3/19/72

DOCTRINE OF SINGLE STATUS

A. There are those who are single who are waiting for their right man or right woman, 1 Cor 7:2. This includes those who haven’t been married and those who have been married, but are not now married.

B. Operation Eunuch, Mt 19:10-12. A eunuch is a person designed by God not to have sex capabilities. This can refer to both male and female. Grace provides something better for them in life.

C. 1 Cor 7:7 teaches about the spiritual gift of celibacy which enables believers who have sexual ability and a sex drive not to marry so that they can devote more time to God.

D. Operation of the Law of Supreme Sacrifice, Paul, 1 Cor 9:5.

1. The law of liberty or law of freedom is the normal function of the growing believer toward God.

2. The law of love is the function of the believer’s impersonal love toward others in which he denies himself something perfectly legitimate in order not to offend others.

3. The law of expediency is used when the mature believer is in cultural situations around unbelievers and does not want anything to interfere with his testimony for the Gospel.

4. The law of supreme sacrifice is where God has special plans for a believer, and has provided something better in place of whatever the believer normally would have had.

E. Older widows are commanded not to remarry, 1 Tim 5:9-10.

F. Those divorced with the legal right to remarry are in single status and have the bonified right under certain conditions to remarry, Deut 24:1-4. These conditions include unfaithfulness on the part of the opposite partner or desertion by the opposite partner. ___________________________________________________________________

R. B. Thieme, Jr. Bible Ministries 5139 West Alabama, Houston, Texas 77056 (713) 621-3740

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