What if a Christian lives in a social condition in an institutional way that doesn't please him? The Apostle Paul deals with this in 1 Corinthians 6 and mainly 7. Slavery was rampant at that time in the first century. Paul speaks to many institutional situations: marriage, singleness, circumcision or not, unbelieving spouse, slave or free, widow, and a daughter and her father. Each of them represent unwanted personal situations and the instruction of the Apostle is the same: don't attempt institutional social change for personal reasons, even slavery.
You may not want to be married. You may not like being single. You may feel a pain from your identification with the incorrect ethnic group, either a Jew (circumcised) or Gentile (uncircumcision). You may not like your marriage or find it uncomfortable or unpreferred, because your spouse is an unbeliever. You may feel the mistreatment of slavery to many varied degrees of difficulty and affliction. A man has proposed to marry you, you want to marry him, and you don't like it that your father says 'no' to that. Obviously if the father says to his daughter, you are not moving out on your own, when she wants to move out, married or unmarried, it would be an identical situation. All of these social conditions or institutions acquiesce to pleasing God for Christians.
As a Christian, the social conditions or societal institutions are not about yourself. You are bought with a price and you glorify God in your body and your spirit, which are God's (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). You can glorify God as a married person, as a single, as an uncircumcised person or as a circumcised person, married to a believer or an unbeliever, as a slave or free, and as an older daughter still living under the roof of your parents. None of these social conditions stop a believer from glorifying God. However, an obsession with changing a social condition, because it isn't convenient, it involves some suffering, it is dissatisfying, it isn't fun, or it doesn't allow for the "freedom" that a professing Christian wants is not a reason to end the social condition. The reason must be glorifying the Lord.
Almighty God through the Apostle Paul says if you're single and can't stop fornication, then marry. If singleness is not going to be about the glory of God, because of the temptation to sexual sin, then your social condition, if possible, should be changed to marriage. Since that is such a vital part of marriage, husband and wife should not defraud each other, whether they feel like it or not. It isn't commanded, but if staying single would bring greater glory to God, someone should do that.
Earlier in chapter 6 (vv. 1-12), even if a lawsuit was lawful against another church member, the Christian should depend on the church to resolve the conflict. Church members shouldn't be suing other church members, even if it is lawful, just because they think they'll get a better decision. Maybe they even trust the secular courts above the church, even if they shouldn't. The glory of God, the protection of the reputation of the church, and the submission to the God-ordained authority of the church is more important than the personal interests of an individual church member.
What Paul describes as Christianity in 1 Corinthians 6 and 7 doesn't seem like the Christianity of today. Today the glory of God subordinates itself to feelings, convenience, comfort, and personal interests, especially among millennials. There is no slavery in the United States today. There is even regulation against racial discrimination in most societal institutions and settings. Churches are not intended to fight for changes in social conditions in society. They are intended to stay in them and live the Christian life. The Apostle Paul writes (1 Cor 7:20-23):
20 Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. 21 Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. 22 For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant. 23 Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men.Serve God either as a slave or a free man. Just because you are a slave doesn't mean you aren't a free man. If a Christian finds himself in the Soviet Union, the goal isn't to escape from behind the iron curtain, but to serve God behind it, or like situations.
Today Christian millennials chafe under the authority of parents and the church. They want the world's music, dress, entertainment, and recreation without judgment. It's not that their church and parents are telling them that they can't live for the glory of God. They are telling them to do that. The Apostle Paul says to stay, not leave. They aren't leaving because it helps them serve the Lord. They are leaving because it helps them serve themselves. They don't want the imposition of God ordained authority.
Paul also writes in Galatians 4:1-2:
1 Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; 2 But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.The regular treatment of a son until the time appointed by his father is as a servant. It's up to the father when the son becomes a son and not a servant. Paul uses this social condition as an illustration. Jesus uses it in the story of the prodigal son. The prodigal desired to buck the societal institution. He is today's millennials.
I don't envision the homes of Christian parents being like slavery. The children are not being treated like slaves even if that was what Paul taught in Galatians 4:1-2 or even like what we see in 1 Corinthians 7:20-23. Paul says to Christians, accept those conditions. Stay in them. They aren't even being treated like slaves. They just have to live like a Christian has lived for most of Christian history and they don't like it. They don't want to just upend marriages and homes. They want to upend Christianity itself and turn it into something it isn't. They would never accept slavery, because being a Christian isn't that important to them. They will just flat out disobey 1 Corinthians 7.
Leaving home, getting outside of the authority of the parents, because of the inconvenience, the discomfort, and personal preferences, is more important than the glory of God for many millennials today. They upend any and every structure of authority to have their own way and even spin it into a moral, high character decision, something about freedom and grace. The priority of changing social conditions circumvents or opposes the glory of God though. Then the millennial children ghost their parents, because they want no accountability for having done it. They left because of preference, but they have a conviction about their own pleasure that requires no further interaction with those who disapprove.
1 Corinthians 7 is in the Bible and it is going to be an eye opener to almost anyone who calls himself a Christian, when he chooses to understand it and apply it. It is the truth and should not be ignored, just because of its inconvenience. It would be worth it for you to open a Bible or a window with the passage in it, so you can follow along. To give 1 Corinthians 7 a general title, I might call it, Being a Christian Is Bigger Than Any Societal or Social Condition You Find Yourself In. It is in a section on the proper use of Christian liberties from 1 Corinthians 6:1 to 11:1.
Changing societal conditions is an acceptable cause in the world. You can get credit for being a Christian and be popular too, unlike the preaching of a true gospel. That turns off the world. It's similar to leaving the impositions of Christian family. You can't dress this way. You can't listen to that. You can't go there. Those can't be your friends. A believing wife is required by Paul to stay with her unbelieving husband and sanctify that home. That's hard, but it brings glory to God. A believing daughter is stay with her father, if he says so, even if she wants to marry. Staying home won't stop her from glorifying God, if that's what life is about.
In 1 Corinthians 7 and according to God's will, glory to God clashes with a life of attempts to change social conditions. God wants acceptance of conditions and change of you. You subordinate yourself to what God wants, because that's what is most important to you. That's what is most important period.
Great article. I like how you brought out this passage.
ReplyDeleteI especially like how in 1 Corinthians 7 Paul explains to us in verse 22 that the true relation is, and ought always to be regarded as, to be one derived from our position in Christ, whether as a freeman bought with a price, and also as being Christ's servant. This contrasts with how the Galatians in chapter 4 of Paul's epistle were turning "again to weak and beggarly elements" as though they did not understand how all things are related in Christ, whether one is "free indeed" or in bondage to sin, and whether one is the chosen "people of God" or whether God considers them to be cut off.
Instead, the Galatians were too focused on narrow minded things like physical circumcision all along, trying to make a "shew in the flesh" of others, believing the "traditions of the elders" of the pharisees, and those trying to exclude us from the covenant that we might affect them. Basically appealing to racial heritage as being "true" while being an "heir of God through Christ" as merely "spiritualizing." However, the supposed slave is actually free in Christ; and, to them that were not His people He shall speak "Thou art my people."
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteThanks!