What is sexual immorality?
The question of sexual morality is hard to define in our society. However, it was just as much a problem in the first-century Church. Most of the world followed religions worshiping their gods in evil ways.
The practice of having both male and female temple prostitutes was common. Many religions practiced cutting and other forms of occult worship.
The early disciples of Jesus carried the gospel message of Jesus Christ into this environment. As people came to Christ, they repented of their sins and accepted the teachings of the Scriptures. However, the world around them made it hard for them to remain focused on Jesus.
Before the New Testament Scriptures became available, they used the Old Testament to teach their converts. The Old Testament proclaimed God’s Law and sin has not changed over time. God spoke to all the issues of sinful man hundreds of years before Jesus.
Our opening Scripture for this study is Paul’s words to believers in the Corinthian Church, 9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. 1 Cor 6:9-10 NKJV
When the Corinthians first accepted Jesus as their Savior they turned away from the sins practiced by their society. As the Church aged there were those in the Church that turned back to their sins. Paul had to remind them and warn them of the cost of returning to the above sins.
His message is a powerful condemnation of those who practiced unrighteous acts in defiance of God’s Law. Four of those sins were sins of sexual immorality. He named them individually as fornicators, adulterers, homosexuals, and sodomites. Paul made it clear that these acts separated them form Christ.
Fornication
Paul addresses the Corinthian Church about the problem of unrighteousness within the Church. The Church is not even a hundred years old, yet all types of sin were seeping into believers’ minds and actions.
Some false teachers had wormed their way into the Church and were teaching lies. If you study the Corinthian Church, you will see many of the sins now found in today’s Churches. There is really nothing new in sinful living. Mankind has always had the same weaknesses.
In many pagan religions, fornication was part of their religious services. When they converted to Christianity, they abandoned these evil sexual practices. They knew what they were doing was wrong and repented.
The Church rarely mentions the word fornication (sex without or before marriage) and teaches little about sexual sin. However, Scripture tells us how very serious it is. In the above Scripture, Paul tells us that those who practice fornication will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Our society has such a loose definition of sexual immorality that it is challenging for young people to understand what is right and wrong. Churches and parents have not taught and enforced Christian values in the minds of our children. Instead, they have turned this critical matter over to the school systems.
Parents on fornication
Solomon tells us in Proverbs to “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6 NKJV
Parents could solve many of the moral problems in our society by teaching their children the Laws of God from birth. By teaching their children, they would also learn to apply them in their lives.
When parents talk to their children about sex before marriage, they usually refer to it as how it will affect their plans and the danger of pregnancy. Not that fornication is a sin against God and can have eternal consequences.
Sometimes it is approached more on financial grounds than moral truths. For example, children are told about the cost to their future if they become pregnant or cause a pregnancy. Parents tell them how pregnancy may affect their college or career plans.
It is not wrong for parents to point out these physical truths. However, it is more important that children and parents understand the spiritual costs of sexual immorality.
What is right or wrong becomes secondary in the youth’s minds and sometimes in ours. However, one thing is sure, what is evil is clear in God’s mind. Speaking through the Prophets and the
Fornication is the forerunner of many of our problems today in marriage. If sex has no boundaries before marriage, what happens once we marry? Unfortunately, many of our young people are not even bothering to marry. Instead, they have opted to live together in sin until someone else comes along.
Marriage
Marriage, of course, is not one of the sins mentioned by Paul in the above Scripture. It is, however, necessary to look at God’s plan for marriage to understand the vileness of adultery.
The failure of men and women to maintain a united home for their children is the primary cause of the family’s downfall. Our social structure falls apart without a solid commitment to building and supporting a family. The effects of falling away from God’s plan are evident all around us. As sin destroys the family it also destroys the nation.
If we are to exist as a nation, we must return to God’s plan for the family. To return, we must teach family values at home and in Church.
We see how family failure affects our country, churches, schools, and government. Without returning to God’s plan, our society has no hope. Instead, it will continue to deteriorate.
