Introduction

This series is an invitation to embrace the high call of the single life—if you are single.

If you are married, it is to help you encourage, support and pray for the single people in your lives.

Review

Key Ideas from last week:

• The status of your heart affects the status of your life.
  • Your single life.
  • Your dating life.
  • Your married life.
  • Your divorced life.
• Why?
• Among other things, the heart is a repository for your subconscious thoughts.
  • Subconscious thoughts are deep seated emotions, ideas and motivations that sit beneath our conscious thinking and that drive most of our behavior.
  • The heart can hide intentions at the subconscious level, causing us to think that our motives are purer than they really are.
• We asked the questions: Can the Christain heart (really) be deceitful? (Jeremiah 17:9–10 (ESV): ⁹ The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?)
  • Yes
  • Our hearts become new through the Holy Spirit, but they still retain the capacity to exhibit the qualities of a wicked heart.
• How?

1. When we stop submitting ourselves to the influence of the Holy Spirit.
2. When the influence of the world on our hearts becomes stronger than the influence of the Holy Spirit on our hearts.

Celibacy and the Single Life

The Scripture’s demands for celibacy are the main reasons many people believe that Jesus takes the fun out of being single. 

It is one of the main rebuttals to the main argument of this sermon series: 

• That you should give your singleness to the Lord 

• That if you are not already married, you should become a spiritual eunuch for the sake of the Kingdom unless or until you get married.  

That sounds noble on paper, but when you consider it for yourself, it just looks to you to be a life that is absent of enjoyment, absent of freedom and filled with frustration and FOMO (fear of missing out). 

This is in part because we do not have the full view of God’s plan for us regarding our sexuality—which is rich with peace, joy and contentment.   

And we don’t have the full view because most of the Scriptural content we hear about sexual immorality places a strong emphasis on the passages that would foster the most fear and condemnation.  

Now fear and condemnation are important 

• You need the fear of the Lord. 

• There are practices that must be condemned. 

• You should NOT feel comfortable in sin.  

But you also have to get to the heart of the matter, the heart behind your behavior, which is deeper and more complex than mere behavior management. 

To better understand this, let’s review some of those well-known passages that have framed our thinking about God’s boundaries for sexual practice.

Our Vision for Celibacy is mainly Shaped by Scripture’s most strongly worded Statements about Sexual immorality.

1 Corinthians 6:18 (ESV): ¹⁸ Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

1 Thessalonians 4:3–4 (ESV): ³ For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; ⁴ that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor,

Matthew 5:28 (ESV): ²⁸ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Ephesians 5:3 (ESV): ³ But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.

1 Corinthians 10:8 (ESV): ⁸ We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day.

1 Corinthians 6:15–16 (ESV): 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 to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.”

Standard Guidance for Addressing Sexual Temptation

Galatians 5:16–17 (ESV): ¹⁶ But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Galatians 5:24 (ESV): ²⁴ And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

2 Timothy 2:22 (ESV): ²² So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

1 Corinthians 9:24–27 (ESV): ²⁴ Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. ²⁵ Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. ²⁶ So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. ²⁷ But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

The Scripture Addresses the Human Complexity of Sexual Practice

1 Corinthians 7:1–2 (ESV): ¹ Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” ² But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

1 Corinthians 7:5 (ESV): ⁵ Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

1 Corinthians 7:9 (ESV): ⁹ But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

• Sexual temptation in this context is not addressed with self-control, crucifying the flesh or becoming more spiritual.
• It addresses sexual temptation in this context with something practical:
  • The remedy for single people is to get married.
  • The remedy for married people is to maintain the regularity of having sexual intercourse.

1 Corinthians 6:12 (ESV): ¹² “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. . .

Sexual Practice That Honors God Is Ultimately a Matter of the Heart

God is more interested in what drives your decisions than the decisions themselves.

Psalm 119:9–11 (ESV): ⁹ How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. ¹⁰ With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! ¹¹ I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.

• A sexually pure life is the result of God’s truth registering in you at a heart level
• You have to allow God to really sift through the issues that sit in your heart.

Hebrews 4:7–13 (ESV): ⁷ . . . .“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” . . . .⁹ So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. . . .¹¹ Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. ¹² For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. ¹³ And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

The Scriptural Command to “Live Right” is a Process, Not and Event

Galatians 5:19–24 (ESV): ¹⁹ Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, ²⁰ idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, ²¹ envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. ²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. ²⁴ And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

© Joshua D. Smith, Ph.D., 2024