“It is better to marry than to burn with passion”—What does this mean?

Hey readers,

I am glad to finally announce that I got married a few weeks ago and I have found it liberating in the path of sexual addiction recovery. I couldn’t help it but share that just after the wedding was over, God spoke to me in a dream and told me “it is finished”. The many years of burning in sexual desire had ended. And just like any path that ends, a challenging new beginning emerged; A high expectation from my wife for a life of bliss in marriage and love for one another sealed in God’s covenant and consummated in a joining of flesh.

So my thought ran up and down while in the honeymoon, what did God through Paul mean when he wrote 1 Corinthians 7:9. How is the flesh defeated by this great covenant of marriage? I did a bit of research and realized that God has destined me to worship him in marriage just as before with all my physical desires. See what John Piper says in his sermon-ette below.

I should say just one brief word about that infamous sentence in 1 Corinthians 7:9: “If they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” Remember, this is addressed explicitly to men and women (v. 8). And here is the one thing I want to say about it: When a person seeks to be married, knowing that as a single he or she would “burn with passion,” it doesn’t have to mean that marriage becomes a mere channel for the sex drive. Paul would never mean that in view of Ephesians 5.

Instead when a person marries—let me simply use the man as an example—he takes his sexual desire, and he does the same thing with it that we must all do with all our physical desires if we would make them means of worship—

1) he brings it into conformity to God’s word;

2) he subordinates it to a higher pattern of love and care;

3) he transposes the music of physical pleasure into the music of spiritual worship,

4) he listens for the echoes of God’s goodness in every nerve;

5) he seeks to double his pleasure by making her joy his joy; and

6) he gives thanks to God from the bottom of his heart because he knows and he feels that he never deserved one minute of this pleasure.

Listen to the Full sermon By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

The last pointer #6 is the one that I relate to the most, after all that I had done outside marriage to the point that God had brought me to, I know that I didn’t deserve one minute of the pleasure that us shared in marriage with my wife, but God… In his mercies and grace gave me this gift and I am eternally grateful to the King of Kings and Lord of lords. Bless your name of Lord God almighty.

So I urge you my brothers, do not burn with passion but be quick to pray for God to gift you with a spouse. Then live in eternal worship to your creator for the gift he has given you.

God bless you,

Gathungu, iStopped