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Pastor Jay's Blog

Five Characteristics of Sexual Sin

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We live in a pornified culture.  Sexual sin has become so commonplace that people don’t recognize it as the sin that it is.  This means Christians, and the church as a whole, need to become very good at speaking to sexual matters in a way that is clear, serious, and unashamed.  As a caveat, we must always protect the innocence of young children, not giving them what they are not ready for.  But our culture is forcing this at younger and younger ages and so wisdom is needed for addressing this in age appropriate ways.  Generations of the past steered clear of any talk of intimate matters and that left a wide door for a godless culture to fill the void.  And fill it they did.  We cannot allow this to happen anymore. 

Scripture has a lot to say about the goodness of marriage and the wrongness of sexual sin.  If that is the case, and our desire is to be biblical Christians, then we need to have a lot to say about these areas as well. 

One portion of Scripture is particularly dense when it comes to addressing sexual sin.  This will be helpful to us in our culture because when sexuality is paraded and promoted as it is, people’s concept of how sexuality can be done wrongly grows thin and foggy.  In such fogginess, the bullhorn of sexual relativism is the only thing that is heard.  Let’s take a look at Ephesians 5:1-7 and see five characteristics of sexual sin.

  • Sexual sin is not compatible with love – Ephesians chapter five begins with love; true, authentic love. Verse 1 says we are to imitate God and walk in the same love demonstrated by Christ and his sacrificial death for us.  That is love.  But then the contrast is made in verse two.  Not one bit of immorality or impurity should be named among you.  Anything sexual that is not given to a spouse or received from a spouse is impurity.  This means that the couple which is head-over-heels in “love” and showing it in fornication or by living together are actually not loving one another.  Why?  Because they haven’t given themselves in the absolute, life-and-death commitment of love called marriage.  Until that is done publically, declaring to all they are off the market, sex is just extremely costly recreation.  If you have not given yourself to the other person in the lifelong commitment of marriage, then sex is not giving, it is taking, operating under the guise of love which is made believable through a thousand romance movies.  It may not feel like “taking” in the moment, but this is only evidence of the depth of self-deception. 

 

  • Sexual sin is greed – it is interesting that verse 2 uses this word “greed.” It is not typically used in discussions of intimacy, but it is here.  This is a further indication that love is not what is happening in pre-marital or extra-marital intimacy.  It is greed.  Selfish, lust-driven greed.  People call it love because that is what the culture has called it for years.  This is the old Indiana-Jones-Golden-Idol-Switch trick.  They have slowly removed the true features of love (self-sacrificial, you-before-me attitudes and behaviors), and replaced it with a bag of chemistry that involves infatuation, desire, and excitement.  Getting that bag of chemistry all worked up feels good and thus greed says “I want more.” Sexual sin is not about love, it is about “me.”

 

  • Sexual sin flourishes in a secular worldview – Verse 4 brings in another idea. Filthiness, silly talk, and course jesting are targeted and rightly so.  When intimate matters are made into recreation, jokes about it will surely follow.  This is the staple diet of late night talk shows and so much more.  But what is happening is someone’s worldview is showing.  When sex is severed from the glory of marriage, the weight of intimacy, and the picture of oneness between Christ and the church, then all the serious joy gets severed too.  Sex becomes the butt of jokes, and sexual sin the biggest joke of all.  But Paul says this is not fitting.  Only thankfulness is fitting.  The majesty of what God created should drive husbands and wives toward oneness and thankful worship.  If that is not there, the world will take it and make it a play thing to be used however you want.  

 

  • Sexual Sin grows where there is no thankfulness – Paul ends verse four with thankfulness. I mentioned this in point three, but I think it deserves its own treatment.  Thankfulness is to be a dominant feature in a Christian.  It is God’s will for you at all times and in all circumstances (1 Thess. 5:18).  This includes all the difficulties and problems that come with sexual intimacy.  Sex is a powerful thing, tied into our very natures, so we should not be surprised that sinful people are going to have trouble with it.  These troubles always come with temptations nipping at our heels.  But what is to be our response?    We should be thankful for God’s provision for our spouse, even if that spouse is not giving themselves to us in a way that would make intimacy all that it could be.  We should be thankful for singleness, in which all kinds of opportunities exist but where the sexual component does not.  In all these difficulties, God is working.  He is supplying strength, pruning out selfish lusts, and drawing us to himself.  If you are not thankful for these things, sexual sin is crouching at the door. 

 

  • Sexual sin is covetous and idolatry – lastly, Paul uses two more words that are unique in this passage about love and sexual sin. In verse 5, Paul attaches sexual sin to covetousness and idolatry.  Covetousness is very closely associated with greed, but what is less recognizable is the association with idolatry.  But this is the very root of covetousness.  Idolatrous people love and worship that thing or those things that they see as the solution to some or all of their problems.  In that regard, sexual sin is a worship disorder.  As with any object of idolatry, a person sees it as a grand goal which will meet their need(s) or fulfill them in some way.  But sex, like all other creations of God, is a pointer to something beyond itself.  It is a faint whisper of the pleasures at God’s right hand and the oneness we shall have with him forever.  Where there is habitual sexual sin, there is the probability that a person desires God’s creation more than God; and therefore he will not inherit God’s kingdom.  This fearful reality is reiterated in verse 6.  All of this means that souls are on the line, including perhaps yours. Your views and practices regarding intimacy are indicators of where you stand.   

 

1 Comment

Thanks for the article. I really liked it !!

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