{"id":4883,"date":"2010-02-02T10:19:01","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T06:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bobsiegel.net\/wp\/?p=29"},"modified":"2010-02-02T10:19:01","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T06:19:01","slug":"why-does-the-bible-call-pre-marital-sex-a-sin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bobsiegel.net\/wp\/2010\/02\/02\/why-does-the-bible-call-pre-marital-sex-a-sin\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Does The Bible Call Pre-Marital Sex A Sin?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is a brief excerpt from a larger book.
\nFor a fuller treatment of this subject as well as a better context, see:
\nI’d Like To Believe In Jesus But..<\/span><\/a><\/a>(The harder, less frequently discussed questions) By Bob Siegel
\n<\/small>Published by CSN Books<\/small> Copyright \u00a9 2007 by Bob Siegel All Rights Reserved<\/small>
\nPublished by Campus Ambassador Press Copyright \u00a9 1999 by Bob Siegel All Rights Reserved
\n<\/small>This article is not to be reproduced without written permission from the author.<\/small><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy does the Bible call certain practices sinful?\u00a0 For example, why does He call pre-marital sex a sin?\u00a0 This is something which does not seem wrong to me at all and yet Christians condemn it simply because of certain Bible verses.\u00a0 I realize that if the Bible really is the word of God, I would be foolish not to obey it.\u00a0 Still, it would help if once in a while God could explain why something is wrong instead of just saying, \u2018Because I said so.\u2019\u00a0 None of us liked hearing that reason from our parents when we were kids, and it is a lame reason when it comes from God as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think it is appropriate to ask God questions.\u00a0 True, some of what He reveals is a mystery, but morality seems to be one of the issues of which God has chosen to be abundantly clear.\u00a0 This makes sense since it is in the area of morality and ethics that God will hold us accountable.<\/p>\n

I am going to make an outrageous claim.\u00a0 I am convinced that any standard found in the Bible is a standard every person will agree with.\u00a0 Deep inside the human conscience we each affirm the laws of the Bible.\u00a0 We may not all be obeying them, but we all agree with them.<\/p>\n

I am prepared to back up my smug claim.\u00a0 But first, we must define the word sin.\u00a0 When the Bible calls something sinful it is referring to selfishness.\u00a0 I do not mean positive self-esteem but rather any personal convenience that comes at somebody else\u2019s expense.\u00a0 Where do I get this definition? From Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.\u00a0 For this sums up the Law and the Prophets\u201d (Matt.\u00a0 7:12).<\/p>\n

This simple yet profound teaching, (sometimes referred to as the Golden Rule) is intended as a summary of the entire Mosaic Law.\u00a0 Jesus is talking about the Old Testament but in those days they did not yet use the term Old Testament.\u00a0 They used the term Scriptures or Law and the Prophets.\u00a0 Earlier in this very same sermon, Jesus had said:<\/p>\n

\u201cDo not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets.\u00a0\u00a0 I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them\u201d (Matt.\u00a0 5:17).<\/p>\n

If\u00a0 sin is described in the Bible as the breaking of God\u2019s law (Rom. 6), and if God\u2019s law is summed up as a command to treat people unselfishly, then selfishness is the resulting definition of sin.\u00a0 Once we have defined sin as selfishness, it is much more difficult for people to say that they disagree with the Bible\u2019s standards because in actuality we are talking about only one standard.<\/p>\n

The entire law is summed up in a single command: \u2018Love your neighbor as yourself\u2019 (Galatians 5:14, (Apostle Paul referring to another statement of Jesus in which He said the same thing in a different way).2<\/p>\n

Few people are going to claim that they object to such a moral imperative.\u00a0 Other religions and even non religious philosophies such as Humanism or Atheism ascribe to the basic notion of treating others with respect.\u00a0 Observe the clear relationship between the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments:\u00a0 If I\u00a0 really love my neighbor I will not steal from him, I will not sleep around with his wife and of course, I will not kill him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, those are obvious examples.\u00a0 But there are other practices condemned in the Bible which don\u2019t seem to have anything to do with selfishness. And this includes the one I already mentioned, pre-marital sex.\u201d<\/p>\n

The relationship between Biblically labeled taboos and selfishness is not always immediately apparent.\u00a0 But if we can find the connection we can agree with God\u2019s appraisal of the action. With this in mind, we are now ready to look at the issue of pre-marital sex.<\/p>\n

