We Two Are One (Part 2 of 2)

Have you ever heard the term married singles? It describes what happens when couples drift so far apart that the only thing connecting them is a legal bond. Today on Truth for Life, we'll find out why this practice of being a married single is unbiblical and how to keep it from happening in our marriages. Alistair Begg is teaching from 1 Corinthians chapter 7, we're in verses 1 through 7. A man should take his wife, and a wife should take her own husband. So we have his observation in verse 1, we have the qualification in verse 2, and then he deals with his obligation in verse 3. The obligations which are unique to the marital status. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. Now, the very practical implications of this are many. Let me quote to you somebody else. It's always easier to quote than I can get blamed for the quote.

This is Pryor. He says, at the practical level, this is a very challenging word to all Christian couples. Many reasons are given for withholding what is due to the other—tiredness, resentment, disinterest, boredom, etc. For Corinthian husbands, so wedded to their own rights, this very earthy instruction must have been something of a body blow. And it is something of a body blow to all husbands, whether they live in Corinth or in Cleveland. It is sadly vital to add to this fourth verse, in our currently increasingly perverted culture, that verse 4 gives no basis to violate our marriage partners' walk with Christ in purity and in wholeness on account of the fact that we now own a fifty percent share in their body. So, if any of us are tempted to use verse 4 as leverage over our spouse to bring them into submission to something that we've decided is right, we'd better be very, very careful. The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband, in the same way the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. The two has now become one, and as one, under Christ, they must still fulfill the divine mandates for purity in lifestyle.

Then we go to verse 5. It just gets better and better, you know? Okay? It is.

It's okay. It's good to be single. Qualification.

There's a lot of stuff going on. You'd be better to be married. Once you get married, you've got an obligation. I want to explain why you have the obligation. And then he says, because you have the obligation, I want to give you no basis for deprivation. Verse 5, do not deprive each other.

Okay? This is a command. The verse opens with a command. Sexual expression within marriage is not an option or an extra. It's not something that can be offered by one spouse to the other as a kind of feather in the hat, as it were. Well, you've been very good, so therefore, that's fine. You've been good, so, well, that's good.

Or you've been bad, so therefore, that's not—no, that's not what it is. There is to be no deprivation. Sexual fulfillment within marriage is at the very heart of what God intends, because it expresses the bond which is to permanently exist between a husband and a wife. God's plan for marriage included neither divorce nor celibacy.

Okay? Genesis chapter 1. It's an interesting question.

I haven't fully thought it out, and I probably shouldn't say this. But do you think there would have been singleness without the fall of man in Genesis 3? God's plan, as he made man and woman, was neither for divorce nor for celibacy.

But he qualifies himself once again. Do not deprive each other. Do not use physical union within marriage as a means, as a tool for providing encouragement or punishment or whatever it might be. If there is going to be a cessation of your relationship with one another, he says, I want to tell you how it happens. First of all, it happens by mutual consent.

One does not inform the other, both agree. Two, it happens for a limited time. Three, it happens for an express purpose, and that is to devote yourselves to prayer. First Peter chapter 3 and verse 7. Husbands in the same way, be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partners and as it heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

I've been thinking a lot about this week, and I've found it phenomenally challenging, but here's what I think. I think that God recognizes that there is a special power in the prayers of a married couple—so special and so productive that he believes that married couples might come to the conviction that in the same way that we might remove ourselves from the realm of eating for a day or three or a week in order to give ourselves devotedly to seeking God s face for something, so he says, in the rush of life, with so much that is going on, with so much that would come in to deprive us of the opportunity of prayer, he says there may well be times when, by mutual consent, as you think perhaps, as you think of your children and you say, Lord God, what will ever become of our children, then let us get our knees beside the bed rather than get in the bed. By mutual consent, for a limited time, and for an express purpose.

