Grace Blog

When discussing marriage, biblical writers most often quote God’s words when He brought Eve to Adam and said, “And the two shall be one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24) But God also makes clear in Ephesians 5 that the marriage union is modeled after, and is a public display of, the eternal union between the Church and Christ.

Most of us have heard about the model for the husband and wife’s union being Christ and His relationship to the Church. But our marriages are also a public display of the union of Christ and His church. I think this is why God says that we have an “obligation” to one another and we are not permitted to “deprive” one another of sex—for Satan may tempt us to break the “one flesh” union (1 Cor. 7:1-5). Whatever else “one flesh” or the “two becoming one” means, it certainly means that we are to be in sexual union—joined in body.

To be even clearer, our marriages should have a consistent and joyful sex life—continually consummating and renewing our affection for, and affirmation of, the marriage union. Otherwise, we may be teaching poor and even heretical theology about the union between Christ and His Church—to our children, our friends, and our coworkers.

As I read the Scriptures—especially the New Testament, I am struck over and over again at how much God values the family of God living together in harmony and in unity. The Spirit of God continued the teaching the gospel even while the Corinthians were suing each other to settle disputes. In Corinth, Christian brothers were taking each other to court. Paul was appalled that they were taking their disputes outside the church to be settled by "the unrighteous" rather than by "the saints." In addition, the idea of two brothers in God's family and even from the same church family appearing in court against each other was completely missing the point of the gospel—God reconciling sinners to himself. It would be better to have someone inside the church settle the dispute. It would be better still to die to self and suffer the wrong, or even be defrauded. After all, Jesus urged his listeners in His Sermon on the Mount not to resist the one who is personally evil but to give to the one who unjustly sued them. "If someone would sue you and take your undergarment; let him have your outer garment as well" (Matthew 5:40).

It should not be a news flash that we live in a very sexual world. What may be a news flash for some is that our world is probably not any more sexual than the Corinthian world. The same problem that caused great dysfunction in the Corinthian church plagues the American church—sex outside of marriage. It is so prevalent even in the Western church that we find it very difficult to know how to address the issue. The statistics of couples who abstain from sex before marriage is soberly low—not to mention the sex through pornography, which for those who are married Jesus called adultery (Matt. 5:28). Most churches have simply taken a "don't ask, don't tell" approach, thinking that it is better to be ignorant.

God reminds the Christian that our sin has been removed and he speaks of us now as "unleavened" because of the sacrifice of Christ, our Passover lamb. So he urges us to continue to live, celebrating and eating "unleavened" bread. The Church is not to allow the sinful "leavened" person who celebrates Christ's sacrifice for his or her sins to continue to live a sexually immoral lifestyle with sex outside of marriage. If a person does, God is very clear, stating three times what the church is to do—"remove from among you" (1 Cor. 5:2), "do not associate with sexually immoral people" (1 Cor. 5:9) and "purge the evil person from among you" (1 Cor. 5:13). Sound harsh? Perhaps—but not as harsh as God the Father was to his own Son—in love, crushing Him, making Him a sacrifice on the cross for our sin, including the sin of sexual immorality. So I plead with you to not treat the sacrifice of Christ lightly through being sexually immoral.

The word "steward" seems to have made a comeback these days. I notice a sign at a park near my house that asks people to be "good stewards of the land." Stewardship is a great biblical idea. It means that I am expected to manage well what I do not own. The Apostle Paul reminds us that Christian leaders are merely servants and stewards of the mystery of God. The mystery of God in the New Testament that is now known is that God would send his Son, Jesus, to be a crucified Messiah. By his sacrifice our sin would be atoned for when we by faith trusted in that sacrifice as the sole and sufficient payment for our sin.

