? Glorify God. So says Paul at the end of verse 20: “Therefore glorify God with your body”. “But Paul, you don’t know my body!” I hear you say. “You don’t know the dishonourable things I’ve done in the body. You don’t know how unfit my body is for God’s dwelling place!” “Maybe not. But,” says Paul, “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11). It’s like Romans 12 again, where Paul can speak of presenting that cleaned up body to God as a living sacrifice, now holy and pleasing to God himself. Just as Romans moved in the direction of worship, so too does 1 Corinthians 6.
But where Paul’s words in Romans 12 were an exhortation to live out the gospel, he seeks here to warn those who presume upon God’s grace, while simultaneously unburdening those who repent. Which of those are you?
Paul is consistent from Romans to 1 Corinthians in saying that worship, God’s glory and your bodies are all caught up in the renewing work of our Lord and saviour, the one who gave his life so that we could be freed from the penalty and power of these sins. With such a view of the Christian’s body, how can sex be casual?
4. Sex (?) without a person
We’ve talked about the joining together of the body; let’s talk for a moment about sex without a person. In much less time, I want to ask, “If sex with a prostitute doesn’t qualify as ‘casual sex’, what about pornography?” You might say that porn isn’t even sex. The same applies to the brave new world of robots.
Of course, the Bible says nothing about such things—probably because even pornography barely existed in an accessible format in Israel or in the circles within which Paul moved on his missionary travels. So how can we make moral pronouncements if the Bible is silent? Furthermore, the argument that such things form a “one flesh union” seems a stretch when one of the participants isn’t really a participant and doesn’t even have flesh, but is simply a cluster of pixels on a screen or an inorganic device. Does any of what we’ve said to this point apply here?
a) Our basis for ethics?
I think we should consider for a moment our basis for ethics. Much of modern Western ethics reduces to “It isn’t hurting anyone”. But more and more, we’re learning about the damage to the person—usually a woman—who provides this so-called entertainment. At the same time, an overwhelming amount of evidence shows that males who view pornography experience damage in relationships,9 and are in many cases unable to participate in normal sexual activities.10
But the pragmatic arguments are secondary to the biblical ones.
b) Jesus and desire
Jesus in Matthew 5:28 condemned looking lustfully at a woman: “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”. That sounds out of date and ridiculous to our culture—and maybe to you. Again, it doesn’t hurt anybody. But note first that Jesus’ instructions aligned with our own shared cultural inheritance until fairly recently, so if you’re concerned with “culture creep”, then it needs to be considered. The pornography that had been the preserve of the few has now gone mainstream.
Secondly, Jesus’ teaching is entirely consistent with what Jesus, Paul and other New Testament writers say about desire, the heart, the mind and sin. The Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things” (Jer 17:9). It views desire as a snare that, from the first, brought sin into the world, and continues to undermine humanity. On the other hand, our world says, “follow your heart”, and much of the scholarly community agrees. One commentary (with words aimed at 2 Peter but which could just as easily be speaking to what Jesus says here) insists that it’s good to attend to such a text not for what we can learn from it, but because “this letter needs to be known so that its reliance on negative views of sexuality (here called lust or desire) may be understood and countered”.11 That is, if we bother with 2 Peter at all, it is to undermine its ethical imperative concerning sexual desire. A senior scholar writes of another passage, “I hope that churches today, being apprised of the history that I have presented, will no longer teach Rom 1:26f as authoritative.”12
The defining element of porn consumption is lust. To dismiss what Jesus, Peter and Paul say about it puts us in line with contemporary sexual attitudes. But at what point can we no longer claim to be the church of Christ if we discard the teaching of the Lord and his apostles? Maybe the real point of tension in this sexual revolution is the goodness or badness of the human heart—that is, the goodness and badness of our desires. How can something be bad if it arises from your heart and represents who you are deep down inside? Jesus says, when addressing the way a man might look at a woman, that it’s better to gouge out your eye than to be thrown into hell (Matt 5:29). Could Jesus be right?
(If you need help in this area, and I suspect some do, let me encourage you to look at resistporn.org—a site produced by the Archbishop’s taskforce for resisting pornography.)
Conclusion
So what should we say in conclusion? Where will we stand? Do we have a firm, unchanging foundation from which we assess right and wrong, not because our culture endorses something, but because something higher and deeper than culture defines morality? We can return to the first question in the Bible: “Did God really say …?” (Gen 3:1).
For some, your questions swirl around the proper interpretation of the Bible. Let me encourage you to search the Scriptures with a heart that submits to its teaching. God’s Word is an inextinguishable light for those in need of illumination.
Others, however, fight not against a lack of understanding, but against our inclination toward sexual sin. The call is clear: repent and turn from your ways, because the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9-10). I say this not without sympathy—and with an awareness that individuals struggling with sexual temptation need to hear things that I could never say to a group. But it would count against me if I didn’t reflect Christ’s love by warning against things that lead to destruction.
