“Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4).
The Bible says that immorality is sin. The Bible also says that sex is not a sin. It is the wrong use of sex that is a sin. –Billy Graham
Philosophers and writers have talked about the body being evil. It is not. Plato thought the body was evil. George Bernard Shaw once wrote about the tyranny of the flesh. The Bible teaches the body is not evil. It is sacred. The body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit. A wrong view of the body suppressed the subject of sex in the Church, and created great harm.
The Bible has much to say about sex beginning with the fact that Adam “knew” his wife Eve.
Why did God give sex?
First, for the propagation of the human race. No one would be here without the act of intimacy.
Second, for the purpose of avoiding immorality.
Third, for the enjoyment of married love. God has placed a fence around sex and confined it to marriage.
Fourth, to express unity between a man and a woman.
Fifth, to illustrate the intimate love Christ has for the Church. “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27).
Why does God forbid immorality?
First, to protect your future marriage. No decent man will want a woman who has been promiscuous, and no good and godly woman will want a man who has carelessly “sown wild oats.” A person who is without self-control before marriage will find it easier to be unfaithful after marriage.
Second, to protect your body. In a day and age of widespread venereal diseases, encouraged by socially acceptable sensual licentiousness, the body needs protection. Advances in medicine has not diminished the need for protection of the body.
Third, to protect you psychologically. That first experience of intimacy outside of marriage never leaves a person. It always remains, often with guilty feelings. Guilt remains one of the greatest psychological problems in the world today. People regret the mistakes of the past, and find them hard to overcome, and impossible to forget. The apostle Paul tells Christians to flee youthful passions. “Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Timothy 2:22).
Fourth, to protect society. When a culture slogs its way to moral depravity, the family unit cannot be maintained, self-control is abandoned, and the most intimate relationships that bonds people together are severed. America is fast becoming like so many precious civilizations now in the dustbin of history.
Past cultures, such as Rome, openly embraced homosexuality, masochism, pedophilia, bestiality, and every evil imagination of the heart. Those societies that reach a saturation point in sin, will be destroyed by God. God might use war, a plague, or a phenomenon in nature to apply His discipline, but the end result is judgment, societal disintegration, and national destruction.
The world’s recent encounter with the Coronavirus demonstrates how easily any nation, without moral character and individual integrity, can easily be intimated to surrender all civil and religious liberties in order to feel safe from an unseen enemy.
However, there is no hiding from the face of God once His divine wrath is unleashed. God knows how to instill terror into the hearts of people, and turn their minds in such a way they make foolish, self-destructive, and other destructive decisions.
How can a young person, or any person tempted, conquer eros?
First, flee. The Bible says to “flee fornication” (1 Cor. 6:18). Joseph was tempted by the wife of Potiphar but he fled from her presence.
Second, develop a philosophy of righteousness. Joseph was able to flee from Potiphar’s wife because he had committed himself prior to the temptation of seduction to do right, and to be right. He lived by a moral code. Joseph had a philosophy of righteousness. Moral character is revealed in the hour of temptation, but it is forged prior to temptation.
Daniel also purposed in his heart to do right (Daniel 1:8). In the hour of temptation to do wrong, Daniel did what was right in the court of the king. He did not violate his conscience or compromise his convictions.
Third, make no provision for the flesh. When people plan to do wrong, they make preparations for sin. They might have to suggest they are going one place, and go somewhere else. They might have to rent a room, or find a time and place where no one else is home or around. They might have to stop work, or go away for a day or two. Whatever preparations are needed to do wrong are made. The Bible says, “Do not do that.” “But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Rom. 13:14).
Fourth, exercise self-control and self-discipline in spiritual matters. There is no way to overcome any form of sensual temptation except through Jesus Christ. “For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come” (1 Tim. 4:8).
Fifth, keep yourself pure. Make a covenant with your eyes as Job did (Job 31:1), and dedicate your body to God. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Rom. 12:1).
If young people want to protect themselves and their future marriage then develop phileo love first. Phileo love is friendship love. Phileo love invokes a strong feeling of attraction that gives. It is the most general form of love in the Bible.
It takes time to develop phileo love, which means that the process of finding that special someone in life must be slowed down. Young people often rush into an unhealthy relationship, or a premature marriage, and then rush to divorce. Why? They were never friends with the person they became enamored with.
Keeping in mind that sex and marriage are created by God, let the Church teach young people to desire and enjoy all that God has ordained, but within Biblical boundaries, for their good, and for His glory. Then a Christian young woman can say, “His banner over me is love.” And a Christian young man can whisper to her, “Save the last dance for me.”
