Swimming Against the Current

God isn't the one who made sex a dirty subject. "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good" (Genesis 1:31). The original husband and wife team, created male and female in God's image, were naked and without shame. God designed a pleasurable way for these committed partners to produce offspring and to express their unity and love—an intimate intertwining of body and spirit the Old Testament calls "knowing" one's wife. There's no reason to blush when we read the Song of Solomon's tasteful romantic poetry, or the apostle Paul's forthright words about a healthy sexual relationship in Christian marriage (1 Corinthians 7:1-9).

The Lord is not opposed to sexual expression within the boundaries he designed. In fact, Scripture urges husbands and wives to rejoice in private celebration of a love "never to be shared with strangers" (Proverbs 5:15-20). But God strongly opposes the perversion and misuse of sexual desire. Sleazy magazines, raunchy videos, and Internet porn sites confuse and corrupt children, degrade women, and rob men of their purity and dignity. Casual promiscuity trades a few moments of passion for a lingering pile of emotional baggage. Pop culture mocks virginity as naïve and encourages us to normalize what the Bible calls immoral, but God's standards haven't changed.

Sexual sin damages others. "It is God's will . . . that you should avoid sexual immorality . . . and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him" (1 Thessalonians 4:3-6).

It offends God. "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you . . . ? You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body" (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20).

It weakens the church. Drifting with the tide of moral relativism, many Christians mirror our culture's shifting standards instead of the Master's holiness. Research by the Barna organization shows that at least three out of 10 "born again" adults consider co-habitation, homosexual acts, sexual fantasies, and watching sexually-explicit movies morally acceptable behaviors. But Scripture says, "Among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people" (Ephesians 5:3). Unconfronted and unconfessed, sins like these rot the church from the inside out.

Sexual sin hurts marriages. Adultery comes from two Latin roots: ad ("to") and alter ("other"). Unfaithfully going "to another" alters the marriage relationship so dramatically that Jesus warned against even thinking about it (Matthew 5:28).

Sexual sin hurts those who commit it. "All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body" (1 Corinthians 6:18).

Thank the Lord, sexual sin is forgivable. Our gracious heavenly Father washes, purifies, and completely forgives those who turn to him in obedient faith, whether we're guilty of sexual immorality or more "respectable" sins like greed and slander (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). Jesus came to save, not to condemn. But he also warned, "Go and sin no more," not "Go and sin on more," or "Go, it's not sin anymore."

What can the church do? Offer clear, positive teaching about the biblical perspective on sexuality. Encourage friendships that provide healthy accountability. Pray for strength to resist temptation. Combine truth with grace, offering redemption to those who have fallen. And no matter how far the world drifts, keep swimming against the tide.