So let’s close with those hope-filled words of Paul: “And that is what some of you were” (1 Cor 6:11). In the Father’s kindness, the cross of Christ and the work of the Spirit has opened a chasm between our sin and our destiny. “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11). There is nothing casual about sex, and there is nothing cheap about the price paid so that you could be right with God.
[Applause]
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PO: Thank you very much, Philip! I’m just going to run through a few notices.
Upcoming CCL events
We have two more events for the rest of the year on our theme of culture creep. The next one will be Michael Jensen speaking on 21 August on “Affluent and Christian? Material goods, the King and the kingdom”—so speaking about wealth. Later in the year, Rory Shiner from Perth will be speaking on “Who am I? The search for identity”. You can register for all of those events now and, as usual, we’ll be running them in person or on the livestream.
Support CCL
We’d also love it if you would consider partnering with CCL financially. We don’t charge for any of our events or resources, and so we rely on donations just to support the work that we do. We’d love it if you would prayerfully consider whether you would like to do that.
2024 Annual Moore College Lectures
We have other events at college and we have an event coming up in August. Tom Schreiner from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the United States is coming to present the Annual Moore College Lectures. These are five morning lectures. Tom will be taking us through the Book of Galatians. You can find more details on the Moore College website.
Conclusion
Thank you, Philip. Why don’t you join with me in thanking Philip?
[Applause]
That concludes the formal part of the evening. It would be great to see you at one or both of our other events later in the year. Let me close our evening in prayer.
Our Father,
We thank you for the clear teaching of Scripture that Philip has pointed us to this evening. We thank you for that reminder just in that last question of the work of your Son, the Lord Jesus, who, by your Spirit, can cleanse us from every sin and renew us to live lives that honour you.
We pray that that would be what we would lean on in our own lives, and what we would point others to as the only hope for real transformation in this area.
We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
[Music]
PO: To benefit from more resources from the Centre for Christian Living, please visit ccl.moore.edu.au, where you’ll find a host of resources, including past podcast episodes, videos from our live events and articles published through the Centre. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast and for you to leave us a review so more people can discover our resources.
On our website, we also have an opportunity for you to make a tax deductible donation to support the ongoing work of the Centre.
We always benefit from receiving questions and feedback from our listeners, so if you’d like to get in touch, you can email us at ccl@moore.edu.au.
As always, I would like to thank Moore College for its support of the Centre for Christian Living, and to thank to my assistant, Karen Beilharz, for her work in editing and transcribing the episodes. The music for our podcast was generously provided by James West.
[Music]
Except as otherwise noted, Bible quotations are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by International Bible Society, www.ibs.org. All rights reserved worldwide.
Endnotes
1 Stephanie Warren Drimmer, “Could humans live forever?”, excerpt from Ultimate Book of the Future, National Geographic Kids: https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/books/article/could-humans-live-forever. Accessed 15 April, 2024.
2 See, for example, Jimmy Hoke, who, in preaching on these verses as a “queer” man, acknowledges the disruption their nonconformity can bring and the constant call to fall in line: “Who Wants to Conform?: On Normativities, Pride Flags, and Romans 12:2”, 4 October 2019, https://www.jimmyhoke.com/blog/who-wants-to-conform.
3 Those are issues the medical world hasn’t solved as fully as we might think it has.
4 I’m borrowing material from other places when I say this—for example Ephesians 1:22-23.
5 The updated NIV of 2011 combines two Greek terms (which were translated in the NIV of 1984 with two English phrases) into the one phrase: “men who have sex with men”. This gives the impression that Paul lists nine items, with three related to sex.
6 “Porneia” is Paul’s generic term for illicit sex.
7 Jesus cites the same words in Matthew 19:5 when he refers back to Genesis 2 and then adds, “What God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matt 19:6). We might think of marriage, sex and forming a family as an act of the will in accordance with our own choice, but from Jesus’ perspective, it is God who joins people together in marriage through sex. Thus in terms of causes, the family is based on two sets of actors: the two become one through the physical act of sex even as God generates a new oneness through his creative power.
8 David E Garland, 1 Corinthians, BECNT (Ada: Baker Academic, 2003) 235.
9 “Porn harms relationships”, Resisting Porn website: https://resistporn.org/about/porn-harms-relationships/. Accessed 3 July 2024.
10 “Studies linking porn use or porn/sex addiction to sexual dysfunctions and poorer sexual and relationship satisfaction”, Your Brain on Porn website, https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articles-about-the-studies/porn-use-sex-addiction-studies/studies-linking-porn-use-or-porn-sex-addiction-to-sexual-dysfunctions-and-poorer-sexual-and-relationship-satisfaction/. Accessed 3 July 2024.
11 Robin Hawley Gorsline, “1 and 2 Peter”, The Queer Bible Commentary, ed. Deryn Guest, Robert E Goss, Mona West and Thomas Bohache, (London: SCM Press, 2006), 732.
12 Bernadette J Brooten, Love Between Women (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996) 302.
