EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of two columns contrasting prevailing cultural attitudes on sexuality with classic Christian ethics and calling for Christians to reclaim their own heritage in a countercultural practice of Christian community. The first was published Oct. 12, and can be read here .
By David Gushee
“Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits is outside his body, but the one who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (I Cor. 6:18-20).
For Paul, as for Jesus, sexual immorality consists of any sexual activity outside of the marriage relationship. Within marriage, sex is not just permissible but required, in the sense that the body is a gift each spouse offers to the other to meet needs for emotional and physical intimacy. Marriage is also the context in which children are to be conceived, born and raised. This is what the church has always taught. The chaos of contemporary society and its negative impact on children gives us little reason to reconsider these points.
But the culture will ask the church, what about all those broiling sexual desires that we have when we are at the stage of life in which we are not married? Here the New Testament simply says: Deal with it. Either get married, or learn to “flee from sexual immorality.” Both Jesus and Paul seem convinced that living without sexual intercourse is possible — not easy, but possible. Self-control is one of the gifts of the Spirit, and it is self-control that is needed here. In this sense sex outside of marriage is not that different from numerous other things we might like to do but should not, and for which self-control is required.
But why not bend a little on this one to accommodate culture?
If you look at the longer passage in I Corinthians 6, Paul says that if I use my body for sexual sin, I am sinning against the body of Christ corporately, not just against myself. But believing this involves developing a sense of shared corporate identity and destiny with fellow Christians that is quite elusive in our individualistic society.
That makes it a difficult teaching. But if one thinks about all the other wrongs that are done within our churches because of this lack of a sense of organic connectedness to other believers, it illuminates the fact that it is our desiccated version of Christianity that is deficient, not Paul’s teaching.
In I Thessalonians 4 Paul offers another rationale for sexual self-control that will make more sense to the contemporary reader:
“It is God’s will that you should be sanctified; that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother [or sister] or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish people for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject people but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.”
What’s new here is the emphasis on not wronging another person: “That in this matter no one should wrong his sister or take advantage of her.” This means that what I do with my body sexually affects not only myself, and not only all members of the body of Christ, but the specific human being with whom I am doing it. She is my sister, and she is not to be wronged by my use of my body. And this really matters to Christ, who commands above all that we love people rather than harm them.
This is a very realistic warning. Because of the mysterious one-flesh nature of sex, people become vulnerable to one another in a way that does not occur anywhere else. Paul here says that to take advantage of someone’s naked vulnerability in sex is a grave wrong. And people often get hurt through that vulnerability even when no one is trying to exploit anyone. How many movies and songs are about the fallout from hurts related to sex outside of marriage?
It is a fact that the contemporary social realities I discussed in my last column make it more difficult than ever for people to restrict sex to marriage. But efforts to rewrite Christian sexual ethics to accommodate this difficulty bump up against both Scripture and human nature. In loving, accountable Christian communities, we must imagine and live out a biblical alternative.