Why Sexual Purity Matters

In 1999 the Web site www.beliefnet.com* ran an article by Lauren F. Winner in which she stated that many young, unmarried Christians are sexually active and the rest of the church better get used to it. Following that revelation, Washington Times columnist Julia Duin wrote, "Six months ago, when I was lecturing on sexuality issues at a Christian college, I passed out Miss Winner's Beliefnet essay, along with at least a dozen others on chastity, to the 18-year-olds I was teaching. When I asked them which of the pile of reading assignments they had liked the best, they preferred Lauren's piece. Lauren, they said, was telling it like it was. In spite of all the well-meaning adult-run abstinence campaigns, many young Christians had already chosen their paths. And virginity wasn't it."

A recent George Barna poll found that 36 percent of self-proclaimed born-again Christians approve of cohabitation, and 39 percent said indulging in sexual fantasies is morally acceptable — despite biblical principles to the contrary. Peter Brandt, Focus on the Family's issues response director, said, "To a great extent, the church has lost its moral moorings on sexual behavior."

So in May 2000, Focus on the Family recruited a team of Bible scholars, the Council on Biblical Sexual Ethics, to develop a Bible-based statement on sexual behavior. The abridged version of the "Colorado Statement on Biblical Sexual Morality" is at the end of this article.

Focus on the Family's hope is that five foundational bodies will work in concert to admonish young people about sexual purity:

• Local churches and pastors need to preach the truth (that any sex outside of marriage is sin) in love (remembering that God has a tremendous capacity to forgive repentant sinners). Denominations need to adopt resolutions that promote the Bible's plain and clear call to sexual purity.
• Seminaries need to prepare church leaders to resist sexual temptations and to give Bible-based compassionate counsel to those who have fallen.
• Parachurch ministries that specifically promote sexual abstinence until marriage and marital fidelity need to work together.
• Parents must recognize that they are the most significant influences in their children's lives. They need to model and teach strong, loving, faithful marriages to children.

The Colorado Statement on Biblical Sexual Morality

The Bible reveals that God's character defines for us what it means to be sexually pure: God's mandate to His people is to "be holy, because I am holy."

We believe that God intends for people to enjoy sex within His established limits. However, because we live in a fallen world, we also believe the following:

Desire and experience cannot be trusted to set the morality of sex. The morality of sex is set by God's holiness.

God's standard is purity in every thought about sex, as well as in every act of sex. Sexual purity is violated even in thoughts that never proceed to outward acts. Sex must never be used to oppress, wrong or take advantage of anyone. Rape, incest, sexual abuse, pedophilia, voyeurism, prostitution and pornography always exploit and corrupt.

God's standards for sexual moral purity protect human happiness. But sex is not an entitlement, nor is it needed for personal wholeness or emotional maturity.

God calls some to a life of marriage and others to lifelong celibacy, but His calling to either state is a divine gift worthy of honor and respect. No one is morally compromised by following God's call to either state, and no one can justify opposing a divine call to either state by denying the moral goodness of that state.

Sexual behavior is moral only within the institution of heterosexual, monogamous marriage. Marriage is secure only when established by an unconditional, covenantal commitment to lifelong fidelity, and we should not separate what God has joined. Christians continue to debate whether there are a limited number of situations in which divorce is justifiable (Deut. 24:1-4; Matt. 19:9; 1 Cor. 7:15), but all agree that divorce is never God's ideal; lifelong commitment should always be the Christian's goal.

Marriage protects the transcendent significance of personal sexual intimacy. Heterosexual union in marriage expresses the same sort of holy, exclusive, permanent, complex, selfless, and complementary intimacy that some day will characterize the union of Christ with the redeemed and glorified Church.

Sex in marriage should be an act of love and grace that transcends the petty sins of human selfishness, and should be set aside only when both partners agree to do so, and then only for a limited time of concentrated prayer.

Sex outside of marriage is never moral. This includes all forms of intimate sexual stimulation that stir up sexual passion between unmarried partners. Such behavior offends God, and often causes physical and emotional pain and loss in this life. Refusal to repent of sexual sin may indicate that a person never has entered into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

The Old and New Testaments uniformly condemn sexual contact between persons of the same sex; and God has decreed that no one can ever excuse homosexual behavior by blaming his or her Creator.

The moral corruption of sexual sin can be fully forgiven through repentance and faith in Christ's atonement, but physical and emotional scars caused by sexual sin cannot always be erased in this life.

Christians must grieve with and help those who suffer hard-ship caused by sexual immorality, even when it is caused by their own acts of sin. But we must give aid in ways that do not deny moral responsibility for sexual behavior.

*(Note: Referrals to Web sites not produced by Focus on the Family are for informational purposes only and do not necessarily constitute an endorsement of the sites' content.)