Tag Archives: Sin

Commentary

What does the Bible say about sex before marriage and homosexuality?

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CARM writes about what the Bible says about sex.

Excerpt:

Any type of sexual union, contact, intimacy is for the marriage only between a husband and wife.  If a man and woman who are not married go to bed together naked and do not have sexual intercourse, this is still sinful.  If they fondle each other without having sexual intercourse it is sinful.  If they go to bed together naked and just hold each other, it is sinful.  The whole point is that the nakedness, viewing the nakedness, the touching of the private areas, fondling, etc., are all reserved for the marriage bed between a husband and a wife.

Now before we see verses, I have to define the term “fornication”. Fornication is sex before marriage.

And here are some specific verses:

1 Cor. 6:12-20:

12“Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything.

13“Food for the stomach and the stomach for food”—but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

14By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.

15Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!

16Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”

17But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

18Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.

19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

Ephesians 5:3-7:

3But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.

4Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.

5For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

6Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.

7Therefore do not be partners with them.

Colossians 3:1-6:

1Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

2Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

3For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

4When Christ, who is your[a] life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

5Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.

6Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.

1 Thessalonians 4:1-8:

1Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.

2For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.

3It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality;

4that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable,

5not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God;

6and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you.

7For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.

8Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

The Bible doesn’t go into scientific details about the effects of fornication. So what harm does fornication cause?

Well, consider oxytocin, a chemical released by women’s brains during sex that causes women to bond to men after sex. Basically, when a women has premarital sex with a man she isn’t married to, the odds are very good that he is not going to commit to her for life, and that he will leave and that she will be hurt. But if she marries the man first, then the bonding that occurs is a good thing, because he isn’t going anywhere and she is free to have those feelings of being bonded to him.

When a woman gets hurt by breaking away from a man that she has bonded with sexually, she loses her ability to trust and depend on men, which she needs to do in order to marry at all. The more she deals with the pain of breaking the bonds over and over, the more she learns to separate her emotions from sexual touching. She needs to have sex in order to make men like her, but she also has to not feel anything, in order to avoid being hurt. This destroys her ability to love and trust if she ever gets married.

Men are hurt from pre-marital sex in a different way. They become cold and cynical about women, unable to trust them, unable to serve them, unable to love them, and unable to commit to one woman for life. In my view, a man who has sex before marriage is not loving women, and he will love them less afterward. If a man loves a woman then he needs to commit to her. Premarital sex ruins a man’s ability to do the things he was designed to do with women. He loses the ability to love unselfishly.

CARM also has an article about the Bible and homosexuality here.

Related posts

Mentoring

How and why to include Jesus in your relationships with others

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I was thinking recently about a number of platonic relationships that I had with women in the past, and I wanted to talk about something I learned in the school of soft knocks trying to be a Christian knight. (Note: this applies 100% in the opposite direction, though, and maybe even 200%, for women who are trying to choose men to relate to).

Basically, when I think about opposite-sex relationships, I think that it is very important to me that I be liked for the right reason. I do not want to be liked because I make her feel happy apart from God. I do not want to be liked because I help her to succeed apart from knowing God. I want to be liked for one reason and one reason only. I want to be liked because I am recognized as important for helping her to know God and to love God.

It’s not my job to help a woman to be happy apart from God or to help her to succeed apart from God in this world, based on worldly criteria. I am not interested in building sand castles in the here and now, even if society approves of those sand castles here and now. It’s not my job to help her to prove to herself (and to others) that she is a “good person” apart from Christ. No one can be good enough apart from Christ.

It’s not my job to help people to feel good about rejecting God. I should not expend my time or resources to comfort someone who is rejecting God. It’s disrespectful to God for that person to invent a new moral standard to follow for their own ends (self-esteem and respect from others), apart from a relationship with God. I can’t help a person who doesn’t want God in the way they really need to be helped.

What you find with some people is that they are very interested in glamorous causes like environmentalism and animal rights, but very dismissive about things like avoiding premarital sex and not killing unborn children. They want to feel good about themselves and to receive the esteem of others, but not in their personal lives. Think of how Bill Clinton committed adultery and how he insisted that his generosity to the poor (paid for by other people’s taxes!) made him a good person in spite of his adultery.

