Paul didn't speak a lot about sex outside of marriage because, culturally, it was generally understood to be shameful. When he used a word like fornication, he was usually speaking of specific immoral acts rather than what we now interpret as speaking in universal and general terms about any and all sex outside of marriage. Abstaining from sex shouldn’t be about some moral law; it should be about sacrifice, about giving a gift back to God and about keeping ourselves pure. My rationale for policing my own behavior is not fear of judgment but an act of love. To love God more than myself means I want to please God more than I want to do what I want to do.
No
Green Light
As I told a young friend the other day: there is no scripture
that says sex outside of marriage is wrong. That’s not what the
bible says. It is, however, what the bible means. Which is why
it’s more important that we know what the bible actually means
than that we be quotologists. The bible never says sex outside
of marriage is wrong, mainly because, in those times, it really
didn't need to be said. It was a morally reprehensible offense
to even touch a girl or a woman intimately unless you were
married to her. Joseph offered to send Mary away so she wouldn't
be shamed by her premarital pregnancy. But, per that example,
the shame fell mostly on the women, as men could either pay a
fine, marry the girl, or enlist the woman as a concubine. Joseph
could have broken off his engagement and had Mary stoned to
death. So even the morality of that day was problematic. One way
of moving away from a moral argument is to substitute the
subjective word "fornication" with the more objective word
"purity." There's so much less to argue about with the word
"purity," because, while not problem-free, this is a word that
need not pass a moral test. We should remain pure. Purity is
surely a desired component of holiness, which IS something God
demands of us [1 Peter 1:15-16]. Again, this is not a specific
law against sex, but it is a component of a sound doctrine of
sexual purity.
It’s not the sex act in and of itself that disturbs our covenant
with God, but rather the impurity of that act, of joining
ourselves with another person [I Cor 6:15] outside of a covenant
God can bless and ordain. Celibacy outside of marriage should be
a product of our choice to follow Christ, not an edict from City
Hall. Not a law to transgress, but a sacrifice of our bodies
[Romans 12] and our hearts to God. This is what the bible means,
which is equally as important as knowing what the bible says.
God wants us to keep ourselves pure and untainted by the world’s
values and customs [Philippians 2:15] so we can be effective for
His purpose and so we can know Him better (the word "purity"
often referring to sexual chastity but also meaning pure motives
and pure of "heart").
Biologically, abstinence is tough. It’s no joke. Most of us
simply can’t do it. Many of us stopped trying. Our moral failure
in this area becomes our stumbling block. We never reach our
full potential. Pastors are brought low by sexual immorality.
And the whole deal—Christianity—becomes a tough sell because the
world sees us as hypocrites, holding up a "biblical moral
standard" that is so high not even the "moral" Christians
themselves can sustain it.
I like Holman (see
sidebar in Part One). I use the Holman Bible dictionary most every day. But here, again, he uses the word
"fornication" as boilerplate and suggests the bible instructs us
to have monogamous married relationships, which the bible does
not. He also quotes several scriptures regarding fornication out
of context, places where Paul wasn't talking universally about
sex outside of marriage but incest and sex with prostitutes.
Paul didn't speak a lot about sex outside of marriage because,
culturally, it was generally understood to be shameful. When he
spoke of fornication, he was usually speaking of specific
immoral acts rather than what we now interpret as speaking in
universal and general terms about sex outside of marriage. It is
important the seeker understand Paul almost never spoke
universally: he was usually speaking to somebody about
something. His teaching is God-inspired, God-breathed and useful
for God's church, but we simply must take the time to understand
who Paul was talking to and what was going on in that place at
that time so we can put an end to our tradition of misusing the
Pauline epistles by insisting on a Ten Commandments-style
universality those letters never claimed to have. By trying to
make Paul's letters be more than what they were, we actually
diminish what they are.
As Bishop Shelby Spong said, “To treat the words of Paul as if they were the inerrant Word of God... presents us with far more problems than it solves. Such a claim suggests that to be a Christian requires the abdication of the mind to cultural patterns long since abandoned.” He continues: “Because I believe those words to be in touch with something eternal, transcendent, and holy, I want to rescue them from the hands of those who by claiming too much will finally accomplish too little. If the words of Paul cannot be broken loose from the cultural accretions and presuppositions of a first-century mindset, they will never speak to this generation.” This Paul-as-God business is the bedrock of some of the church's more oppressive dogma, including the continuing oppression of women and the black church's romance with the year 1965. Elevating the words of Paul to the Word of God is incredibly bad doctrine. Holman's summary is generally useful if, in my opinion, flawed by using the word "fornication" as boilerplate without parsing it properly.
