Illicit sex or sex before marriage may feel good and can be exciting. But its pleasure is empty compared to the joy of married love.
Within marriage, sex is beautiful, fulfilling and creative. Outside of marriage, it is ugly, destructive and damning.
What is the result of sexual sin? Ephesians 5 : 3 says, “Among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality or of any kind of impurity”
What is the pay you get for your sexual sin? (Proverbs 5 : 9 – 11) says, “you will lose your honor and hand over to merciless people everything you have achieved in life. Strangers will obtain your wealth, and someone else will enjoy the fruit of your labour. Afterwards you will groan in anguish when disease consumes your body.”
Is the Bible exaggerating? No it is not. Ask the many girls who had pre – marital sex. Some are burdened with a baby without a father. Some did abortions became wounded emotionally. Some ladies who do abortions and later get married to a different man is unable to bear a child because of the past abortions. In all cases men are seen to go away scot free, but not so. They are burdened with the guilt and sin of abortions (killing ones child) and find solace in alcohol and wee – smoking.
There are many men and women who have neither illegitimate children nor sexually transmitted disease. But they are scarred with shame and regret. Many women who once regarded sexual liberation as good, clean and fun are now reaping bitter results. There are some women who are now married with children who do not want their husbands to touch them or hold them in certain ways because it reminds them of their past orgies they had participated with men during their youthful days. Some women became infertile due to damage from sexually transmitted disease. Other women who had to undergo biopsies for precancerous condition due to too many sexual partners. Ask these women if their pleasure was worth it. Talk to the married couples who sinned together before marriage and who have spent years recovering from the bitterness and distrust, it sowed in their relationship.
And if all this is not enough to make the option of sexual immorality vile, think about Jesus Christ. He knows the depth of God’s unmitigated wrath against sexual sin. He bore it all when He hung on the cross, cursed and forsaken by His father ( 2 Corinthians 5 : 21 Galatians 3 : 13)
No excuse for sin
We need the motivation to stay away from illicit sex because we know that God is serious about punishing sin. Let us not fool ourselves. God is talking to us (Hebrews 13 : 4 ) says “God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. In I Thessalonian 4 : 6, we read, “the lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you.” These words should sick in into our heart and soul.
God does not excuse sin because of who we are or how good we have been in the past. It does not matter if you have lived a sexually pure life for forty years and they have one night of sin – God still hates the act of fornication. Read the story of king David’s adulterous affair with Bathseba in 2 Samuel 11. Even though God called David “a man after his own heart” (I Samuel 13 : 14 ) He hated David’s sin and He punished it. David was forgiven when he repented, but the consequences of his sin spoiled the remainder of his life. The lesson for us is that God’s righteous standard will not be relaxed for anyone. God doesn’t overlook our sin because it is not as bad as someone else. His standards are unchanging (Psalm 102 : 27, Hebrews 13 : 8).
God doesn’t excuse our sin because we are in love and “no one is being hurt.” You have heard the argument, maybe you have even used it yourself. “We are two consenting adults. We love each other. We both want this.” But do you see who is being forgotten in the equation of “two consenting adults”? the Almighty Creator of their two bodies. Apostle Paul explains in (I Corinthians 6 : 18 – 20 )
“Flee (run away from) fornication. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he that commits fornication sins against his own body. What? Do you not know that your body is the temple of God who is in you, and you are not your own because you are bought with a price. So glorify God in your body and in your spirit.
The warnings are serious and there are no exceptions. Sure some people seem to escape them, but there will be a reckoning beyond this life – “they will have to give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead”, (I Peter 4 : 5).
ose Corner
…with Rose Hansey