Sexual Ethics Today
Why is it wrong to be sexually promiscuous? Typical reasons that modern Christians give are that sexual promiscuity can lead to out-of-wedlock pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and emotional and relational hurt. While these reasons are valid as far as they go, it is quite significant that Scripture never once mentions the first two reasons, and only rarely mentions the last reason.The fact that Christians so often appeal to these sorts of reasons for why people should not be sexually promiscuous goes to show that modern Christians have largely lost a real sense that lust is sin and that chastity is a vital and necessary virtue. As a result, when the Church wants to motivate young Christians to follow biblical sexual ethics by refraining from sex outside of marriage, it must resort to the tactic of pointing to various commonsense potential negative consequences of sexual promiscuity.
The problem is, these negative consequences do not always result from having sex outside of marriage. Modern, effective forms of artificial birth control and “safe sex” practices can effectively avoid out-of-wedlock pregnanceis and STDs. And many modern people, including many Christians, have attitudes towards sexuality that allow for “casual sex” and even “open marriages” without anyone feeling emotionally hurt. Thus, these potential negative consequences of sexual promiscuity by themselves are not sufficient to show that extramarital sex is always wrong.
American Christians live in a highly sexualized culture, and the media continuously bombards them with the message that sex outside of marriage is perfectly fine and normal. Studies have shown that American culture’s messages about sexuality have deeply influenced young American Christians, such that there is little difference in the behavior of Christians and non-Christians with regards to sexual ethics. This is a major ethical crisis for the American Church.
In response to this crisis, some churches and Christian organizations have organized abstinence campaigns to try to influence young Christians to conform their sexual behavior to biblical sexual ethics. These campaigns almost always focus on telling young Christians to wait until they get married to have sex.[1]See Making Chastity Sexy: The Rhetoric of Evangelical Abstinence Campaigns by Christine J. Gardner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). The problem with this is that, for various reasons, many Christians never get married, despite having a strong desire to do so. These Christians may quickly tire of waiting if years or decades go by without their promised spouse ever materializing. Also, there are some Christians who only experience same-sex attraction; they are simultaneously told to just wait until marriage to have sex and that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. Since traditional marriage may not realistically be an option for them, this ends up being an incoherent message.
Sometimes, the message to be abstinent until marriage is coupled with the message that sex will be even better if you wait until marriage to have it. This is rather like saying that food will taste better if you make a good, honest living and buy it rather than stealing it; it is simply not true. This message tries to employ a self-contradictory strategy of appealing to indulgence in a person’s egocentric desires in order to motivate them to act ethically. It encourages the pursuit of indulging one’s personal sexual desires, rather than encouraging self-denial and the submission of one’s sexual desires to the will of God. Predictably, such a message fails to effectively motivate young Christians to be obedient to God with regards to their sexuality for any length of time.
Biblical Sexual Ethics
So, why is it wrong to be sexually promiscuous? There are many biblical passages we could turn to to begin answering this question, but 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 is an excellent place to start. Paul writes, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” [Gen 2:24] But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies” (vv. 15-20).
It is quite significant that Paul here makes no attempt to argue against sexual promiscuity from grounds of general human reasonableness. Instead, he argues theologically. Christians are members of the body of Christ and temples of the Holy Spirit. Because of this, it is unthinkable that they would have sex with prostitues, since this would join Christ’s body with a prostitute and defile the temple of God. Note that neither of these arguments apply to people outside the Church, since non-Christians are not members of Christ’s body nor are they temples of the Holy Spirit.
American culture considers sex to be a merely physical act that only has the significance which the participants subjectively give to it. However, Paul makes clear in this passage that, when two people have sex, this has an objective, spiritual significance of uniting them as one flesh. Thus, from a Christian perspective, there simply is no such thing as “casual sex,” even if both participants subjectively regard it in this way.
American culture says that “morality” consists only in avoiding harming others, and teaches the attitude that “no one has a right to tell me what to do with my own body.” In contrast, Paul teaches Christians to flee from sexual immorality because it is an internal, not an external, sin. Christians know that they do not “own” their bodies; God owns their bodies, and so they must honor God in how they use them.
According to the biblical sexual ethic, Christians must restrict having sex to the context of a lifelong covenant commitment of marriage. If they are not married, they must completely abstain from having sex. If a married person has sex with someone who is not their spouse, this is the sin of adultery. If two unmarried people have sex, this is the sin of fornication. Both are serious sins which are forbidden among the community of Jesus’s disciples.
Why is this the case? As the teachings of Genesis, Paul, and Jesus (Matt 19:4-6; Mark 10:6-9) make clear, sexual intimacy spiritually unites two people as one flesh. If one of them then has sex with someone else, this perversely violates this spiritual union. American culture generally considers adultery to be wrong because it violates a commitment two people have made to be sexually exclusive with one another, but considers fornication not problematic because no such agreement about exclusivity has been made. From a Christian perspective, however, the difference morally between adultery and fornication is not that great, since, in either case, the fact that two people have become one flesh is perversely violated.
God intended sexual intimacy to occur within the context of holistic intimacy between husband and wife in a lifelong covenant commitment of marriage. Sexual intimacy outside of marriage is distorted and perverted because it detaches physical sexual intimacy from all the other aspects of intimacy with which it is supposed to be inextricably interconnected. Fornication is incompatible with Christian love because it inherently treats the other as an object for fulfilling one’s own sexual desires, rather than fully treating the other as another person with whom one has a relationship of holistic, mutual self-giving and intimacy. This is the case even if fornication occurs within the context of a relatively “committed” dating relationship, since even in this case, there remains an attitude of, “When this person no longer makes me feel happy, I will be willing to leave them and find someone else to make me happy.” Thus, the other is still ultimately treated as an object to be used for one’s own enjoyment. Only within the context of a lifelong covenant commitment of marriage, in which one commits to love one’s spouse for better or for worse, till death, can sexual intimacy be rightly ordered and morally acceptable.
The Lord Jesus Christ taught us that to even look at another person lustfully is a sin (Matt 5:27-28). Lust is sinful because it treats another human being as an object for one’s own pleasure, which is incompatible with Christian love. Christians must seek to rid themselves of the sin of lust and to develop the virtue of chastity, the right ordering of our sexual desires.
Many modern people criticize the biblical Christian sexual ethic as too difficult and unrealistic. It is indeed difficult to always live up to the standards of biblical sexual ethics. But there are other aspects of biblical ethics, such as the demand that we genuinely love our enemies, that are even more difficult to live up to; this does not give us license to be disobedient to God regarding these ethical issues. As they struggle with sexual temptation, Christians must seek every day, by God’s grace, to develop the virtue of chastity. As they do so, they can trust that God in His mercy will forgive them when they fail to live up to His standards, and that the sanctifying power of God’s Holy Spirit will eventually transform them to have a Christlike character with regards to their sexuality.
Notes
| ↑1 | See Making Chastity Sexy: The Rhetoric of Evangelical Abstinence Campaigns by Christine J. Gardner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). |
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