Thus those so-called “superfine apostles” were trying to marry off the Corinthian congregation to a different Christ as a spiritual husband. This was leading to a spiritual immorality. How?

20. How was the corrupting influence of those “superfine apostles” leading to spiritual immorality on the congregation’s part?

²⁰ The apostle Paul had already promised them in marriage to Jesus Christ the heavenly Son of God. So now if they let themselves become engaged to marry some other Christ, they would be losing their spiritual morality. They would be losing their spiritual chastity, their virgin chastity, that they owed to Jesus Christ as their promised Husband. The apostle Paul wanted to present this Christian congregation that he had founded as a “chaste virgin to the Christ,” but here those “superfine apostles” were trying to break the congregation’s engagement to Jesus Christ and switch it over to a counterfeit Christ. They were trying to seduce the already engaged congregation to commit spiritual immorality, spiritual adultery, inasmuch as in Jehovah’s law given through Moses an engaged virgin was considered as already the wife of the man to whom arrangements had been made to marry her.

21. What kind of jealousy did Paul have over the congregation in Corinth, and to whom was he a true friend?

²¹ Hence the apostle Paul likened those so-called “superfine apostles” to the serpent in Eden, and he tried to protect the Christian congregation from them. The jealousy that Paul had over them was not a selfish, impassioned, ungodly jealousy, but was a godly jealousy that tolerated no rivalry but insisted on exclusive devotion to Jesus Christ their original Bridegroom. Paul was truly a “friend of the bridegroom,” and he desired to experience in due time the friend’s “joy on account of the voice of the bridegroom” when speaking to his “chaste virgin” Bride in heaven.—John 3:29.

SEXUAL PURITY (CHASTITY) ALSO

22. (a) About what other kind of purity of the congregation was Paul concerned? (b) What did he write about a pertinent case in the congregation in Corinth?

²² As a general overseer who had the “anxiety for all the congregations” in Gentile lands of the West, the apostle Paul was also deeply concerned about the bodily chastity or sexual purity of the organization of God’s public servants. Paul knew that a local congregation could not remain a part of God’s organization and at the same time allow the moral impurity of any of its members. The congregation needs to free itself, vindicate itself from all community responsibility for the sexual immorality of any of its members. Listen to this case that Paul handled for the congregation at Corinth in the first century of our Common Era. It was a shocking case, for Paul writes: “Actually fornication is reported among you, and such fornication as is not even among the [Gentile] nations, that a wife a certain man has of his father. And are you puffed up, and did you not rather mourn, in order that the man that committed this deed should be taken away from your midst?”

23. In that connection, what kind of responsibility did Paul not want to share, and so what did he do about the situation?

²³ As Paul had founded that congregation and had the apostolic oversight over it, he was not for a minute going to become soiled with any community responsibility for such immorality inside God’s organization of public servants. So he immediately follows up the charge that he files against the congregation by writing: “I for one, although absent in body but present in spirit, have certainly judged already, as if I were present, the man who has worked in such a way as this, that in the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are gathered together, also my spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus, you hand such a man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, in order that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. . . . Do you not judge those inside, while God judges those outside? ‘Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.’”—1 Cor. 5:1-5, 12, 13.

24, 25. (a) In Paul’s mind, what was the question now with regard to the Corinthian congregation? (b) How did the congregation demonstrate itself to be chaste in this matter?

²⁴ In Paul’s mind the question now was, Will the Christian congregation with its so-called “superfine apostles” clear itself of any community responsibility for this shocking case of incestuous immorality? Would it be saddened because it had tolerated this immorality within it for any length of time without proper action? Would it vindicate itself by promptly carrying out the apostle’s orders to remove that wicked man from the congregation? Paul’s mind was later set at rest when his missionary companion Titus came back from Corinth and told him that the congregation had done so. Giving official approval to this, Paul wrote them:

²⁵ “(I see that that letter saddened you, though but for a little while,) now I rejoice, not because you were just saddened, but because you were saddened into repenting; for you were saddened in a godly way, that you might suffer no damage in anything due to us. For sadness in a godly way makes for repentance to salvation that is not to be regretted; but the sadness of the world produces death. For, look! this very thing, your being saddened in a godly way, what a great earnestness it produced in you, yes, clearing of yourselves, yes, indignation, yes, fear, yes, longing, yes, zeal, yes, righting of the wrong! In every respect you demonstrated yourselves to be chaste in this matter.”—2 Cor. 7:8-11.

26, 27. (a) Only after what developments would it be safe for the Corinthian congregation to take the incestuous man back again? (b) Nevertheless, against what did the congregation have to keep on watching, and what did Paul write them to indicate this?

²⁶ Certainly only after the congregation had vindicated itself by showing that it did not uphold sexual immorality among its members, only after they had demonstrated themselves “to be chaste in this matter,” only after that would it be safe for the apostle Paul to advise the congregation to let that wicked man come back into the congregation again. Not only had the man sincerely repented of his incestuous sin, between the time that the congregation received Paul’s first letter and the time that it got his second letter, but the congregation as a whole had taken the right stand and action toward the matter. (2 Cor. 2:6-11) But, whether they forgave this man for his proved repentance and took him back in again or not, Paul knew that the Corinthian Christians had to keep on watching against sexual immorality in the congregation. They were living in a very sexy pagan city and many members of the congregation had come in from that sex-crazed world. Hence toward the end of his second letter (2 Cor. 12:20, 21) Paul made this remark:

²⁷ “I am afraid that somehow, when I arrive, I may find you not as I could wish and I may prove to be to you not as you could wish, but, instead, there should somehow be strife, jealousy, cases of anger, contentions, backbitings, whisperings, cases of being puffed up, disorders. Perhaps, when I come again, my God might humiliate me among you, and I might mourn over many of those who formerly sinned but have not repented over their uncleanness and fornication and loose conduct that they have practiced.”

