Posted on 06/28/2024 10:39:38 AM PDT by Morgana
Check out Gary Curtis’ related article, “Avoiding Sexual Sins and Scandals,” at this link.
Some contend that God sees all sins as the same and that one sin is not more difficult for God to forgive than another. While they may think that sounds reasonable and righteous, it ignores the admonitions of revealed Scripture and how sexual impurity damages us personally, weakens our witness and can be destructive to the family of God.
Pastor Jack Hayford, respected author, songwriter and church leader, once wrote, “I believe that sex sins are worse in that they are more damaging personally and socially than all other sins.” Hayford also observed that sexual sins may be the entry points of many other sinful actions, thoughts and lifestyles. “I don’t believe that any other sin can be said to devastate believers so thoroughly as sexual sin,” he said.
Sexual intercourse is more than a biological experience or experiment. It is more than just another physical act, like drinking water or sneezing. It involves the communion of life itself and is to be shared only under the covering of a covenant of commitment (Eph. 5:30-31).
If a believer, who is “washed … sanctified … justified” and filled with the Spirit of Christ (1 Cor. 6:11), would be so crass as to commit sexual immorality casually in what some have termed “recreational sex,” he or she would literally be contaminating the body of Christ by involving Him in immorality. It is an unthinkable proposition and one of the primary reasons that, for believers, sexual sins are worse than others (1 Cor. 6:12-17).
“Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body” (1 Cor. 6:18-20, NLT).
It is due to the constant temptation to sexual immorality that Paul advises, “each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband” (1 Cor. 7:2b). The writer to the scattered Messianic Hebrews warned: “Give honor to marriage, and remain faithful to one another in marriage. God will surely, judge people who are immoral and those who commit adultery” (Heb. 13:4).
The sexually immoral can be understood as sexually active unmarried people, and adulterers are sexually unfaithful married people. Promiscuous premarital or extramarital activity could become an appetite or “felt need” that normal marriage doesn’t break. Review Paul’s admonition above: “Run from sexual sin!”
God doesn’t forbid fornication (the broad biblical term for sexual immorality) because He is against our enjoying the pleasures of life. Rather, He doesn’t want people to be abused, cheated on or taken advantage of. He doesn’t want the most intimate human relationships to be entered dishonestly without full and responsible commitment.
Sexual activity between unmarried partners is:
— Biblically wrong because it violates the clear commandment of God.
— Morally wrong because it can result in broken and twisted lives—for generations—as well as unwanted pregnancies and dreaded venereal diseases
— Spiritually wrong because it provides a “place to the devil” (Eph. 4:27b, NKJV) to control our lives, limit our influence and destroy our testimony before our church, our families and any children.
In the face of the many moral failures in society and even in our churches and Christian institutions, true believers will want to glorify God by following His pathways of purity: “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then, you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Rom. 12:2, NLT).
Gary Curtis served for 27 years as part of the pastoral staff of The Church on The Way, the First Foursquare Church of Van Nuys, California. Since retirement in 2016, he has continued to blog at worshipontheway.wordpress.com. Gary and his wife live in Southern California and have two married daughters and five grandchildren.
They’re certainly more fun...
When people seek pleasure in anything, some preachers will find sin in that. I mentioned once that I take pride in what I do, and I enjoy doing it... I was told that pride and that enjoyment is a sin.
I think they can be, because sexual sins are sins that can bring down entire civilizations.
It’s why the left works to loosen up sexual morals all the time.
“I think they can be, because sexual sins are sins that can bring down entire civilizations.”
I’m sure you all can figure out why I posted this. What this kind of thing would lead to?
A B O R T I O N
Abortion.
Not building civilization.
One reason why the West built its great works is because it had control of its sexual sins. Sexual propriety was a norm for everybody, even if not everybody complied all the time.
All sin separates us from the Love of God. None are “better sins” than any others. Paul speaks about the “sins of the flesh”, but these are sins which draw us away from the Spiritual life and into worldly life:
Gal 5: 19-21 - Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
We are all guilty of these sins, and none are worthy. That is the point. We all want “more from this world”. Our worthiness comes only from the Grace of God (through re-generation, i.e., Baptism). God is the original “come as you are” party. We all need changing, but this is only possible through the tutelage of the Holy Spirit - with out that, we are truly lost.
My Catholic friends used to say they were the easiest kind to get by the priest, because “everyone does it Father...”
We all know the word "pride" contains both positive and negative connotations. This is an 'arguing from semantics' fallacy, conflating different 21st century english meanings of "pride" in the same usage to suit a (false) argument.
The Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament had very different words for proper self-respect vs. arrogance, selfishness and self-serving behavior.
The love of money is what drives most people but sexual sin is the easier to go after.
A room full of what seem to be moral people can sit in a business meeting, or work meeting and casually discuss sinful work practices they do every day and want to increase and perfect, but let them get a hint of sexual sin and they are all fully awake and aligned against the obvious sin.
A small business owner doing unethical things or a giant Corp. CEO and all the people under him who are part of the shady business, or agency, for instance Google, or Wells Fargo and their credit card scandal, or the normally sweet woman at the cable company who is screwing you over in the phone call.
Church going and other everyday people will do most anything during the work day with little examination of the sin involved as long as it is part of the job, of work, of company policy, but sexual sin is the big one, it even outrages people who are in between their own sexual sins.
C.S. Lewis disagreed.
I think you’re right about that. It’s arguable that greed has led to more sin and harm to others than sex has ever done.
Define worse. It doesn’t appear to me that the Lord ranks sins in that way but I do think worldly consequences of sexual sins are more severe than consequences of “lesser” sins..
Swingers and partner swappers would disagree.
A preacher and his group that I ferried to Phoenix told me that pride was a sin because of how I brought the plane down through some rough weather and nailed the landing. I was pretty proud of myself. the preacher heard me talking to my right seat guy about it. We bumped fists and went over the landing when exiting launched into the pride thing.
“There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.”
Proverbs 6:16-19 ESV
https://bible.com/bible/59/pro.6.16-19.ESV
I know there are other things called abomination also.
People live, breathe, and embrace it all day long without a thought.
All those people you hate to deal with over the phone at the various corporations and bureaucracies with their lies and deceptions, and cons, most of them are not like that at home and in their personal lives, but if you call it work, or business, or a career, then morality is never given a second thought, and they are the underlings, it gets even worse as you go up the ladder.
Other abominations.
“And you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor’s wife and so make yourself unclean with her. You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion. For everyone who does any of these abominations, the persons who do them shall be cut off from among their people.”
Leviticus 18:20-23, 29 ESV
https://bible.com/bible/59/lev.18.20-29.ESV
You should indeed be proud of your actions. As mentioned, Hebrew and Greek writers had words with very distinct meanings, and he should know that. Perhaps "pride" was closer in meaning with 18th century usage of the word, while we in the 20th and 21st century have also twisted and corrupted the word "pride." Pride parades anyone?
Was he from some kind of fringe church or sect?
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