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Coping With Life 41 – Sexual Immorality
Coping With Life 41 – Sexual Immorality
Mike Willis
In my previous article, I presented the biblical view of sexuality within the bonds of marriage between a man and a woman who blend their lives to form a family in order to raise their children. In this article, I want to examine one of the contemporary perversions of what God created for man’s good.
In several of the vice lists in the New Testament, Scripture includes the sin of fornication (Rom. 1:29; 1 Cor. 5:1; 6:12-20; 10:8; 2 Cor. 12:21; Gal. 5:19; etc.). The definition of the Greek word porneia is “unlawful sexual intercourse, prostitution, unchastity, fornication” (BDAG, 854). Sexual activity outside the bonds of marriage is one of example where the ethics of humanism and the biblical ethics are in conflict. Humanism teaches that there are no moral absolutes, which is self-contradictory (that is, “there are no moral absolutes” itself is a moral absolute statement). Let this sink in: If there are no moral absolutes, that means that murder, stealing, racial and homosexual discrimination, etc. are not “wrong” because there are not “right” and “wrong” in ethics. Every individual has a right to his own moral choices. Strangely, however, humanists find a way to make racial and homosexual discrimination a most horrible sin and crime.
Scripture explains that God’s laws are for mankind’s own good. “And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, FOR OUR GOOD ALWAYS, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day” (Deut. 6:24). Think of the problems avoided by maintaining one’s sexual purity: pregnancy outside of wedlock, sexual diseases, fatherless homes, temptation to have an abortion, etc. Raising children by oneself frequently creates poverty conditions for the mother and her children, conflict with a father over visitation rights and proper discipline of their children. After one gets married, he is tempted to compare his marriage with past memories of other sexual partners. He/she may feel trapped in a marriage that one had to enter because of a pregnancy. And then there are the emotional problems: the feelings of guilt for having violated God’s word, having made sex a higher priority than obedience to God’s word, lying (whether to one’s parents, a future spouse, friends, or others) to cover up what one has done, etc.
The fact is that humanism is selling our teenagers and young adults a glamour picture of premarital sex that does not reflect reality. The idea that one can “hookup” with a stranger that he/she meets on the dance floor or at a bar without having any emotional attachments does not work. Even Scripture tells us that “he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her” because the sexual bond makes the two “one flesh” (see 1 Cor. 6:16). Mark Taylor explained Paul’s meaning of “one flesh,” “The meaning is that two people cannot engage in casual sex without forming emotional bonds. In the sexual act two people become one, forming an enduring bond with one another” (1 Corinthians, The New American Commentary, 157). The text in 1 Corinthians continues to explain that the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord (6:13).
The simple fact is this: The Lord gives commandments for His children to avoid sexual immorality for the purpose of protecting them (both male and female) from the painful consequences of sexual intimacy outside the bonds of marriage. The young adult who rebels against the commandments of the Lord will suffer painful consequences from his sin.
