⁸So, he who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you.

Mindful that his writing carries the authority of God, Paul strongly warns those who dismiss what he has written about sexual immorality. Some critics today have asserted that Christianity’s so-called Victorian strictures on sex are what is driving people away from the church, especially young people. The word “Puritan” is also thrown as a pejorative, although most misunderstand what it means. The Puritans were great believers in sex, but taught that it was to be fully expressed and enjoyed in the context of marriage, and in no other way. They actually held a view that exalts sex to a much higher degree than the world’s free-sex attitude! God is no prude; neither was the apostle Paul! God’s Word makes it clear, for example, that homosexual behavior is wrong:

Professing to be wise, they became fools . . . Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them … gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. (Rom. 1:22, 24, 26–27)

This is the Word of God. Some will arrogantly assert that this was just Paul’s opinion; he was narrow-minded, and we now know that sex in any form can be healthy, as long as it is between consenting adults. But if what Paul says about sex is not from God, then how would we know anything he wrote was from God? The apostle Peter considered Paul’s writings to be on the same footing as OT Scripture (see 2 Peter 3:15–16). Everything he wrote on this subject was in concert with OT teaching, so to deny his instructions on sex would require a denial of the OT writings on sex as well.

We do better to take the whole counsel of the NT writings as being from “God who gives His Holy Spirit” to us. This is a firmer foundation than the shifting sands of cultural morality. So despite the preponderance of worldly opinion to the contrary, we believe what the Bible teaches that sex before or outside marriage, in any form, is not the will of God. We should seek to be sanctified in this extraordinarily important area of life.

Lord, help me be pure in mind as well as action.