That is the only way that it can ever happen. That is the only allowable time that you can shut down your sexual urges within marriage. You understand that? It is not uncommon for me, for us, to hear people come and say, We have had no physical relationships with one another for seven months, nine months, twelve months, eighteen months.

For what reason? They didn't even know 1 Corinthians 7 verse 5? No, they didn't even know 1 Corinthians 7 verse 5 was in the Bible. So it is a clear violation of the Bible. What are we going to do?

Well, first of all, we're going to obey the Bible. How about I don't feel like it? I don't care whether you feel like it or not.

Since when did this become a glandular condition? That's Hollywood. I'm just trying to get the feeling again. That's Hollywood.

The Bible says you do it because you're supposed to. That doesn't sound very romantic. No, it doesn't, but that's what it says. Oh, goodness me, I was waiting for something to happen. Yeah, obviously you were, and it obviously didn't happen, right?

No, it didn't happen. Well, if you keep waiting, you're going to be an old lady or you're going to be an old man, so let me give you some practical advice. Do not do this, except for these reasons. We decide together for a limited time, for an express purpose, and when you finish, come together again fast, so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

To ensure that neither we nor our marriage partners fall into temptation, we must resume relationships immediately. Now, let me ask you a question. Is this practical? Is this helpful? Is this down where we live our lives? This is no pious claptrap. This is absolutely dead on. This is the Bible.

I'm excited. We don't have to apologize to the world. They have made sex a disaster.

They have no answers. We do. Then, as Christian people, for the love of the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ, would we not then be a shining example to a sex-crazed, distorted world and not come with the same jolly notions that the whole world is coming to counselors with all the time?

Why? Why would we ever believe that that was possible? Because the Holy Spirit lives within our lives. Because we're no longer what we were before we came to faith in Jesus Christ.

Whether single or married, we are made absolutely new. Now, we move to verse 6, and he moves to his expectation. He says, I say this not as a command but as a concession. What does he mean by that? It's a rhetorical question. I say this as a concession, not as a command. Kenneth Taylor in the Living Bible helpfully paraphrases it in this way. I am not saying you must marry, but you certainly may if you wish.

Okay? So he's not telling single people that they have to get married. He's telling them they may get married if they would like to. And they mustn't listen to the people who tell them that the only spiritual way to live your life is to live it in singleness. He has been laying down in these five or six verses the duties of all who are married, but he does not lay it down as a duty that all should be married.

Okay? These are the duties of those once married, but it is not a duty to be married. Because what he might wish to be the case and what he expects to be the case are obviously two different things. The point that he was making is simply this, that marriage is the God-ordained institution for relationships between a man and a woman. That's what the Bible says from beginning to end. For relationships between a man and a woman, apart from fraternal relationships within the family of brothers and sisters, physical relationships, anything that approaches that, God has ordained that marriage is the place for that. So the writer of the Hebrews says that marriage is honorable, and the marriage bed is undefiled. It is perfectly fine. Incidentally, some people use that saying the marriage bed is undefiled to come up with the same nonsense that I mentioned earlier. So I might as well just hit it again with the suspenders and belt as well. And that is that they say, since the marriage bed is undefiled, what that means is you can do anything you want in the marriage bed.

No, you can't. You can only do within your marriage bed what fits the propriety and the parameters of a physically pure life before Christ as an individual and as a married couple. The only way the marriage bed is undefiled is if undefiled activity takes place within the marriage bed. Marriage is the God-ordained institution for relationships between a man and a woman.

However, he says, it is not required. If you're single, he says, that's good. If you're married, or if you get married, then stay married.

And while you're married, don't deprive your spouse. Spirituality is not determined by marital status. Now he states his own preference. Verse 7, I wish that all men were as I am. He tells us in verse 8 that he was unmarried. Therefore, he's saying in verse 7, I wish that everybody was unmarried like me. Now, it is commonly held that Paul was celibate all of his life. Have you ever thought of Paul as having a wife?

