This is an excellent question for young Christians to resolve in their hearts and heads before it
becomes emotional and personal, especially in a cultural climate where we are repeatedly told
that pre-marital sex is not only not sinful, but healthy, normal human behavior.
Chaste teenagers are currently considered more than a little defective. Heaven help you if your dedication to sexual purity lasts into your
twenties.
So why have Christians always taught that sexual purity is so important?
Lawful, but Not Helpful
For the Christian, the answer “Because God says it is” really should be enough, shouldn’t it? But
perhaps it would be a bit of a cop-out for me to simply leave it there. After
all, there are one or two verses we could cite out of context in an attempt to
suggest that what we do with our bodies is not really all that important to our
spiritual state. For example, Jesus said, “There is nothing outside a person
that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person
are what defile him.” Sure, he was talking about food, but couldn’t we argue
that the same principle might apply to sexual experience? I mean, “To the pure,
all things are pure”, right?
However, the Bible doesn’t leave this question hanging. Apostolic interpretation of the Lord’s teaching
forbids us from using what he said to declare open season for behavior that has
been considered sinful for over two millennia. In 1 Corinthians, Paul
starts out with much the same question the Lord was considering — the
appropriateness of eating foods that had once been considered off-limits for
Jews — and he says essentially the same thing Jesus taught, “All things are lawful for me.” Then he adds this: “But not all things are helpful.” I could
do all kinds of things with my Christian freedom, says the apostle, but some of
them are damaging.
Damaging to my testimony. Damaging to other people. Damaging to my relationship with the Lord. Damaging
to me.
A Question of Ownership
From here he moves quickly on to the question of what is sexually appropriate for the Christian,
and he says this: “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for
the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” The first problem is that when we sin sexually, we are acting against our own design. It may be possible to use our bodies for evil, but that is not what they were intended for. Neither the human body nor the human mind respond well to repeated misuse, which is exactly what sexual immorality involves.
But more importantly, Paul makes the point that as Christians we are under new
ownership. Our bodies are not ours to do with as we please. Having been redeemed from certain death by the blood of Christ, we are obligated to consider his claims in everything we do, including who we sleep with and when. “You are not your own, for you were bought
with a price.”
These verses establish beyond question the Lord’s right to call the shots about how we behave. We can
like it or not, but if we claim to be Christians, that’s part of the deal.
The One-Flesh Principle
But we might well ask ourselves what would make God forbid something which we are constantly hearing
is one of the most wonderful experiences two people can have together. In
the same passage, Paul tells us why: “Every other sin a person commits is
outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.”
Sinning against our own bodies is not some distant, lofty spiritual principle that has no immediate
consequences in the real world. Sexual sin is transformative. It changes you in
ways you can’t imagine unless you have lived it. If you happen to catch a nasty STD or two, it can also be physically transformative, and not in a good
way. But that’s far from the most important change that occurs. When you unite
your body with that of another person, something is going on that has major
significance. Paul says that when man and woman come together, they become “one flesh”. This is true in every
case, even if the sexual encounter seems relatively unimportant to the people involved.
It remains true even if you are having sex with a prostitute, which is
about the most emotionally-detached, meaningless sort of encounter one can
possibly picture.
Bring on the Baggage
The ongoing problems that result from being sexually experienced are not obvious to people who have never
tried to establish a life-long partnership. If that is what you plan to
eventually shoot for down the road, there is no worse possible foundation for a
Christian marriage than a whole pile of meaningless sexual experience ...
or, even worse, sexual experiences with a number of different people that
seemed meaningful at the time, but did not end in commitment. In those situations,
somebody is always hurt, and that hurt has a domino effect in every future
relationship.
In any ongoing relationship that does not last for life, one of two things is usually happening.
For at least some part of it — at least the last few months, but in many
instances the entire relationship — you are either using another person or
you are being used by them. The “friends with benefits” thing is really a bit
of a myth. It may start out as uncommitted fun, but someone always gets hurt in
the end.
Using ...
Let’s consider the user first. The Christian who deliberately uses others knowing he has no permanent
interest in them is acting wickedly. There is nothing loving about taking
advantage of people for your own gratification or even to pass the time until
the right person comes along. Having a lot of sexual relationships may
initially build your confidence with the opposite sex, but that confidence
evaporates with age and experience, especially as you see how many other people
out there are operating just like you.
Moreover, we can all do the math, and we all tend to project. Liars think everyone else is lying to
them. Users become paranoid that someone is going to pull their own trick on
them someday. Imagine trying to live as man and wife when you both have a
history of infidelity and dishonesty (and yes, they always go together). The
level of paranoia and insecurity that results is truly staggering. You may have
“settled down” now, and are committed to the relationship. But how do you
really know for sure that your wife has settled down if she has previously been
involved in multiple sexual relationships? You might just be the “bridge” guy
until she comes across a man she really wants to make things work with.
Moreover, consciences tend to get seared the more we repeat the same sort of sin. Fidelity is not
something we can turn on and off like a light switch. If we have not learned to
practice it when we are young, we will find it very difficult to develop as we
age. After all, if you have committed the same sin 150 times, what’s
one more sin of the same sort going to do? That’s how we think. The person
who imagines he can do what he wants with his body in his teens and twenties,
then will suddenly be able to control it perfectly in his thirties when he
wants a family and children, is hallucinating.
And really, do you imagine it’s a good time to crawl into bed with someone every night knowing you
are being consciously or unconsciously compared to the performance of ten,
twenty or fifty other people? (And, yes, I know these days it’s frequently
a whole lot worse than that, or at least so the media wants us to believe.)
... and Being Used
Then let’s consider the person who is being used. Being hurt is no fun. When you end up on the losing
end of a relationship you hoped would last, you have given your ex-partner
something you can’t get back for your next attempt at a relationship. Your
virginity maybe, sure, but I’m really talking about trust. People who can’t
trust are miserable to live with. They are unhappy people who make everyone
else unhappy. A man or woman who has been burned four, five or six times
makes terrible marriage material, almost as bad as the people who did the
damage to them. They become self-fulfilling prophecies of relationship failure
by driving away everyone who tries to love them so that they can “control”
their exit from the relationship rather than be caught by surprise.
For the Christian, sexual purity is huge. With God all things are possible, and I’m not saying that
nobody with a checkered sexual history can ever become a good life partner if
they are truly committed to changing in obedience to Christ. It’s just much,
much harder. And a Christian teen who is looking for reasons to experiment with
sex does not sound to me much like the sort of person for whom repentance comes easy.
The Lesson of Solomon
King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. He had sexual experience on a par with NBA players and
bassists in hair metal bands ... again, if we believe the media. So let’s
let one of the most well-traveled bodies in Bible history have the last word about the importance of
sexual purity:
“Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his paths.”
With all his worldly experience, what does Solomon recommend to the world when given the chance to
say his piece? Loving monogamy.
That settles it for me.
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