Anonymous asked:
Hey. I listened to your sermon on Daniel in the Lions den. <3'd it. You showed me some things I didn't pick up when I read it. Anyway, my question is about pre-marital sex. Historically people could have sex outside of marriage and from what i gather, waiting to get married until we have sex was (aside from protecting us from dieseases and such) ordained to keep young women safe. So would it still apply now? What exactly is the spiritual danger? Does it exist?

Thank you for saying that. I’m constantly insecure about preaching so I really do appreciate your encouragement. That one was unusually lit up by some Holy Spirit juice.

The church’s teaching on premarital sex is not just a preacher’s invention but a biblical mandate: even if you define the word adultery much different from the Bible like some do (which takes some linguistic gymnastics), you’d still have to consider 1 Corinthians 7:3-4, 9, and Jesus’ words about remarriage with the implicit assumption of virginity. There are also logical implications from marriage’s design from Genesis to Revelation that are easy to read into. You can pretend they don’t exist but I don’t enjoy the taste of lightning wrath either.

Having just finished The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller, I’ll share some thoughts about this augmented by Keller’s teaching. Just so you know, the primary reasons are not about disease or pregnancy.

1) Premarital sex causes confused intimacy. Physical sex was designed to bring a husband and wife closer together, to re-create and renew the covenant bond, to be absolutely vulnerable and give-all with one another.

When it’s done outside marriage, it will make you feel closer to the person than you really are. Several pathologies will result. You will bypass the biblical pace of intimacy — discovery, sharing, encouraging, prayer, self-control, honor, respect — and build a false connection on physicality. When you bypass God’s commands, you’ll soon become a half-formed, unrealized, virtual copy of yourself. Because God’s commands are how things work.

Either you’ll have to be completely cold-hearted to stay “ahead,” which is no better than abuse, or you’ll be desperately hoping the sex leads to security, which creates obsessive paranoia and neurotic jealousy. You’re either cold meat or self-selling meat on display.

Since premarital sex has no guarantee of long-term commitment (and even if it did), any real intimacy that you could have had is short-circuited by a pride to protect yourself or a desperation to “win” that person. So people break up like disposing trash or stay much longer in a relationship than they should for the wrong reason. In church we call that bondage.

2) God shapes the vision of your spouse’s beauty on one spouse. 1 Corinthians 7:3-4 touches on this. As one pastor said, Adam only had one spouse and one vision of beauty: “It’s either Eve or aardvark.” Adam didn’t practice physical prowess with anyone else, nor did he have a catalogue to compare. When you have multiple pictures of so-called beauty in your life, it’s almost impossible to be satisfied with one wife or a million.

It’s only the tragic person who can never be satisfied with consistent stability. This is why porn is so destructive to marriages: it destroys a man’s desire for his wife if he has a buffet-mentality. The culture still celebrates fifty year marriages for this very reason: because the husband and wife dedicated themselves to one wonderful vision.

3) The psychological ramifications of premarital sex are too drastic to ignore. If you have had premarital sex, you immediately know that sex becomes “part of the package.” You open a floodgate that God designed for marriage. When you choose against that, it’s easier then to throw away your body to half-known people or to strangers. The world calls this “freedom” but it’s really just slavery. You feel like you “have to” since you already did it anyway, or else the other person will leave you or dislike you.

Imagine that your future daughter’s boyfriend has a prerequisite of, “Have sex with me or we can’t date.” You’d probably shotgun this dude in the groin. Just kidding. I meant you’d definitely shoot him.

I have never met one woman ever who didn’t regret the guys she slept with before she was married. At the very least, she’s not proud of them. She might say, “I have no regrets,” but people who say that are either in denial or have lived perfect lives. Of course we have regrets. Only Jesus could possibly press us on from them.

If you’re having premarital sex with your fiance, please don’t fool yourself. A lack of control now only explodes in marriage. You’ll bring all your sins into it, including that one. If you’re not good at budget, don’t clean well, raise your voice a lot, punch walls, and don’t like children, that doesn’t suddenly get cured by marriage. Neither does a lack of discipline with your body.

I’m ashamed to say that because of my premarital experiences with multiple women, I’ve exposed them to a careless lifestyle where they no longer cared for their own bodies as God-created poetry for Him. I wrote them into a cosmic tragedy. Sure it’s been their choice, but it doesn’t change that I was a part of their deterioration. It keeps me up at night. Some days I weep in the car just thinking about it.

4) Premarital sex is a cheap imitation of the real thing. I know what you’re thinking: sex is hard not to do because it’s good. Of course it’s good and God knows that.

This is where we must look forward instead of looking back. I could tell you all the reasons why premarital sex is immoral, but let’s instead seek God’s better plan for us.

When you have the covenant blessing of God, a commitment made in front of all parents and friends and family, a legal union made public to the world, a heart promised to your spouse forever, a bed that will only have one lover for life, a mind that is full of your spouse’s body as the standard for your desire, and the loving devotion of your spouse to sanctify and encourage and rebuke and know you as you really are — imagine that sort of sex. Anything else by comparison is a low budget, laughable, poorly assembled knock-off.

By the grace of God, I’ll have one God for life, one church for life, and one wife for life. I have so many regrets in my pre-life before Christ. Take it from a former atheist who indulged against God (and who is not telling you that it’s part of “growing up” — it most certainly should not be). I cherish the day I can tell my woman, “I do, forever.”

Remember: God’s commands are to make us more human, not less. God doesn’t endorse our temporary happiness for our self-glory but pursues our permanent joy for His glory. I’ll get on His glory, thanks.