Most people haven't. Now, I had to think about this a little bit this week, and I read about it as much as I could, and this is what I found out. Remember Paul says in Philippians that he was absolutely up to the max in terms of Jewish orthodoxy, that before he came to faith in Christ, he never missed a beat. He was dead on with what the requirements of the Jewish law were.

He was absolutely orthodox. Well, let me tell you that Jewish orthodoxy laid it down that marriage was an obligation. Therefore, if Paul was completely orthodox in his Judaism, and if, as was common at that time, he were to be married around the age of eighteen, then Saul of Tarsus was married once. And furthermore, since he mentions in Acts chapter 20 that he made a decision regarding the Christians as a member of the Sanhedrin council, you could not be a member of the Sanhedrin council without actually being married. However, he's not married now. He's unmarried.

So what happened? Well, in heaven, you can run right up to him and ask him. Because tonight I can't tell you the answer.

There are two options. One, his wife has died. Two, as a result of his Damascus Road experience, his wife left him. You ever thought about that? You ever thought that Paul wrote all the stuff he wrote about marriage and about singleness and about everything else in light of the fact that he himself was the product of a broken marriage?

That he had come to faith in Jesus Christ, and when he writes to the Corinthians, as we're going to see a little bit later on, and he says, if you come to faith in Jesus Christ and your marriage partner won't have anything to do with you anymore, he says, you better just let him go. Maybe he wasn't right in theory. Maybe he was right in history. Maybe he was right in biography. However, it is idle to speculate. And that was a little bit of idle speculation. What we can say with certainty, as we draw this to the close, is that Paul would like others to be unmarried.

Why is that? Because he expects that if they remain unmarried, then they'll be just like him. The thing that singleness did for Paul was it clarified his vision. It established his days.

He knew exactly what he was about. He had a this-one-thing-I-do passion about his life. Philippians 3.14, he says, this one thing I do.

Forgetting what is behind, I press on, so on. And it was very, very clear to Paul that in his single state, he was able to pursue this passion for the evangelization of the world in a way that he could never have done if he had the responsibilities of marriage. So when he says, I wish that you were all like me, he doesn't simply mean, I wish that you were all unmarried, but I wish that you were unmarried and possessed of the same zeal that I have to see the world won for Jesus Christ. You know, it's very, very important that we understand that, because singleness is held up as an expectation in our day, but seldom is it seen in light of the benefit that accrues for the sake of the kingdom of God. However, having said that, it's equally clear that his expectation is not that all who are single will remain single, nor that those who are married will introduce celibacy into their marriage as if it were an evidence of spirituality. And the final sentence in verse 7 acknowledges that both singleness and marriage are gifts from God.

When he says, Each man is his own gift from God, one is this gift and another not, he's not just talking now about looking forward to 1 Corinthians 12, he's speaking expressly in terms of married or single. Singleness is a gift, marriage is a gift. We should neither misuse the gifts we've been given. So if we have been given the gift of singleness, we should not abuse it. If we've been given the gift of marriage, we should not abuse it. We should not regard singleness as some second-class state. It is, he says, God's gift to a person, and if it is a gift to the person, then it is important that he or she accepts it and exercises it. Take for example Helen Roseveare. It is questionable whether Helen Roseveare's ministry would have been of the dimensions that it has been were it not for the fact that God gave to her the gift of singleness. Take for example John Stott, probably the most quoted clergyman from this pulpit in the last nine years. John Stott's ministry is directly related to the fact that God gave him the gift of singleness.

He could never have been enclosited away as he was, nor written as he's done, nor travel the world as he has, if he'd had the responsibilities of marital relationships and children. Now I know that some of you want me to go on and discuss the individual who, in a single state, finds themselves enduring it rather than enjoying it. "'Don't tell me,' says the person, that singleness is a gift from God. I don't regard it as a gift.