28, 29. (a) How is the same situation true of the New World Society today, especially as more persons come into it? (b) Why may Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 well be said to the Society today?

²⁸ The same situation is true of the New World Society of Jehovah’s witnesses. It is living in the midst of a sex-maddened world, a regular modern Sodom. Not all the members of this New World Society have been born and reared in the homes of Christian witnesses of Jehovah. The vast majority of them have come out from Babylon the Great, that is, the world empire of false religion, and from among her immoral political paramours. And the more tens of thousands there are who come into the Society from this sexually disturbed world year after year, the more the Society as a whole is subjected to an immoral pressure, because of the immoral leanings of a growing number of incomers. Accordingly, to the Society of today the following words of Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Christians may well be said:

²⁹ “What! Do you not know that unrighteous persons will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be misled. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men kept for unnatural purposes, nor men who lie with men, nor thieves, nor greedy persons, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit God’s kingdom. And yet that is what some of you were. But you have been washed clean . . . in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and with the spirit of our God.”—1 Cor. 6:9-11.

30. (a) What fact makes it all the more difficult to keep the Society clean as time goes on? (b) Against what did the apostle Peter warn all the washed ones?

³⁰ Yes, as the New World Society grows, “that is what” more and more of Jehovah’s witnesses inside the Society once were. This fact makes it all the more difficult to keep such a growing Society clean, pure, chaste. But all baptized persons today in the Society would never have been admitted into it if first they had not been washed in the name of the Lord Jesus and with the spirit of our God. So in his second letter (2 Pe 2:22) the apostle Peter warns all of us washed ones that we should not go back to such worldly uncleanness, like the “sow that was bathed to rolling in the mire.”

31, 32. (a) Even if not such kinds of persons previously, against what do members of the Society have to watch? (b) For instance, what did Paul have to write Timothy about chastity inside the congregation?

³¹ Many members were not such kinds of persons before they came into the Society. Yet they should keep on watch against falling into temptation to such unclean practices. Take, for instance, Timothy, the missionary who joined Paul in writing the second letter to the congregation at Corinth. He was half-Greek, half-Jew, and was brought up in a godly way by his Jewish mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois. (2 Tim. 1:5) Yet after Timothy had worked with him for about fifteen years Paul saw good to write Timothy the following words on moral chastity inside the congregation:

³² “Do not severely criticize an older man. To the contrary, entreat him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters with all chasteness. Honor widows that are actually widows.”—1 Tim. 5:1-3.

33. (a) To whom especially are Paul’s words to Timothy directed with regard to dealing with the womenfolk? (b) Hence the treating of them immorally would be just as abominable as what?

³³ When it came to dealing with womenfolk in the congregation, the young and the old, it called for moral chasteness on Timothy’s part, though now he was no longer a teen-ager. Remember, please, this letter to Timothy was to a regional overseer of congregations, and not to a congregation in general. So the instructions to deal with the “younger women as sisters with all chasteness” stands directed with special force to Christian men who serve as district servants, circuit servants and congregation servants in the New World Society of today. If these today pursue this clean, chaste conduct toward those of the opposite sex, such servants should be strengthening examples to all the other dedicated, baptized men in the Society. If such servants treat the younger women in the Society as they treat their own sisters of their personal family, then they will not morally injure these younger women of the Society any more than they will their own fleshly sister. Committing fornication with one of the younger women of the congregation would be just as abominable as committing incest with one’s own fleshly sister.

34, 35. (a) To what other persons did Paul need to give moral instructions, and with what end in view? (b) In that behalf, what must the older women do in behalf of the younger women?

³⁴ On the other hand, moral instructions needed to be given also to the women of the Christian congregation. To another fellow missionary named Titus, Paul wrote the following words: “Let the aged women be reverent in behavior, not slanderous, neither enslaved to a lot of wine, teachers of what is good; that they may recall the young women to their senses to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sound in mind, chaste, . . . so that the word of God may not be spoken of abusively.”—Titus 2:3-5.

³⁵ What must older women do to recall the younger women to their senses, that these may love their own husbands instead of some other woman’s husband, and may be chaste toward all of the opposite sex? The aged women must themselves set the example of personal chasteness. Chasteness on the part of a woman in the New World Society can help another person to take up the Christian course of life.

36. How did the apostle Peter emphasize this fact to Christian wives, with what reflection on God’s Word?

³⁶ The aged apostle Peter emphasized this fact by writing to Christian wives: “You wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, in order that, if any are not obedient to the word, they may be won without a word through the conduct of their wives, because of having been eyewitnesses of your chaste conduct together with deep respect.” (1 Pet. 3:1, 2) The more corrupt that a community is outside the congregation and outside the home of a Christian wife, the more the chastity of the faithful wife shows up to good effect, with greater impressiveness. It reflects well on God’s Word.

How the Organization Should View Chasteness

1, 2. (a) How is human sex to be viewed, and why so? (b) How does Genesis 1:27, 28 explain the origin and the purpose of sex?

CHASTENESS takes sex into account. In the light of God’s holy Word sex is sacred. Sex did not spring from blind, unintelligent, unmoral, accidental evolution operating toward a selfish end. Human sex, as well as the sex of animals, fish, birds, insects, and plants, is of God. Is God immoral because he created sex? No! He did not purpose the great wave of sex madness that is sweeping the world, resulting in all kinds of terrible social diseases or unhealth. He purposed that sex should serve a miraculous purpose, that of propagating life in its various forms on earth, including human life. In very simple language the first chapter of the Holy Bible