There are a lot of people in the world who do put God at the center and who need support. And it’s my job to make sure that when I choose a woman to work on, that I choose one of these women who gets her idea of “the good life” from her relationship with God through Christ. I want to be able to help someone who really cares about God. And if a person doesn’t want to look into these things, I can’t make them, even if I care about them.

What I have found is that there are women out there who are interested in learning more about God and in conforming their actions to what they find out about him. They read the Bible, they read theology, they read apologetics, and they are interested in assessing the evidence to confirm what they read about. They are not trying to be happy or popular, they are trying to know God and to be related to him. And those are the women that I should support.

For those who are feeling broken from having chosen a non-Christian person to invest in, I have some advice. Always remember that the person who rejected you has also rejected Jesus. You’re not better than Jesus. If a person doesn’t want to acknowledge Jesus and to follow him, then they sure aren’t going to acknowledge you when you try to get them to follow him. God has other ways to help that person if he wants to reach out to them. You’re not the only person he can send. If you’ve failed, move on to someone who welcomes you.

I always try to choose the person who has the most interest in knowing God in Christ and growing her closer to God. I know it’s hard to leave a person who you really love and have invested time in, but if they steadfastly refuse to let you even talk about God then my recommendation is that you move on to someone who will. Don’t leave God out, because relationships aren’t about just you.

Further study

I recommend reading this article by Dr. Michael Murray about the hiddenness of God. God gives people free will to either respond to him or to reject him. And we need to do the same – let people who don’t want us reject us, too. Let them go. Don’t think about them any more. God will go after that person some other way when that person is ready. In the meantime, choose someone to work on who wants God now, so you can have a real impact now.

Commentary

Mark Driscoll explains 8 things that might compel you to reject Jesus

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The list is here on The Resurgence. (H/T Caffeinated Thoughts)

Here’s the best one from his list, in my opinion:

7. Embarrassment

Sometimes it’s just embarrassment, because being a Christian does not get you cool points anywhere. This was my big thing as a non-Christian. All the Christians would come to me and they’d be like, “Okay, you need to give your life to Christ.” And I’m like, “I don’t want to join the team, man. The Ned Flanders society. I do not want to join the team.” And it was always the kids with the bumper stickers and the t-shirts and the permagrins and the parted hair and the wristbands, and they’re like, “We love Jesus! We love him, we love him.” I was like, “Aaaargh! Seriously, is there another team that he has? Maybe wearing black, you know? Could I join that team?” It was just embarrassing. “I love Jesus.” You know how weird it is to get converted in college and your philosophy class, when they’re like, “How many of you are Christians?” “Oh, here we go.” You know. History class. “Yeah, I love Jesus.” Sociology class. “I love Jesus.” Women’s studies class. “Oh yeah, I love Jesus.” You know? You’re just a piñata for your whole undergrad degree. It’s embarrassing. And then every time any Christian says or does anything stupid, myself included—I am not beyond this capacity—it’s like, “You Christians.” You’re like, “There are billions of us! Just because one duffed it doesn’t mean we’re all doing it.”

It’s embarrassing. Do you think it was embarrassing for Naaman to go down to the river? “Hi, I’m the mighty man, leper, help.” It’s kind of embarrassing. For those in Nazareth, it’s like, “You’re the bad guys.” “Really? That’s kind of embarrassing, because we took a vote. We thought we were the good guys.” Some of you just need to be humiliated for Christ.

This is the reason I see the most often in the university and at work. People don’t want to be thought of as stupid, ignorant or different. It’s PRIDE. They want to compare themselves to others and think they are better. And they want others to think they are better than them.

The best reason of all isn’t even on his list. People want to pursue their own interests in this life and they don’t want to be encumbered with the demands of a relationship that forces them to do some things to make God happy. They want to work 100% on making themselves happy.

That’s the number one reason why people DON’T look into these issues to see if Christianity is true. They are afraid that it will be true and that they will have to dedicate some portion of their time to serving God and behaving themselves. I do it too. We all do. And it’s particularly hard to include God in your decision making when you aren’t getting your way.

What does G.K. Chesteron say?

“The problem with Christianity isn’t that it has been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”

Exactly.

I’ll be picking up the Mark Driscoll series on sex and marriage as soon as things cool down at work. I’m working on 3 projects and it’s just too much to do!