Chastity is the resolve to keep a heart pure and on fire for Jesus. It is not just the virtue that protects us from sexual sin. Chastity is the watchman that guards the heart from any passion that would douse or misdirect the love that belongs to the bridegroom himself.

In I Corinthians 6 Paul is dealing with sexual immorality. In giving pastoral instruction, he says something that is, at first, difficult to understand. He says,
‘Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two will become one flesh.’ But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him’ (vs. 15-17).
Now what is strange about this teaching is that Paul seems to suggest that the spirit of a Christian is wedded to the spirit of Christ. The problem of prostitution is not just that it violates a command of God or that it infringes upon the covenant of a human marriage. The depth of the sin is nothing other than infidelity against Christ himself.
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When churches stay focused on their primary calling, they inject hope into this world. And when a nonbeliever walks into a God-fearing, biblical church, they will find hope for themselves, and for humanity, because they will see person after person who has been transformed.

Ministry is not easy. It can discourage and distract. At times, it’s uncomfortable, precarious, and lonely. For most pastors, it requires years of labor in obscurity, shepherding small congregations and having no platform for broader influence. With all the challenges of ministry, why would anyone want the job? Why is pastoral ministry worth it? Pastors in the thick of the struggle will not endure unless they remember the glory of the church.
Nothing is more noble, more wonderful, more amazing than the work of God in and through the church. The church is not one of many institutions in this world. It is the institution of God for all time. It is an honor to participate in the church’s eternal work. Pastors must be convinced of that reality. And the best place to see that reality on display—and to find strength and encouragement for the ministry—is in the book of Acts.
Many treat the book of Acts as if it was a description of how to do church. While there is plenty of practical ecclesiology in the book, that is not the primary focus. Instead of a book on what the church does, Acts is a book about what the church is. If it was a how-to manual for the church, congregations today would still speak in tongues, or have mandatory church services on the third floor of a building where the pastor would preach until sleep overcomes a congregant and he falls out the window to his death (see Acts 20). If the events of Acts were all normative for church ministry, missionaries could only travel by boat and prayer meetings could only happen at night and in homes. But as we survey the deeper purpose of Acts—to provide us a glorious definition of the church—we find four realities that make the church the world’s most glorious institution.
The Church Bears Witness
In Acts 1:8, Christ says to His disciples: “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” When Christ calls the first generation of the church “My witnesses” he is identifying the church’s central identity. The church is not a political organization or a social club. It does not enact societal change or engage in social justice. Instead, the church proclaims Christ and it shows the world what life is like in His kingdom. It is a sample of a coming day when Christ will reign over every inch of this earth.
That reign is to be presented throughout the world. As Jesus says, the gospel message must go to “Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the end of the earth.” In all the globe, Christians are to describe and exclaim the glories of Christ. Because the church is a sample of the coming glory (Jas 1:18), the church must stop acting as if it’s responsible for the renovation and redemption of culture. When churches lose sight of their foundational purpose—to bear witness to Christ—they start social movements and become distracted with the things of this earth. They forget that they are a witness to Christ, and a sample of His coming kingdom.
When churches stay focused on their primary calling, they inject hope into this world. And when a nonbeliever walks into a God-fearing, biblical church, they will find hope for themselves, and for humanity, because they will see person after person who has been transformed.
This hope-giving is a collective task. Individuals can bear witness to Christ’s transforming work in their life, but only the church can bear witness to Christ’s transforming work for all humanity because only their will nonbelievers find people of all backgrounds, races, ages, and genders transformed (Eph 2:15). When people come to church and see individuals who would never know each other, never care for each other under normal circumstances, now united in love, service, and praise, they see an effective testimony to the power of the gospel.
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In Genesis 3, Eve’s sin occurs when she takes the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree God had forbidden his image-bearers to eat from. Note the language in 3:6: the woman “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,” so “she took of its fruit and ate.” In 6:2, the sons of God “saw” that the daughters of man were “attractive,” so they “took” as their wives any they chose. In Genesis 3 and 6, there was a “taking” of what someone “saw” as “desirable,” and this “taking” was something that should not have happened.

In Genesis 6:1–4, the reader encounters one of the most challenging passages in all of Scripture to interpret. I’d like to spend some posts exploring this passage. In this first article, let’s get our bearings. Here’s the passage in the ESV.
1 When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
Echoes from Genesis 1–3
People multiplying is an echo of Genesis 1. God made “man” (Gen 1:26–27), and then he commissioned his image-bearers to be fruitful and “multiply” (1:28). In 6:1, we read of this multiplication happening.
The reference to God “Spirit” in Genesis 6:3 reminds us of 1:2, the second verse in the Bible. There the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters, and in 6:3 the Lord’s Spirit shall no longer abide in image-bearers for extraordinary lengths of time. The limit of “his days shall be 120 years.”
Marriages are reported in Genesis 6:1–4, and marriage is rooted in Genesis 2. Adam and Eve were the first image-bearers, and they were the first married couple. Many generations later, marriages were happening in Genesis 6.
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