This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Ephesians 5-6” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, October 27, 1996.
About this sermon
Ephesians 4-6 develops one sustained theme, the Christian walk, and within it singlehood has real standing as a calling of its own. Heaven has no marriage, and that fact frees the single believer. Marriage and children point toward heaven in the meantime, and they do not compete with it.
Sermon transcript
This morning we are beginning our scripture reading in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, and we are at verse 17. This is 1 Corinthians chapter 7, and we are reading from verse 17. This is the word of God. I am reading from the New American Standard this morning. Only as the Lord has assigned to each one, as God has called each in this manner, let him walk. And thus I direct in all the churches. Was any man called already circumcised, let him not become uncircumcised. Has anyone been called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing.
But what matters is the keeping of the commandments of God. Let each man remain in that condition in which he was called. Were you called while a slave? Do not worry about it. But if you are able also to become free, rather do that. For he who was called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord’s freedman. Likewise, he who was called while free is Christ’s slave. You were bought for the price. Do not become slaves of men.
Brethren, let each man remain with God in that condition in which he was called. Now, concerning virgins, have no command of the Lord, but I give an opinion as one who by the mercy of the Lord is trustworthy. I think, then, that this is good in view of the present distress, that it is good for a man to remain as he is.
Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you should marry, you have not sinned. And if a virgin should marry, she has not sinned, yet such will have trouble in this life, and I am trying to spare you. But this I say, brethren, the time has been shortened so that from now on both those who have wives should be as those who had none, and those who weep as though they did not weep, and those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice. And those who buy as though they did not possess, and those who use the world as though they did not make full use of it, for the form of this world is passing away. But I want you to be free from concern.
One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife. and his interests are divided. And the woman who is unmarried and the virgin is concerned about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit. But one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. And this I say for your own benefit, not to put a restraint upon you, but to promote what is seemly and to secure undistracted devotion to the Lord.
Then turning over to Ephesians chapter 5, reading from verse 25, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that that she should be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one has ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ also does the Church, because we are members of his body. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, let each individual among you also love his own wife, even as himself. and let the wife see to it that she respects her husband.
Our Father, teach us the meekness of Christ the one who submitted himself fully and completely to you while in this world, thereby providing us the very foundation of such neatness as should come to expression in us. Lord, you are patient with us, but Father, as you are patient with us by your Spirit you direct our attention to our Savior, that we might live in and from his meekness. Lord, at this time, we are before your word. And Lord, we ask that our hearing would be that kind of hearing that is also obeying. Bless us, O God, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Now, it is very easy when messages from the pulpit turn to the subject of marriage for some to feel left out. single folk, single parents, the divorced, the unmarried, the widowed. As one woman, whose husband died a number of years ago, said to me as she left the church building after my sermon on husbands and wives last week, you didn’t have anything to say to me this morning.
It is greatly important that we be very careful when we find ourselves talking like this. For we must guard against that spirit that says within us, I don’t have to listen because the preacher isn’t saying anything that applies to me. We do well to take note of the extensiveness of the concerns for biblical texts and sermons based on them, for they have a wider context than the immediate words, much less our immediate situation, may suggest.
For instance, the passage we have been dealing with presently, specifically Ephesians 5, verse 22 through chapter 6, verse 9, is part of a section in this letter from Paul that begins in chapter 4, verse 1, for wider context. A section that has as its theme the Christian rock. Hear what Paul says at that point.
I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called. But notice how this theme is furthered as the apostle continues. Chapter 4, verse 17. This I say, therefore, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind. But join these two texts to what we find closer to the passage that concerns us. Ephesians 5 verse 15, Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise, but wise.
Paul’s theme in this section to his letter is the Christian rock. Or, of course, more colloquially, the Christian life. A matter, I may remind you, from which none of us is exempt. About which we can say at no point the apostle isn’t speaking to me, or this doesn’t apply to my situation. But, of course, the relevance of Paul’s words lies even closer at hand, for the capstone statement hanging immediately above That section that concerns us most, beginning with the 22nd verse of that fifth chapter, is what we find in verse 21, where Paul says, be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Surely we are not exempt from that statement.
Paul intends, then, his remarks in the succeeding verses to be representative of the way in which the call to mutual subjection works itself out in the Christian’s life. This means, therefore, that all of us in the Church, in one way or another, are addressed by each of Paul’s pairings in the successive verses.