The Christian leader in a church doesn't own this message—it is not his own idea. Rather, the leader belongs to Christ, as a servant belongs to his master. Furthermore, the mystery of God does not belong to him or her—it belongs to God! So whatever else may be involved in being a Christian leader in a church—it primarily means he or she is a servant and steward of the good news of Jesus. This means that his or her obligation is to share the good news of Jesus Christ—Him crucified for sin. In other words, the Christian leader is a servant of Christ and a steward of the gospel of Christ. I wonder how well the leaders of Grace Bible Church steward the gospel—how well do I steward the gospel? Only the Lord can truly be the judge of my stewardship.

My father was a home builder. He was not your typical large contractor who builds a home in 2 months. It often took my dad as long as 2 years to build a home—because he was a slow, but careful custom builder. His homes were built to last. He was always skeptical of new building material or methods. He was old school—he knew that a home that was built to last rested on a firm foundation. It took him forever to get a foundation completed. He insisted on French drains inside and outside of the footer. All footers had to be 36 inches deep and the walls were either 8 or 12 inch thick block with concrete poured inside the block every few feet. The outside of the blocks were plastered with 2 inches of mortar followed by a thick coat of tar. His foundations never leaked, cracked or swayed! They were built to last because he was a careful builder.

So when God tells the leaders at Corinth to be careful how they build the church and that no one can lay a better foundation than Jesus Christ, I think of my father. I want to be a careful builder of God's church. It scares me that I might build with poor material or use construction methods that cut corners and are quick, but may not last. I certainly want to be sure that Jesus Christ is the foundation and that the material built on top of Him will be quality material in the hands of skilled builders. I pray that God would teach me and the other leaders to be careful builders—and give us the grace and knowledge to become skilled master builders—building a church that will last.

Mondays are my day off and I often enjoy long walks in the woods with my dog and reading or memorizing some texts from my Bible. Yesterday, I found an old chair that had been washed down stream. So I cleaned it off, sat down, listened to the babbling brook, watched a young Bald Eagle and read the entire book of 1 Corinthians—it was near heaven!

What struck me on this reading was that God chose to start with their lack of unity and obvious divisions inside of the church—in fact he returns to it in various ways throughout the entire book. The question I kept asking myself is out of all the issues they were having, why did God start with the issue of divisions in the church?

One of my initial thoughts is that it must illustrate their lack of understanding of grace. If they understood God’s undeserved gift of grace to them in Christ, then why weren’t they following Christ rather than human leaders and why wouldn’t they extend the same undeserved grace to their brothers and sisters in Christ? The answer can only be that they did not understand and or live by grace. A church functioning without grace is in a very bad place.

As we start our long series in 1 Corinthians please pray that God would open our eyes to see the connections between the grace given to us by God, in Christ Jesus and the practical effects of that grace that is operating in our lives in the person of Jesus. Through faith in His work done for us on the cross, I pray that many would believe the good news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection—the Gospel and experience the joy of having their sin’s forgiven. I pray that we would understand how this good news—Jesus, not only saves us from condemnation but how Jesus continues to be an effective work of God’s grace in our lives.

I have called this series Lessons on Grace from a Dysfunctional Church because God wants us to understand from this letter that it is His grace—God’s unmerited favor on us who deserve only His wrath, that saved the Corinthians. I want us to see that it is God’s grace that will keep these Corinthians (1 Cor. 1:7-8) strong to the end and even blameless on the day that our Lord Jesus Christ is revealed—in spite of some severe sin and dysfunction. I want us to see that through faith in the Gospel, the same grace of God is effective in us through Christ Jesus and that grace will keep us until Jesus is revealed—in spite of sin and severe dysfunction in our lives.

Most of us made Hallmark rich last week—by celebrating Valentine’s Day! I am confident that I can make three assumptions. First, if you are dating or married you probably did something special for your date on Valentine’s Day. Second, if not, you probably have been in trouble all week! Third, even if you did observe Valentine’s Day, you probably did not celebrate Christ’s love for His Church as the motivation of your love and respect for your spouse.

God tells us in Ephesians 5:29-31 that marriage is a picture of how Christ loves His bride—the Church. More than that, marriage is patterned after Christ’s love commitment to His Church. As John Piper says in This Momentary Marriage, “the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and His Church on display. That is why marriage exists.”