Chapter One
Get a cup of coffee and find a quiet place to read this.
This Second Helping turned into a book, so take it in bite-sized portions.
Perhaps you have the time to read it all in one sitting or you can take a chapter a day. But you must get to the end!
The end contains the answer.
Feel free to skip ahead.
Pray for the Holy Spirit to illuminate your understanding about God’s will for your life and your sexuality in particular.
Pray for the Spirit to “guide you into all truth” and to bring conviction and correction to the places in our lives where we have compromised and backslidden, especially in the area of our sexuality.
This is a heavy and controversial topic and hits close to home for many of us so please reach out if you have any comments or questions or disagree with something I say.
Let’s talk about it and learn together.
Two Sundays ago, I preached from 1 Corinthians 6 about Christians showcasing a sacred sexuality in a society of sexual insanity.
(Audio begins at the 4:10 mark)
Paul deals with lawsuits among believers in the first part of chapter 6 and then shifts towards sexual immorality in verse 9, which the NASB puts this way, “Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor those habitually drunk, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.”
The Amplified Version puts it this way, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate [by perversion], nor those who participate in homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers [whose words are used as weapons to abuse, insult, humiliate, intimidate, or slander], nor swindlers will inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God.”
He tells them, “Do not be deceived” or “Do not be misled” or “Don’t delude yourselves,” which implies that there were some people of influence in the Corinthian church who were advocating something that brought deception and were misleading Christians about several things, perhaps the primary deception was their thinking about sexuality.
What were these people advocating that was leading to many Christians in the church being deceived and into a compromised sexuality?
That God didn’t have a problem with the things in this list; that Christians could pursue whatever sexual lifestyle they wanted; that their souls were disconnected from their bodies; that their sexuality wasn’t a part of their salvation; that their Christian faith didn’t affect their sexuality.
The Corinthian Christians were sexually confused.
They were Christians but were confused about many things, including their sexuality, and they wrote a letter to Paul asking a list of questions. Paul responded to their questions with 1 Corinthians, chapter 5-7, addressing their questions about sexuality.
They ask Paul, “Now that we are Christians, what should we do about our sexuality?”
Paul gives them and us the answer.
Before we dive in, I want to caution us not to cherry-pick and highlight certain fruits of the root sin of sexual immorality/lust while ignoring others. We tend to emphasize the sexual sins that we don’t personally struggle with and minimize the ones we do, as if God finds some sexual sins more acceptable than others; as if He finds pornography more acceptable than homosexuality.
Notice the words he uses in chapter 6, the first one being “the sexually immoral.” Other translations say, “fornicators” or “those who sin sexually” or “those whose lives are driven and defined by sexual immorality.”
The actual Greek word is πόρνος (pornos), which is where we get our English word “porn.”
Paul uses a few sexually explicit words in this list—“effeminate” and “homosexuals.”
One commentary explains how different translations bring out these Greek words: “The term ‘homosexual’ is a term used today to describe same-sex sexual behaviour. Many translators think that two Greek terms in 1 Corinthians 6:9 refer to this behaviour. NASB translated them with ‘effeminate’ and ‘homosexuals.’ NKJV chose ‘homosexuals’ for the first term and ‘sodomites’ for the second term, while KJV talks about ‘effeminate’ and ‘abusers of themselves with mankind.’ NAB suggests ‘boy prostitutes’ and ‘sodomites,’ NLT ‘male prostitutes’ and those who ‘practice homosexuality,’ and NRSV ‘male prostitutes’ and ‘sodomite.’ The old Darby Bible has ‘those who make women of themselves’ and those ‘who abuse themselves with men.’ Other translations lump both terms together: the ESV reads ‘men who practice homosexuality,’ NIV ‘men who have sex with men,’ and RSV ‘sexual perverts.’ Some of this language is no longer acceptable in modern societies, but at least there seems to be some kind of agreement among Bible translators that 1 Corinthians 6:9 describes homosexual practice.”
The Greek word translated as “homosexuals” is one that Paul probably created to describe this specific sexual sin. One commentary describes this word, “The term ‘arsenokoitai’ (homosexual) helps to define the ‘malakoi’ (effeminate).
It is a unique term found in the New Testament only with Paul. Paul may actually have invented it. It clearly goes back to Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 (LXX). There, the two terms ‘arsēn’ and ‘koitē’ that Paul has joined together, now forming one term only, are found separately. A literal translation would describe a man lying with a man in bed, having homosexual intercourse. Its meaning is not restricted to pederasty.”