Regardless of the advancements of our culture and our economic and social ideology, the work world will always be defined by bosses and workers. Or, as Paul puts it in chapter 6, verses 5 through 9, masters and slaves. Shall we go further? Children will always have parents. There will always be parents of children. These categories involving each other, necessarily, and marriage working backwards through the and marriage similarly.
It engages our energies, be it with respect to our own or others, or be it simply with respect to the idea of marriage and its institution. Paul himself was not married, and from what we can tell by his writings, he had no desire to be married. Yet his energies were engaged by the subject. They could not help but be. He was alive and breathing in this world. and he was intimately bound to others who were married. Shall I speak about the Lord Jesus Christ? He also was not married. He had no wife. in this world, nor did he generate any children, yet he was absorbed in a righteous concern for marriage and for children.
The mutual submission to which the Lord calls us through the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5.21 has something to say even to retired persons who have removed themselves from the workaday world situation of their former occupations. It has something to say to people without children. It has something to say to orphans. It has something to say to the unmarried, the previously married, about their outlook and their estimation.
So please, for the sake of Christ and in light of the Word of God, don’t imagine yourself left out of a text of Scripture or a sermon because the words don’t appear immediately germane to your particular situation. And whatever you do, don’t succumb to the selfish heart that is always demanding the easiest and most transparent applications. before it would admit to any profit from a Scripture passage or from a sermon. But now, having gone to such great lengths to relate all of us to the relationships listed by Paul in Ephesians 5 and 6, particularly with respect to the institution most immediately in view in his writing Marriage, let me turn the tables on you by laboring to relate us all to the inversion of these relationships, particularly to the estate or condition of the unmarried, the single estate.
Now here we have a subject. How shocked we are to learn, when we are facing things as we ought, how shocked we are to learn that the New Testament ideal is not marriage. but the undistracted, unencumbered, single devotion to the Lord of which the Apostle speaks in 1 Corinthians 7. Let me remind you of some other texts in this regard.
Matthew 22.30, Jesus’ words to the Sadducees.
This is what he says, for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. This comment from our Savior makes it clear, does it not, marriage is for this world, not for the next. may be made in heaven, but they do not carry over into heaven. Marriage relationships, therefore, are temporary. They have a transitory significance.
But faced with the difficulty of what Christ says in this particular text, we are also faced with the difficulties concerning the implications of His thought. For Christ’s words affect not only marriage, but those realities of life most closely tied to it. For instance, sexual relations.
Sexual relations, according to the Bible, always belong within the bounds of marriage. I cannot say that too loudly. I fear that sexual relations have become epidemic outside of the bounds of marriage, not only among unbelievers, but among believers. Sexual relations, according to the Bible, always belong within the bounds of marriage.
Marriage However, being transitory and temporary spells the same with respect to sexual expression. Sexual expression is transitory and temporary. This means, yes, it may be a revelation to many, this means that sex is not eternal. Much less is it the power and energy of life, as was suggested by D. H. Lawrence, as if it were some kind of deity to be served with the most absolute devotion. We might also get that idea from what is communicated to us through the popular media. And what might we say about children, the product of marriage and human sexuality?
Have you ever wondered about the relative absence of genealogical lists in the New Testament? Now, I know that you are aware of them in the Old Testament. In fact, you skip over them regionally. But in the New Testament, we have only two genealogical lists, and they occur very early in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. And then we see them no more.
Why? Why? Because, from the Bible’s perspective, there is that sense in which the production of children has reached a most definitive and definite endpoint in the birth of the Messiah. The seed promised to the woman has come. He has arrived. So there is that sense, as you come to the New Testament, there’s that sense in which the genealogies cease in him, for his is the last generation. There are very eloquent ways in which both Matthew and Luke communicate that in their genealogies. We can’t go into that this morning. But I just give you that aside. But considering this point now, do you grasp what this means? Do you understand what this means? It means this. The end point having been reached, something of the eternal heavenly estate intrudes upon us. that a state of glory where children are no longer being conceived and born. However, we may say even more at this point.
For you see, the conception and birth of children themselves have within them the message about this higher world to which we are called. The conception and birth of children through human parents are an analogy in which we see higher things. our birth by the creative and regenerative power of God, that we might be His spiritual children, living already in this world as we look forward to the arrival of the next. Children born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” According to John, in his Gospel, chapter 1, verse 13. Now you’re really upset. Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here. The full message, and I underscore it, this is the full message of the Word.