From the beginning, it is clear God meant for a man and woman to stay together forever. In Genesis, God says, 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Gen 2:24 NKJV
The oneness of marriage is used throughout the Scriptures. This oneness under God gives the stability to build a family and a nation. Parents demonstrate to their children how to live together, solve problems with the Bible’s help, and live responsibly.
You can see the results of our failure to commit ourselves to lasting relationships. Broken homes do not build hope and character. Responsibility does not usually develop in children as well when a marriage breaks up.
Marriage is to be protected. Paul tells the Hebrews, 4 Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Heb 13:4 NKJV God’s judgment is sure and clear. His plan will not be replaced by our plans even if we think we have some right to change them.
In many places, the Bible uses marriage to illustrate Jesus and His Bride, the Church. The union between Jesus and His Bride is eternal. The Bride of Christ is not a trial arrangement, and marriage is not either.
Marriage statistics in the United States are shown below.
- First Marriages: 42-45 percent will terminate with divorce as the result.
- Second Marriages: 60 percent will terminate with divorce as the result.
- Third Marriages: 73 percent will terminate with divorce as the result.
These statistics show a total disregard for God’s Law. We as a nation have decided our wishes are more important than God’s. Even sadder is that these figures are little different from those who claim to follow Jesus.
Jesus on divorce
There was divorce during Jesus’ day. Even though marriage was considered sacred in the Jewish culture, divorce was allowed because of their evil desires. However, not by God.
The Pharisees asked when they tried to trap Jesus with a divorce question. “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”
4 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Marriage is still a sacred union between one man and one woman in the presence of God. This will never change.
However, our society made laws that allow divorce for any reason. We call those laws no-fault divorce laws. Satan hates marriage because it presents a strong force against evil. The devil wants to see as many divorces as possible. It gives him great access to all family members.
Jesus’ answer was not what they expected, so they continued questioning Him about marriage.
7 They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”
8 He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it was not so. 9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.” Matt 19:3-9 NKJV
Adulterers
Jesus is very clear that whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and remarries commits adultery. Therefore, adulterers comprise the second group of sexually immoral individuals who will not inherit eternal life unless they repent and turn from their sin.
Scripture does not only hold man accountable. Whoever marries the divorced woman is also guilty of adultery. So the idea that we can marry, get a divorce, and marry someone else is wrong. When this happens, God defines both as guilty of adultery.
Neither man nor woman is free to remarry until their first husband or wife dies. The sin of divorce presents a real problem for those who want salvation and wish to remarry.
Because God takes marriage so seriously, we should too. We have a loving and forgiving God, but this does not mean He will change His rules for you. You are responsible for your actions.
Every sinful act has a cost. Jesus died to save us. However, if we break God’s Laws, there will always be a cost. The cost often hurts the innocent children and the innocent party, if there is one.
As a Christian, having a divorce in your life hurts your witness. And, as with all sin, it leaves a mark on you that never goes away. However, Scripture is clear that all sin is forgivable if we are willing to repent and follow the Lord.
To repent we have to confess that divorce is a sin and seek God’s forgiveness and guidance. It is not our job to judge divorced people, but we also cannot say that what God has defined as sin is something else.
If you are the innocent party who has been betrayed and divorced this is very hard. You may have done nothing wrong, yet you still fall under the rules of marriage. You must wait until your husband or wife passes away before you are free to marry as a Christian.
Homosexuals
In defining sexual immorality, homosexuals are the third group in our opening text. The Scripture does seem to imply that this type of sexual immorality is worse than the previous ones. The Scripture refers to homosexuality as an abomination. In my mind, if it is an abomination it must be worse.
Paul says that men left worshiping the Creator and begin worshiping the created and therefore fall into sin. God judged their transgression against Him and their vile passions.
26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. 27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. Romans 1:26-27 NKJV
As Christians, we are responsible for loving everyone, including homosexuals. However, we are not to love their sin or in any way encourage or support it. Instead, we are to see it as God sees it. He calls it an abomination.
