PAUL ON SEX

Sex is a hot potato.  It is in everybody’s minds, and St Paul does talk quite a lot about it.  In this blog I am simply showing what Paul did say.  You may or may not agree with it, but here it is.

What was St Paul’s attitude to sex? 

Paul’s attitude to sex was remarkably relaxed – on the understanding that it was enjoyed within marriage.  “The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband… Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.  To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practising self-control, they should marry.  For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.”  (1 Corinthians 7.3-5, 8-9)

In other words, sex is as much for pleasure as for procreation.

And marriage was not a church ceremony.  That did not come into being for a thousand years.  In Rome there was an elaborate ceremony if you belonged to the upper classes, but for many you could be married simply by living together, a practice known as ‘usus’.

Prostitution

Prostitution was very common in the Roman empire.  Pompeii had a population of 15,000.  There was one brothel, nine individual booths for individual sex workers, and twenty taverns which might or might not provide sexual services.  That’s a lot for a town smaller than Godalming in Surrey.  Prostitutes were licensed by the local magistrates, and this could be used to provide a legal cover for adultery.  Prostitution would have been at least as rife in Corinth, with its passing population of sailors (“What happens in Corinth stays in Corinth”). 

There were those in the Corinthian church who saw nothing wrong with it, whom Paul quotes and then gives his reply:

““All things are lawful for me”,

but not all things are beneficial.

‘“All things are lawful for me”,

but I will not be dominated by anything.

“Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food’”

and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.

Paul continues:

“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, ‘The two shall be one flesh.’ But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”   (1 Corinthians 6.12-20)

Note that in all his argument, Paul cannot bring himself to say, “It’s wrong”, or “It’s against God’s law”.  The most he can say is “It’s not appropriate”, rather like saying, ‘You’ve married a beautiful young woman, how can you go out to find a harlot?’

And he is not talking to shrinking violets but to people who have been there, done that. 

“Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6.9-11)

So all Paul’s words which appear to attack people ‘out there’ are actually an appeal to people who share in the same community with him.

Condemnation and forgiveness

One particular instance started Paul on this subject:

“It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Should you not rather have mourned, so that he who has done this would have been removed from among you?

“For though absent in body, I am present in spirit…  When you are assembled, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.”  (1 Corinthians 5.1-5)

However, Paul then repented!

“But if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not                                                                                                              to me, but to some extent — not to exaggerate it — to all of you. This punishment by the majority is enough for such a person; so now instead you should forgive and console him, so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I urge you to reaffirm your love for him.”(2 Corinthians 2.5-8)

In other words, love trumps law.

Me too

It may be that Paul himself suffered from almost overwhelming temptations – perhaps to indulge sex, perhaps to indulge anger.  He wrote to Christians in Rome: 

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… In fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me….For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”                                                   (Romans 7.15-16, 22-25)

A thought

In the 4th century there were hundreds if not thousands of monks in the Egyptian desert, who were often remarkably insightful.  One old man was approached by someone suffering from thoughts of fornication.  The old man advised, “Cast your inability before God and you will find peace.”