I don't like it, and if this is my birthday present, you can take it back." Okay, well, that's another discussion, but it's not within the context of this here. What we have to say is that God sees singleness not as a second-class state, but he gives singleness to certain individuals, and he gives marriage to other individuals.

We'll say more about that in the weeks to come. Suffice it to say that in these verses Paul declares the place of both singleness and marriage. Both are evidences of God's grace to be experienced and sustained purely by the strength which God supplies. I can only but imagine that to live as a single in this world demands that God infuses you with strength to be able to live without violating his commands. I would imagine that that's your state as a single. I want to tell you that that is exactly my state as married. It is only as God gives strength and grace and wisdom that I can live as a man within the marriage bounds as God intends.

There are distinctions in what life means for us, in the benefits we enjoy, in the freedoms we experience. Both are gifts from God. And let me conclude with a word to Mr. and Mrs. X. Mr. and Mrs. X, Satan is a roaring lion. He's seeking people to devour. By observation and by biblical record, he loves to attack marriages. He loves to quench our prayers.

He loves to reduce the joys of sex to his own debased level. Therefore, as we've seen so many times before, the Christian life as it relates to marriage is not easy, but it is straightforward. And the parameters established in these verses may be difficult to apply, but they are easy to understand.

Therefore, in understanding them, let's ask God for the grace to apply them. And don't let's go away having to sing the sad laments of Karen Carpenter, love, look at the two of us, strangers, in many ways—the tragic condition of married singles. One plus one equals one. So take your wife, take your husband, look into her eyes and tell her, hey, we two are one.

Don't ever, ever forget it. And no one, not even your kids, are allowed to violate the nature of that relationship. Whether we are married or single, we need God's grace and strength to live according to his word. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg.

Alistair returns in just a minute to close today's program. Now, as Alistair explained today, whether you've been married for decades or just a few months, it can be easy to take your spouse for granted. In his book, Lasting Love, Alistair takes a closer look at the actions or the neglect that can cause couples to drift apart until you're living as married singles or worse. When you read the book, Lasting Love, you'll learn how to nurture and protect your marriage like an expert gardener. Alistair encourages couples to pull the weeds of destruction that sprout up before they overrun the marriage, things like holding on to past relationships, failing to appreciate one another, or running the merry-go-round of daily schedules.

You'll also learn how you can plant hedges of protection around your marriage. Request your copy of the book, Lasting Love, when you donate to Truth for Life. You can click the image you see on our app or visit our website at truthforlife.org slash donate. While you're online, there's another book Alistair has written that is now available in our online store. It's his daily devotional titled Truth for Life, 365 Daily Devotions. This is a hardcover book that uses scripture as the source of each daily reflection. The corresponding commentaries by Alistair point us to God's glory and his goodness as he reveals himself in his word. Again, you'll find the daily devotional Truth for Life online at truthforlife.org slash store. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. Father, I pray that out of the intense practicality of your Word that you will make us students.

I certainly can't get to the heart of all of this in this framework, and I pray that it may just create a hunger in the hearts of each one of us to search the Scriptures, to see if these things are so, to be like the church at Berea who examined the Scriptures every day, to see if the things that were being told were really true. Lord, give us increasingly that kind of congregation, that we may be men and women of the Word. Come to our marriages, we pray. Come to our singleness. Come to our hearts. Come to our loneliness. Come to our fears.

Come to our disinterestedness. Come to us, Lord, we pray. Make us different in this crazy world in which we live, that the world may come to our doors to ask a reason for the transforming power and hope that is within us. We thank you that you derive praise and glory to your name from the lips of men and women throughout every hour of the day, and we thank you immensely for the privilege of being able to end our day in a chorus of praise and worship to you, the living God. For Jesus' sake we ask it, amen. I'm Bob Lapine, thanks for listening today. Tomorrow we'll learn why we need to protect our marriages with the vigilance of a presidential bodyguard, whether you've been married six days or six decades. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.