The Church
The Church has often ignored God’s Law concerning homosexuals while emphasizing God’s love. However, God has been evident in His Law that it is an abomination.
The following two verses are examples of abominations in God’s sight. He classifies it with the perversion of mating with an animal.
22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. 23 Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is perversion. Leviticus 18:22-23 NKJV
Because our Churches have failed to teach about sin, we are seeing a growth in many different types of evil. When we do not stand for what God shows us is right, our whole society decays.
We have reached the point where our schools are trying to teach that these perversions are OK. They say that it is just finding our gender identity. But, unfortunately, many Christians and Churches are not opposing this horrible evil. Relabeling sin does not make it any less evil.
Thankfully, some teachers and Church leaders have taken a stand against teaching our little children that it is OK. They do not want to lead the children into making decisions that will cause them harm.
Deciding that the God who created you is wrong is always dangerous. We see what happens to whole nations when they choose to reject God’s plan for mankind. God destroyed nation after nation in the Old Testament account because of their choice of sexual evil.
Sodomites
In Leviticus, we find the laws that God gave to Israel. God gave these laws to make it clear to them what was right in His creation. He told them the things He wanted and the things He hated. He made His Law so clear that there could never be a misunderstanding.
They could not pick and choose what was right and wrong.
In the 18th chapter of Leviticus, He defined many of the immoral problems we face today. For example, we look at the abomination of homosexuality and now the perversion of sodomy.
Most people are aware of the Scriptural account of Sodom and Gomorrah. The word sodomy comes from this Bible account.
Sexual immorality had become so great within Sodom and Gomorrah that God decided to destroy it completely. God only spared Lot and his family.
20 And the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, Genesis 18:20 NKJV
They had rejected all moral truths
Because they rejected all moral truth from God and turned to their evil ways, the whole area was destroyed. Every man, woman, and child was burned up and the land was destroyed so it would no longer produce crops. It is still barren today.
We are told, “ 24 Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens. 25 So He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.” Genesis 19:24-25 NKJV
These sins affected the early Church as well. We find Jude reminding fellow believers of this Scripture in verse 7 of his epistle. He says, 7 as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.Jude1:7 NKJV
Do not associate!
Paul tells the Corinthians, “not to associate with sexually immoral people.” In 1 Corinthians 5:9
Not only are we to not be sexually immoral, but we are not to associate with the sexually immoral. When we associate with immoral people our nature is to accept them. Soon, we accept their sin as an allowable practice. Our stand should always be against sin.
Paul goes on to say, 17 But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.19 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; 1 Corinthians 6:17-19 NIV
As Christians, we need to realize who we are and what our position is with God and man. Scripture tells us that we are temples of the Holy Spirit. Our bodies are given over to God and are not our own. We have been purchased from our sins and now are to proclaim the things of God.
As followers of Jesus, we have committed ourselves to proclaiming the truth of God. We can only do this if we accept that those things God has proclaimed evil are evil. If we choose to follow the dictates of the world we cannot claim that we are His followers.
James says, 4Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James 4:4 NKJV
If we side with the world and accept sin as a choice we cannot be friends with Jesus. James says that if we want to be a friend of the world it makes us an enemy of God.
Is that what you want? Are you willing to follow after those who would say God is a liar? That is what you are doing if you accept any of the sins mentioned in our text.
It is time to make a choice!
Joshua said it best, Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
God had just delivered the Israelites from 400 years of slavery. God went before them to conquer all the nations that were in the land. These nations worshipped false gods and practiced all the sins we have listed.
Joshua continues,
15 And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15 NKJV
You can make a choice like Joshua did or you can ignore the God of creation and do whatever evil is popular within our nation. The choice is always yours! God gives you free will to follow Him or not. You can hate sin as God does or you can stand against Him.
The choice is yours, but you must know that one way leads to destruction.