A student once approached my book table at the University of California at San Diego, claiming that the Bible was outdated.\u00a0 He mentioned the listing of certain sexual sins as an example.\u00a0 Certainly he could see the betrayal and dishonesty associated with adultery, but sex outside of marriage was another story.\u00a0 He acknowledged that the Bible labeled premarital sex as a sin (I Cor 7: 1), but expressed bewilderment as to why it was a sin.\u00a0 After I asked him if he at least agreed with Jesus\u2019 Golden Rule he quickly said, \u201cYes, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we would both agree that we should treat others the way we want to be treated?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSure.\u00a0 But that has nothing to do with sex.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSupposing I could show you that it did?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI doubt that you could.\u00a0 Tell me,\u201d he continued, \u201cwhat\u2019s wrong with having sex with my girlfriend as long as I love her?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

The student almost fell over with astonishment.\u00a0 \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing,\u201d I repeated.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNope.\u00a0 If you love her, as you say, nothing is wrong with having sex.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was clear that he was unprepared for this answer.\u00a0 He had obviously expected me to quote some Bible verses that slammed pre-marital sex.<\/p>\n

\u201cWow.\u00a0 I must admit.\u00a0 You\u2019re more open minded than most Christians I meet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I\u2019m not done yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

His cheery disposition melted as he awaited an explanation that would surely show the \u201cfine print.\u201d<\/p>\n

I continued.\u00a0 \u201cWhen you say you love your girlfriend, what do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHuh?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean exactly when you say you love your girlfriend?\u00a0 We both seem to agree to a certain standard here that sex belongs in the context of love.\u00a0 That is fine, but how are you defining love?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know\u2026I love her.\u00a0 That\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs this love just a feeling or does it include a commitment?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell\u2026I\u2019m committed to her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor how long? Are you committed for life?\u00a0 Do you love her unconditionally?\u00a0 Or do you only love her until someone more attractive comes along, or until you grow tired of her or until she displays some weakness that you don\u2019t want to live with?\u00a0 Are you willing to someday leave her, this woman with whom you became so intimate, this person who made herself so vulnerable to you as she expressed her sexuality?\u00a0 Could you someday desert her and devastate her by breaking her heart?\u201d<\/p>\n

In only a few short moments this poor student realized that he didn\u2019t love his girlfriend nearly as much as he thought he did.\u00a0 But isn\u2019t it interesting to see that even without a Bible, he did have some standards in relation to sexuality.\u00a0 Sex, apart from love was wrong.\u00a0 This he could understand.\u00a0 This he could relate to.<\/p>\n

God is not some celestial killjoy who gets upset when we are having a good time.\u00a0 God is not anti sex.\u00a0 God invented sex.\u00a0 A whole book in the Bible, Song of Solomon, is nothing but a sensuous love sonnet between a man and a woman.4\u00a0 But God does care about broken hearts.\u00a0 God is interested in the way we treat people.\u00a0 For these reasons He speaks against sex outside of marriage.<\/p>\n

\u201cOK,\u201d the student continued.\u00a0 \u201cSupposing I were to decide never to leave her.\u00a0 I will never break up.\u00a0 Then can we have sex?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d I responded, \u201cIf you are really committed to her for life and vice versa, then we are talking about marriage.\u00a0 That\u2019s what marriage is, so this would not be sex outside of marriage but sex within marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, but what if we wanted to be committed without legally marrying?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat would be your reason for that?\u00a0 Is your relationship with her a secret?\u00a0 Are there certain people whom you don\u2019t want to know about it?\u00a0 If you can\u2019t be open about your commitment to her, it isn\u2019t really a commitment.\u00a0 Other women will still feel free to flirt with you and men with her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOK\u2026Well\u2026We don\u2019t have to make it a secret.\u00a0 But, why is a marriage license so important?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t the main thing that we are committed before people and before God?\u00a0 Why is a piece of paper such a big deal?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe piece of paper isn\u2019t a big deal.\u00a0 The main thing is being committed before people and before God.\u00a0 So, since you have done that and since the marriage license isn\u2019t a big deal anyway, why not just go ahead and get a marriage license?\u00a0 After all, it is only putting on paper the reality of your situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wish you could have been there to see the look on his face.\u00a0 Obviously one who is not ready for a marriage license is one who has not truly made a marriage commitment.\u00a0 Perhaps if some couple were stranded on a desert island, committed to each other, they could have sexual relations, provided they truly take a vow before God, promising Him that if they ever get rescued, they will obtain a marriage license immediately.\u00a0 But this student didn\u2019t fall into such a category.\u00a0 He came to realize that we weren\u2019t making wedding rings, pieces of paper or even Bible verses into something sacred in their own right.\u00a0 Instead, we were discussing a God who looks at our hearts and motives and gives us this one command: \u201cAs you would have people treat you, treat them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another student once asked me a similar question, but he left out words such as love and commitment, finding them unnecessary.\u00a0 \u201cWhat is wrong with sleeping around with women?\u201d he asked.\u00a0 \u201cI am not hurting anybody.\u00a0 Maybe our sexual relations are casual.\u00a0 Maybe these women won\u2019t mind me leaving them eventually or having a one-night stand.\u00a0 So, again, what harm is being done?\u201d<\/p>\n