Paul uses this word one other time in 1 Timothy 1:10, “sexually immoral people, practicing homosexuals, kidnappers, liars, perjurers—in fact, for any who live contrary to sound teaching. This accords with the glorious gospel of the blessed God that was entrusted to me.”
Here is the footnote from this verse in the New English Translation: “On this term BDAG 135 s.v. ἀρσενοκοίτηςstates, ‘a male who engages in sexual activity with a person of his own sex, pederast 1 Cor 6:9…of one who assumes the dominant role in same-sex activity, opposed to μαλακός, the one who plays the passive role. 1 Ti 1:10; Pol 5:3. Cp. Ro 1:27.’ L&N 88.280 states, ‘a male partner in homosexual intercourse—‘homosexual.’…It is possible that ἀρσενοκοίτης in certain contexts refers to the active male partner in homosexual intercourse in contrast with μαλακός, the passive male partner’ (cf. 1 Cor 6:9). Since there is a distinction in contemporary usage between sexual orientation and actual behaviour, the qualification ‘practicing’ was supplied in the translation, following the emphasis in BDAG.”
Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:10 that those who advocate alternative lifestyles are living “contrary to sound teaching” or “acting against sound doctrine.”
There are many aspects of Christianity that are debatable, but this is not one of them. God’s Word presents a universal standard for a theology of sexuality; things that are true for all Christians in all places, at all times.
We can either submit or reject this standard, but we cannot modify it.
The great temptation is to shape our faith around our sexuality rather than shape our sexuality around our faith.
The only sexual activity affirmed (and even celebrated in parts of the Bible like the Song of Solomon) in Scripture is between a husband and a wife.
We, like the Corinthian Christians, are products of a sex saturated culture and also like them, we come from a past filled with sexual thinking and sexual activity that we brought into our Christianity.
These things do not simply go away when we are saved; on the contrary, our minds and our bodies have been discipled about sexuality for all of our pre-Christian lives, and once we meet Jesus, the process begins of unlearning as we are now disciples of Christ. The Holy Spirit indwells our lives, beginning to disrupt and uproot our pre-Christian worldview and to reshape our minds and hearts around Christ. We are called to “the mind of Christ” with his thinking controlling our actions.
Jesus takes it to another level in Matthew 5:27-28, saying, “As you know, long ago God forbade His people to commit adultery. You may think you have abided by this Commandment, walked the straight and narrow, but I tell you this: any man who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart.”
Even if we are able not to act on the lusts of our flesh, Jesus says that what’s in our hearts matters to God, even more than our behaviour.
We can live a moral life and at the same time have hearts filled with anger, pride, and lust.
Ultimately, it’s what’s in our hearts that matters to God.
God specializes in heart work, and He does this through the Holy Spirit, bringing transformation from the inside out.
It must start with our hearts.
Don’t stop reading.
The conclusion contains the solution.
The Bible gives us the diagnosis of our sinful nature that comes with desires and appetites that are contrary to God’s will and do not lead to real satisfaction.
Fulfilling the lusts of the flesh offers a temporary escape from the exhaustion and depression that besiege most of us.
Chasing pleasure is a way we cope with the unavoidable pain of being broken people living in a fallen world.
But we are left with emptiness afterwards, which creates a cycle of seeking something that will numb the pain, if only for a little while.
Everyone struggles with their sinful nature—everyone.
This struggle is different for every person, but its source is the same—the sinful nature. We didn’t receive this nature when we first sinned; we were born with it. We inherited the rebellion of our first father, Adam, which has been passed down to every generation, every person, on this side of Eden.
Our sinful natures are an intrinsic rebellion that is awakened when presented with any authority outside of ourselves and ultimately expressed in our rejection of God’s rule over our lives. Our sinful nature revolts at any restrictions placed upon us.
We are all born outside of Eden, meaning we are born separated from God.
But we are also born with a longing for Eden in our souls, which produces a feeling of restlessness and homelessness; we subconsciously search for something or someone to satisfy this longing.
We chase temporary pleasure and embrace false identities, hoping they will satisfy us, but inevitably discover that each pleasure we pursue and experience is like a drop in an empty well. Too many spend their lives trying to fill this well drop by drop, peering over the edge and looking into the deep darkness of our hearts, believing the lie that we can experience fullness apart from Christ.
We end up exhausted and empty.
But God made a way for us to recover the intimacy of Eden, a way for our restless souls to come home; a way for us to be filled and even overflowing.
I am running a few minutes late; my previous meeting is running over
Skip to Chapter 6 if the suspense is too much for you!