This full message from the Bible is not designed to provide us with an easy excuse for not having children. That is not its intention, much less an excuse to ignore or abuse the ones we have, because after all, we’ve arrived at the end point, and these children are important. Nor is this full biblical message intention the removal or denigration of the natural desire for children, much less the removal of all pain when we cannot have children. Nor is it justification for those who have arisen in the Church from time to time, who have legislated for all or for some in the monastic orders against the conception of children. Much less justification for those who, once the child is conceived, would destroy that child in a fetal cycle of madness, in murderous abortion.
But at the same time, this full biblical message sets before us our true situation in light of the conclusive work of God in Christ, by whom a genealogical end has been reached, and in whom the reality of the eternal order has been introduced in which there are no children conceived or born. What we have said here about children, we can echo in our comments about marriage itself.
You see where I’m going. As noted earlier, Jesus in Matthew 22, verse 30, has nudged us in this direction with his comment about there being no marriage in heaven. But he directly connects the kingdom of heaven’s future to its present earthly reality when he says in Matthew 19 verse 12, there are also eunuchs who make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus has in mind at this point not actual physical units, nor members of monastic orders, but spiritual units who have become those in whom we perceive the eternal world where no one marries or is given in marriage.
It is now this background that provides us our entrance into what many have judged the strange and even unnatural world of the Apostle Paul, as he opens himself up in 1 Corinthians 7, making such a point about not marrying. His advice to the Corinthians does not rise simply, as he says in verse 26, because of the present distress that has overtaken the Church in Corinth. Rather, his advice rises just as much because, as he says in verse 31, the form of this world is passing away. In other words, the form of the world to come is making itself felt, is it pressing itself upon our present world order. And particularly, we are able to see something of that world, something of that eternal world, in the undivided, undistracted devotion of the unmarried, those who are presently for the kingdom’s sake, what we all shall be in glory.
You dare not look down upon the single person as if they were a secondary citizen in the kingdom of heaven. You must not scorn them. You must not hold them in contempt. You must not become suspicious of them, they being members of the body of Christ, with regard to their sexual orientation.
It may well be that it is a strain for them to live under their present condition. They may well wish to be married. We may pray with them and for them with regard to their condition, and hope with regard to the best concerning that expectation of theirs. But, at the same time, we must be prepared to see and to recognize the glories that are appearing before our eyes in the single person. But in conclusion, we also need to remember what is so obvious in Ephesians 5. Even for those of us who marry, the institution itself carries within it the message of something higher.
I have often thought that the smallness of this congregation is somehow related to this message. I understand the passions. I understand the drives. I understand the ambitions of men. And the high hopes of women. But coming to this church week after week and being told There is something more than a piece of real estate, a house, children, and a good retirement plan.
It’s very difficult to take. You may find yourself in the course of this message very upset My contention is that you are upset with God and his gospel and not me. I cannot preach to you your family. I cannot tell you to worship your wife, much less your children. That is idolatry.
By God’s design, the institution of marriage carries within it the message of something higher. The conception and birth of children carries this message, and so does marriage itself. In marriage, we see a greater and more ultimate reality, the blessed relationship between God and His people, between Christ and His Church.
Paul finds this testimony to the higher and more ultimate relationship even at the beginning, in Genesis 2.24, and the commentary on Eve’s creation for Adam. Marriage, as wonderful as it was for Adam and Eve in the garden, as wonderful as it may be for us, was never intended as an end in itself, but a mirror in which we behold the dynamics of the covenantal bond between God and His people. Putting it in its most trenchant New Testament form, Paul says, this is a great mystery, but I am speaking about Christ and His Church. Or as John puts it in the most sublime New Testament expression, And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea. And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
None of this which I have told you this day will make you a worse husband or wife. I can say to you on the authority of the word of God, it will make you the best husband and wife. He loves his wife best who loves God first. I dare say that this gospel makes us all better citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. We, then, free as sons of God, and not in slavery to anything of this world.
Father, your son presses us in light of the coming of the kingdom. Your apostle presses us in light of the coming of the kingdom. And father, we ask that in our hearts, we might first of all be ready to let everything go. For your sake, and for the sake of that thing. Yes, even marriage and children. Help us, Lord, bless us. We know your will, sir, superintendence, and therefore we acknowledge your will may well be for us that we marry and that we have children. And in that event, oh, God, may we give ourselves to our families as a blessing to them. And may we help them also see. And the things they experience in the institutions that they are acquainted with in this world, how all things are for you. For your greater glory. And for a higher destination.
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