Notice how he did agree that sex would be wrong if harm were being done.\u00a0 He just didn\u2019t see the harm.\u00a0 Of course he did find it necessary to make some immediate qualifications.\u00a0 If venereal diseases were transmitted, certainly that would be harm, and if he got a woman pregnant certainly that would say something about the need to associate sex with commitment.\u00a0 But my cheery friend was quite confident that he could have free, safe sex without incurring such results.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell me then, what is wrong with pre-marital sex?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing is wrong with the experience itself,\u201d I answered, \u201cGod isn\u2019t upset that you enjoy women, but these women may someday be married to husbands who would object to what you did.\u00a0 Can you relate to these men?\u00a0 Let me ask you a question: Supposing you had just been married and on your honeymoon night your wife turned to you and said.\u00a0 \u2018Sweetie, I have a confession to make.\u00a0 I slept around with fifty men before I met you\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He gave a sly grin, \u201cObviously that would bother me.\u00a0 But come on, fifty men? Isn\u2019t that kind of an exaggeration?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOK forty\u2026Feel better now?\u00a0 How about just ten? Just five?\u201d<\/p>\n

He finally admitted to me that he would feel bad even if his wife to be had only slept with one man.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what are you saying here?\u201d he complained, \u201cAm I not supposed to get married to a woman who has a past?\u00a0 I thought the Gospel was about forgiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course it\u2019s about forgiveness,\u201d I said, \u201cAnd we all have a past.\u00a0 But you weren\u2019t asking me about forgiving a violation of the standard.\u00a0 You were simply asking if the standard exists.\u00a0 And it certainly does.\u00a0 We both agree that we should treat others the way we want to be treated.\u00a0 Sleeping around with women, even women who say they are uninterested in a commitment from you is unfair to the way their future husbands may feel, for you are not showing those future husbands the respect you would have wanted your wife\u2019s previous suitors to show you.\u00a0 Therefore, Jesus\u2019 Golden Rule applies again.\u201d<\/p>\n

A third challenge came from the hardest nut to crack.\u00a0 Asking him a similar question, I received a completely different answer.\u00a0 \u201cHonestly?\u201d he said, \u201cI would not care if my wife had slept with fifty men or a hundred men before she met me.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t sure I believed him.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t sure if he had ever truly fallen in love and experienced that small emotion called jealousy.\u00a0 Still, I took him at his word and went on.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut whether or not it bothers you, future husbands of the women you sleep around with may be bothered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s their problem!\u201d he snapped.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, that\u2019s your problem if you are going to take Jesus\u2019 words seriously, \u2018As you would have people treat you, treat them.\u2019 You should respect their feelings, and they in turn should respect yours even when you feel differently about things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conclusion:\u00a0 God did not arbitrarily make up standards out of some desire to make our lives miserable. God wants what is best for us and if we are made in His image, we in turn must want what is best for those around us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a brief excerpt from a larger book. For a fuller treatment of this subject as well as a better context, see: I’d Like To Believe In Jesus But..(The harder, less frequently discussed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,26,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aboutchristianity","category-articles","category-questionsandanswers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobsiegel.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobsiegel.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobsiegel.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobsiegel.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobsiegel.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bobsiegel.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobsiegel.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobsiegel.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobsiegel.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}