Articles
Abstain from sexual immorality
Abstain from sexual immorality
"For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God" (1Thess. 4:3-5).
God made man a sexual being. God provided for the fulfillment of such desires instructing man concerning marriage (cp the story of Adam and 1 Cor. 7). As with so many gifts of God, this one has been sorely abused almost from the beginning. Yet, for God’s people, those who desire to be pleasing unto God, His will is YET for us to be morally and sexually pure and holy.
In the times of Paul, the attitude towards sexual purity and marriage were grossly wrong. Marriages were made for the purpose of family ties and the security of economics. Sex outside of marriage was not only accepted it was praised. For example, it was said of the Stoic philosopher Cato, who died about 46 b.c., that he praised men who satisfied their sexual desires with a prostitute rather than another man’s wife. Unfaithfulness to the wife was the norm, so they debated which manner of unfaithfulness was morally superior! Another writer wrote: "Adulterous activity was, in fact, so widespread that the emperor Augustus (63 b.c.– 14 a.d.) established a new code of laws having to do with adultery and marriage—the “Julian Laws”—in a failed attempt to reform sexual practices.”
As Paul spread the gospel among the gentile world this was an ever-present problem that was addressed. The Jewish converts came from a worldview that promoted faithfulness to marriage. From their youth, they learned the story of Adam and Eve, the 10 commandments, the early chapters of Proverbs that warn against the adulterer, and even the Song of Solomon. The Gentiles came from a different background. Paul wrote of the ' the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God" (vs. 5). Peter wrote of the Gentiles who were "living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry" (1Pet. 4:3).
Thus, when the apostles wrote the first instructions to these gentile converts in Acts 15, they instructed them to “abstain from sexual immorality” (Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25). As Paul wrote letters to the various churches, he constantly instructed them concerning this (cf. Rom 1:26–27; 9:10; 13:13; 1 Cor. 5:1; 7:1, 2, 3, 5; 12:23; Eph. 5:3, 12).
Our American world is a lot like the gentile world of Paul’s day. Even those who grow up with the Bible often see such teaching as antiquated, quaint, and unworkable. You don’t need me to tell you that faithfulness in marriage is an endangered species! Yet the instructions of God are still the same: abstain from sexual immorality. To avoid this, Paul instructed that each man was to have his own wife, and each wife her own husband (1 Cor. 7). Such a marriage union was to “be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous" (Heb. 13:4).
Paul adds this warning: "Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you” (4:8).
Hugh DeLong
