Riding the bus home from work last week I was reading through 1
Corinthians and came across a sobering passage of how serious God is about sexual
immorality. In light of Valentine’s Day
I began thinking of the many people that would give up their most precious gift
to someone they just met at a local bar, or someone they've known for years who’s
not their spouse. It made me think about how far our culture has gotten away
from God’s design for us. Television is
saturated with a celebration of sex outside of marriage, glamorization of
teenage pregnancy, the “New Normal” family, and many other perversions of the
beauty God intended for our sexuality.
My wife and I have even struggled in our marriage enjoying the beautiful
gift God has given us due to the modern portrayal of sex. I pray this post would challenge us (myself
included) to get back to God’s design for our sexuality.
The motivation behind
this post is love and I pray I approach it with a humble heart because no one (including
myself) is without sin. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God…”
Rom 3:23. “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the
truth is not in us” 1 John 1:8. I don’t
desire to alienate anyone from my life through this post, rather I pray it
would show my desperate heartfelt desire to spend eternity worshiping God with
everyone who reads.
Sexual Immorality – Who defines it?
In short, the one who defines sexual immorality is God. The One who created us revealed His will for
our lives through His word, the Bible. I
agree with those who say that the Bible was physically penned by the hand of
sinful/flawed/finite men, but I also believe that a sinless/flawless/all
powerful God produced the exact results he wanted in Scripture regardless of
man’s intentions. I believe the Bible
when it says in 2 Tim 3:16 that all scripture is God breathed. And 2 Peter 1:21
when it says, “prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets,
though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy
Spirit.” And Isaiah 40:8 “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but
the word of our God endures forever.”
So with the Bible as the source, let’s look at what sexual
immorality is. If you read His word from
cover to cover, God reveals that sexual immorality is sexuality that violates His
original design. “But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So
the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while
he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the
place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he
had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is
now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for
she was taken out of man.’ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and
is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Jesus reiterates in
Matthew 19 that a man will be united to his wife. That is God’s design for our
sexuality. Examples of things that violate His design include David committing
adultery with Bathsheba who was not his wife, those in the Old Testament with
multiple wives, those in Romans 1 who exchanged natural relations for unnatural
ones, and if I’m being completely honest, it also includes me when Jesus says in
Matthew 5:28 “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has
already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus is saying that sexual
immorality is deeper than our outward acts; the root of it is in the condition
of our hearts. The acts that fall under sexual immorality in the Bible are much
more numerous than I've mentioned, but the bottom line is we are all guilty
outside of Christ.
What we've discussed so far are the various manifestations
of sexual immorality. In its most basic form, the Bible says sexual immorality
is simply sin against God. Like all other sins, the consequences of sexual
immorality are death and eternal separation from God. “The wages of sin is death” Romans 6:23. “Surely
the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear
too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your
sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.” Isaiah 59:1-2. We
were created to bring Him glory (Isaiah 43:6-7), the only true joy is in
bringing Him glory, and I desire that each of us would be able to experience
that joy for eternity. But we can’t have
that joy or bring Him glory if our sins make it so He can’t hear us. When I look at the world around me, I can
relate to what Paul felt when he said, “I have great sorrow and unceasing
anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and
cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the
people of Israel”. Like Paul, I don’t
hate those who are living in sexual immorality; I desperately pray that all
would be saved. And I don’t wish on even my worst enemies the words Christ
speaks in Matthew 7:22-23: “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did
we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many
mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew
you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ ”
So where does that leave us? I pray that it leaves us crying
out to God to save us. I pray it produces repentance in us that leads to faith
and salvation in Christ. We were born
into sin and death, but Christ through his death and resurrection can raise us
back to life. And once alive, I pray that we would die to ourselves daily, pick
up our crosses and live for Him. “Therefore
do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of
wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought
from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of
righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master,
because you are not under the law, but under grace.” (Romans 6:12-14)
