Because of the details of
these meditations, we can easily lose the overall picture. Therefore, I would
like to remind ourselves of the current main theme “Corporate, Christlike love
for the Father and His Son”. Since
Meditation 63, the question has been how God’s Spirit wants to empower
my church for mature, Christlike worship of God. We have understood that the
Holy Spirit wants to do that in such a way that my church fulfills ever more
God’s first and greatest commandment: “Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
mind.” (Matthew 22:37).
From Meditation 76 onwards, we looked into a third characteristic of a church
that loves our triune God wholeheartedly: “To love God the Father and His
Son Jesus Christ wholeheartedly as a church means to pursue holiness in
preparation for Jesus’ return in glory.”
Since Meditation 84 we have
been looking at the unholy actions of the Corinthian church and what God might want to
say to our churches today through the way He disciplined the New Testament
congregations.
Today’s meditation deals with:
Licentiousness within the Corinthian church
In New Testament times,
Corinth was a port city on the Aegean See at the west end of the isthmus
between the mainland of Greece and the Peloponnese. It contained the temple of
Aphrodite (the goddess of love) with its 1,000 temple prostitutes.
Consequently, the city became known for its legendary immorality.
In Meditation 78 we mentioned
that sexual immorality was an enormous problem in the Corinthian church. In
both letters to the Corinthian Christians, the apostle Paul mentions this point
in question various times.
These new Christians had just been saved from a
culture of free sexual relations. The apostle Paul had to teach them how God
wanted them to live as ‘children of light’, in a way that pleases Him. In the
same way, Paul writes to the Christians in Ephesus: “Though your hearts were
once full of darkness, now you are full of light from the Lord, and your
behavior should show it!” (Ephesians 5:8)
As Paul writes to the Corinthian Christians, his
keynote on sexual immorality is: “Flee from sexual immorality. All other
sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against
his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple 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 honour God with your body.” (1
Corinthians 6:18-20)
Our bodies and our church community are residents of
God’s Spirit. Therefore, we should learn to treat them as it pleases God.
In a different way the apostle writes about the same
subject to the Christians in Rome: “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body
so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin,
as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who
have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him
as instruments of righteousness.” (Romans 6:12-13)
1. Incest and other related issues
The first case of sexual immorality within the
Corinthian church which Paul mentions, has to do with someone who lived in sin with
his father’s wife. This might have been a case of incest or related to the
second wife of this man’s father. The apostle writes to the church: “It is
actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that
does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father's wife. And you are
proud! Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief?...” (1
Corinthians 5:1-2)
It seems that the church in Corinth was in favour of
such an immoral practice. Was it not a sign of ‘true freedom’?
God addressed this subject extensively in Old
Testament times and continues to speak about it in the New Testament.
Here are some Old Testament examples:
“While Israel (= Jacob) was living in that region,
Reuben (his oldest son) went in and slept with his father's concubine Bilhah,
and Israel heard of it.” (Genesis 35:22)
Later Reuben is punished for this immoral act. Before
his death, Jacob pronounced: “Reuben, you are my oldest son, the child of my
vigorous youth. You are first on the list in rank and honor. But you are as
unruly as the waves of the sea, and you will be first no longer. For you slept
with one of my wives; you dishonored me in my own bed.” (Genesis
49:3-4)
At mount Sinai, as God made His covenant with Israel,
He commanded His people: “Do not have sexual relations with your father's
wife; that would dishonour your father” (Leviticus 18:8) and
“If a man has intercourse with his father's wife, both the man and the woman
must die, for they are guilty of a capital offense.” (Leviticus
20:11)
Absalom dishonoured his father, king David, gravely
when he slept in public with his father’s concubines (2 Samuel 16:21-22). Later
God punished him as he died at the hand of Joab, king David’s army commander (2
Samuel 18).
