February 7, 2016
Love is a Verb - Eros
Part 2 - Controversy Around Marriage
Love is one of the most important themes and most repeated theme in the Bible. If you can boil the entire Gospel down to one word, it would be love.
The word "love" shows up:
319 times in the Old Testament,
232 times in the New Testament
So what does love mean?
If you look in an English dictionary, you’ll find things like:
“feeling an intense feeling of deep affection”
“feel a deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone”
“caring deeply for someone”
“to find pleasure in”
The New Testament was written in Greek, and Ancient Greek has 4 root words for love:
Agape - God’s love for us, our love for God, selfless brotherly love
Phileo - deep friendship, very emotional love
Eros - sexual passion, intimate love between a married man and woman
Storge - natural love, usually between parents and children or family members
Today we are going to be looking at eros love
- Physical sexual attraction, feelings of arousal shared between 2 people
I have had SO MANY questions about controversial topics over the last couple of weeks that we added in another sermon in this series. Today we will be talking about the controversies around marriage in our culture.
So often the church is silent on these issues or the church is loud and hurtful. That is not who we are, and we need to talk about these topics.
Homosexuality
Here are the 3 main New Testament verses that mention homosexuality:
1 Corinthians 6:8-10
8 Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters. 9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
1 Timothy 1:9-11
9 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine 11 that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.
Romans 1:26-27
Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
We also need to look at a baseline of what to contrast that to: Eros love in romantic relationships in general:
1 Corinthians 7:2
each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.
Ephesians 5:22
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.
Ephesians 5:25
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
Proverbs 18:22
22 He who finds a wife finds what is good
and receives favor from the Lord.
Genesis 2:24
24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Every one of those verses talks about a man and his wife. In fact, every verse that mentions the sex of a married couple
mentions a man and his wife in the singular form. That is our definition of Marriage in the Bible.
A lot of people attacking the Christian viewpoint will say that the Bible tells us not to do so many different things, and Christians just focus on homosexuality and fight it to death
while ignoring other sexual sins, like: sex before marriage, immoral thoughts, lust, crude joking, forcing being served sexually as opposed to serving, adultery, coveting someone else spouse, and pornography.
I agree, we pick and choose what we want to fight for but there are so many sins we give ourselves to day in and day out.
Matthew 7:5
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
Our goal is not to publicly call out sin, our job is to introduce them to the only one who can clean that sin and give new life: Jesus.
Polygamy or Polyamory
Polygamy is having multiple spouses, Polyamory is loving or sleeping with multiple people.
This again comes back to the definition of love. Love is based on God’s Agape Love for everyone, which is the same LOVE that made Jesus give his life for us. Our definition of love HAS to point back to Him.
If you look in the Bible at the idea of having many spouses, it is never portrayed as a good thing.
Genesis 2:24
24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Even polygamy in Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon is never looked at as a good thing.
1 Timothy 3:2
Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife
Divorce
50% of 1st marriages, 67% of 2nd marriages, and 74% of 3rd marriages end in divorce.
Malachi 2:16
"The man who hates and divorces his wife," says the LORD, the God of Israel, "does violence to the one he should protect," says the LORD Almighty. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.
in the NASB and NLT:
"For I hate divorce," says the LORD, the God of Israel
Matthew 19:5-6
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Divorce was never meant to be an option. If you are married, DIVORCE IS NOT AN OPTION. Marriage is, “until death do you part.”
That said, there are a couple “exceptions” listed in the Bible for divorce: Marital Unfaithfulness and when a non-Christian forcefully divorces a Christian.
Matthew 19:8-9
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
Sexual immorality means: fornication, adultery, prostitution, etc. So if person 1 cheats on person 2, they can divorce and person 2 can remarry.
1 Corinthians 7:12-13
12 To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13 And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him.
7:15
15 But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.
It it so much better to stay together if possible, but in this circumstance, if person 1 is saved and person 2 is lost, and person 2 leaves person 1, it is okay for person 1 to remarry.
Men’s Leadership
One of the hot topics in our culture is a push for equal rights for both men and women, which the Bible supports, but there is a big difference between treating one gender wrongly and treating both genders as being different.
Sexism is when you value, reward, or punish people differently based on their gender. That does not mean that there is not a difference between their genders. To say that we are all the same is just false, but, to say that we are all equal is correct.
Ephesians 5:21-28
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
God set up men to lead and women to submit to that leadership. That is to protect the woman from having to have split focus becuase of the massive job she is responsible for. Men have the burden of leading the relationship in order to serve his wife.
Communication Card
- I will strive to truly (agape) love people, even if they believe something different than me.
- I will study some of these verses in the Bible closer this week with an open mind.
- I will be at the Q/A on February 16.
Click here to submit an anonymous relationship question for the open Q/A on February 16th at 7pm.
