Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be

18 January 2009
is 62:1-5, 1 Cor 6 11-20

What are we intended to learn from these readings? The answer is not as obvious as it might appear. Yes, the obvious subject of the reading from Paul is sexual immorality, and you could certainly leave it at that. His advice is perfectly good, if not exclusively Christian except in its manner of expression, and we would all do well to follow it.

However, there are a few hints in that passage as to what the two readings, taken together, are really about, and the passage from Isaiah clinches it. As always, the meaning is love, God’s love for us and the love that that should elicit from us.

Undoubtedly it is faith that saves us, and not good works, but of the three dispositions that Paul lists as necessary later in this epistle, the greatest is love, and love in us human beings is a response and necessarily shows itself in action. In God, of course, love is not a response; it is part of his nature. God does not love us because we are lovable; we are lovable because he loves us into being and loves us into lovableness.

The phrase I used then: “God loves us into being” is a clue to why these two readings go together so well. In the Old Testament the relationship between God and humankind is seen as analogous to that between a husband and wife; and that is what Paul has in mind when he writes to the Corinthians. The classic text here is Ezekiel 16:
“This is what the Sovereign Lord says to Jerusalem: On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised. Then I passed by and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, "Live!" I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign LORD, and you became mine. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendour I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord. But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute.”

This is a recurring theme in the prophets, if not usually expressed with quite such forcefulness (and what I have given you is an expurgated version). We would not now look on the relationship of marriage as being so unequal, but if we can see it in the context of the time we will understand why it is such a good analogy for God’s relationship with us. In Biblical times it was difficult for a woman to manage unless she was under the care of either a father, a brother or a husband. The father would in the normal way of things die before her; the brother might have more than enough to cope with with his own family; the husband therefore was in a way the woman’s saviour, and she owed him gratitude for making her life possible. He was not, of course, her creator, but without him she might well be destitute, and destitute in a world without health service and benefits; he had not brought her into life, but he certainly preserved her in life. That, I believe, is the background to the double standard that still exists today regarding adultery or sexual misconduct. A promiscuous man is seen as “sowing wild oats”; a promiscuous woman is seen as “no better than she should be”. It is not so long since having a child out of wedlock was enough to ruin a woman’s whole life. Similarly, a man having an affair is seen as “having a bit on the side” while a woman is seen as a home-wrecker. In the west in the 21st century this is ridiculous. In biblical Israel it wasn’t. In the west in the 21st century describing the church (or the individual Christian soul) as the bride of Christ is misleading and confusing. In biblical Israel describing Israel as the bride of YHWH was an extremely clear and hard-hitting metaphor.

It’s because of this huge change in culture that it is even necessary to explain what these readings are about. And what they are not primarily about is sexual immorality. They are about faithfulness and gratitude. And, of course, about God’s love.

When King David repented of his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband, he said “I have sinned against the Lord”. He did not say he had sinned against Bathsheba or Uriah, although he most certainly had done. Because all our sins are ultimately sins against God, and that is why they matter even if no other human being is hurt by them. What is the reason Paul gives when he adjures us to “flee from sexual immorality”? It is that our bodies are members of Christ himself and we are not to take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute; and that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in us, and whom we have received from God. We are not our own; we were bought at a price.

It is impossible adequately to grasp what we owe to God. Our creation, our preservation in being, our salvation. Everything. The biblical writers all struggled, using metaphor and allegory and analogy, all of which finally date and become incomprehensible or at least liable to be misunderstood. There is only one Word that does not date or change, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, Christ yesterday and today and the same for all eternity. We cannot live up to his fidelity, but that is the example we have been set.

Of course we must be faithful to our earthly partners. But fidelity to God comes first, because it is from our relationship with God that everything else flows. And it is not as if we had to do it all ourselves. As Paul said in his second letter to the Corinthians, our sufficiency, our capacity, is of God. You’ll find it summed up in Lamentations Chapter 3:

Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion therefore I will wait for him."
The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.