By mouth of the prophet Amos (8th century
B.C.) God warns Israel already for His coming judgment. Also here the sexual
misconduct of dishonouring one’s father is mentioned: “... Both father and
son sleep with the same woman, corrupting my holy Name.” (Amos
2:7)
In Ezekiel 22, God confronts Jerusalem with all its
detestable practices. Among many other sins, God mentions: “In you
(Jerusalem) are those who dishonour their fathers' bed...” (Ezekiel
22:10).
Because of her many sins, God declares to the city of
Jerusalem by His prophet Ezekiel (ca. 590 B.C.): “You have brought your days
to a close, and the end of your years has come. Therefore I will make you an
object of scorn to the nations and a laughing-stock to all the countries. Those
who are near and those who are far away will mock you, O infamous city, full of
turmoil.” (Ezekiel 22:4-5).
In the Mosaic or Sinai Covenant, God forbade incest
and sexual intercourse between near relations within the family:
“If a man has intercourse with his father's wife, both
the man and the woman must die, for they are guilty of a capital offense. If a
man has intercourse with his daughter-in-law, both must be put to death. They
have acted contrary to nature and are guilty of a capital offense. ... If a man
has intercourse with both a woman and her mother, such an act is terribly
wicked. All three of them must be burned to death to wipe out such wickedness
from among you. ... If a man has sexual intercourse with his sister, the
daughter of either his father or his mother, it is a terrible disgrace. Both of
them must be publicly cut off from the community. Since the man has had
intercourse with his sister, he will suffer the consequences of his guilt. ...
If a man has sexual intercourse with his aunt, whether his mother's sister or
his father's sister, he has violated a close relative. Both parties are guilty
of a capital offense. If a man has intercourse with his uncle's wife, he has
violated his uncle. Both the man and woman involved are guilty of a capital
offense and will die childless.” (Leviticus
20:11-20)
In Israel these were all capital offences. God ordered
that those who sinned in this way should be expelled from God’s people and
punished with death.
Why did God give His people such rigorous laws at
mount Sinai? I can mention two main reasons:
1.) The apostle Paul says about God’s Mosaic Law: “The
Law was our guardian and teacher to lead us until Christ [the Messiah] came...” (Galatians 3:24)
In other words, the Law prepared us for Christ’s coming.
The Law kept us on track towards Christ’s future.
Paul explains to the
Christians in Rome: “No one can ever be made right in God's sight by doing
what his Law commands. For the more we know God's Law, the clearer it becomes
that we aren't obeying it” (Romans 3:20) or as the New
International Version translates: “... through the Law we become conscious
of sin.” It is also through the Law that we see the need for the sin
offering of God’s Son at the cross of Calvary to make us right with God.
2.) As God used His
Law as both guardian and teacher to lead His people until the Messiah would
come, He also used it to separate His people from the lifestyle and
customs of the nations around them.
We can read in Exodus 19:3-6: “Then
Moses climbed the mountain to appear before God. The LORD called out to him
from the mountain and said, 'Give these instructions to the descendants of
Jacob, the people of Israel: 'You have seen what I did to the Egyptians. You
know how I brought you to myself and carried you on eagle's wings. Now if you
will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from
among all the nations of the earth; for all the earth belongs to me. And you
will be to me a kingdom of priests, my holy nation.' Give this message to the
Israelites.'”
Furthermore, God says in Leviticus
20:22-26: “You must carefully obey all my laws and regulations; otherwise
the land to which I am bringing you will vomit you out. Do not live by the
customs of the people whom I will expel before you. It is because they do these
terrible things that I detest them so much. ... I, the LORD, am your God, who
has set you apart from all other people. ... You must be holy because I, the
LORD, am holy. I have set you apart from all other people to be my very own.”
Next time we will see how God wanted the New Testament
churches to deal with cases of incest and other grave sins.
(to be continued)
Matthew 22:37, 1 Corinthians 6:18-20, Romans 6:12-13,
1 Corinthians 5:1-2, Genesis 35:22, Genesis 35:22, Ezekiel 22:10, Ezekiel
22:4-5 are quotes from the New International Version. All other quotes are from
the New Living Translation.
