Paul and Jesus

And that is just the problem. The present world order is passing away but it is also still here. Men are men, and women are women, and sexual desires are real and powerful. Marriages have their normal stresses, and people are being born as well as getting sick and dying. In Paul’s ideal world of being in Christ, none of these things should be happening. Men and women should already have transcended their physical, sexual lives. No one should be getting sick or dying. Sexual immorality should be no temptation whatsoever. If Christ is in them, and they are in Christ, why should any realities of the old creation have any sway? Why should there be any struggle “against the flesh.” After all, the “outer nature” is fading while the “inner nature” is being renewed day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16). Paul is profoundly disappointed in his followers, whom he chastises for still living “according to the flesh.” He suggests that the reason some are dying is that they have not properly participated in the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:30). He knows he cannot command sexual abstinence but he had somehow hoped they would have already made their own decisions to take this higher path of spirituality.

For Paul, as a Jew, sexual immorality (porneia in Greek) refers to any sexual activity outside a marriage between a man and a woman. This means that he condemns a wide range of sexual practices within Greco-Roman society that were commonly accepted, including homosexuality and sexual intercourse with prostitutes (Romans 1:26–27; 1 Corinthians 6:9–19). He is clear and uncompromising—those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. He avows that the instructions he has given are “through the Lord Jesus,” that “the Lord is an avenger of all these things” as he had solemnly warned them, and that anyone who disregards these teachings is disregarding God (1 Thessalonians 4:6). Marriage is an available “remedy” but even better is a pure devotion to Christ.

Paul is giving the Corinthians practical advice. Though baptized into Christ, they are nonetheless part of the “old world” that is passing away. He tells them it is better not to marry “to spare them worldly troubles,” or so they can be “free from anxieties,” since the apocalyptic crisis is upon them (1 Corinthians 7:28, 32). Those women who have chosen to marry must be submissive to their husbands, as God decreed to Adam and Eve from the beginning. They have chosen the old world, so they must continue to live within it. He is particularly concerned that they behave in ways that promote what he calls “good order” (1 Corinthians 7:35; 14:40). The word he uses in Greek, euschemonos, means “a good arrangement.” It refers to a proper standard of ordered decency. But the problem, of course, is that he also says the present schema, or “order” of things, is passing away. In the end he can’t resist pointing out that those who like him cast aside their sexuality through the gift of the Spirit experience purer devotion to Christ. They are holy in body as well as in spirit. But even after saying that, he repeats once again that he wants to lay no necessity upon them (1 Corinthians 7:34–35). He is having difficulty balancing his instruction between the old order and the new one.

NEITHER SLAVE NOR FREE

Paul compounds his claim that there is neither male nor female “in Christ” with the equally startling claim that slavery and freedom no longer exist, either (Galatians 3:28). If the one is gender nonsense the other is surely socioeconomic naïveté, to say the least. After all, Paul admits that his gospel was “foolishness” (literally “moronic”) to those who are perishing, but contained a secret wisdom and power only those chosen could understand through the Spirit (1 Corinthians 1:18–24; 2:12–13).