PREMARITAL SEX AND ITS IMPLICATIONS IN CHRISTIAN LIVING

We have a young sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?  If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: but if she be a door, we will barricade her with boards of cedar. I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one who found favour - (Song of Solomon 8:8-10)

INTRODUCTION

What kind of youth are you – a wall or a door? Are you a person of easy virtue or a person of strong moral fibre? Are you easily swayed by the sweet nothings of what you hear and see? Are you controlled by the inclinations of your lower nature or are you subject to the principles of the higher calling of God to live in consonance to His Will?

Are you a moral weakling or a moral hero? A moral weakling is one who cannot say, “NO!” to the amorous invitation of a degenerate: a sweet-talking, immorally-enticing person to wine, dine and have a fill of the sweet poisons of immorality. A moral hero is one who has learnt to say “NO” to sinful persuasions and immoral lifestyles.

We live in an era where antiquated immorality has become the modern morality, where taboos have become norms, a sign that one has arrived, a sign that one has become a “Big Gal” or “Big Guy.” We are constantly sold the dummy on TV, movies, magazines, novels, etcetera that compromising our moralities is the sure way to become reckoned as a happening person. Girls are busy baring their breasts without qualms while boys are exhibiting that which makes them males with reckless abandon.

Today, majority consider foolish  people wise and wise people foolish. Today, God’s kind of morality has taken the backseat while Satan’s immorality has taken the centre-stage. Many are eating poisoned fruits and drinking poisoned wines thinking that they are enjoying themselves. 

Today, illicit sex is associated with millions of youths who are unaware of its many dangers spiritually, biologically, and socially. Our youths have taken pre-marital sex as a normal thing and a way of life.   

The topic assigned to me is, “Premarital Sex and Its Implications In Christian Living.”

DEFINITIONS OF CONCEPTS

Who is a Christian?

By definition, a Christian is one who has heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ, believed in Jesus, repented of his/her sins, confessed faith in Jesus, is baptized into Jesus in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and then added into the Body of Christ, the Church. These processes make one a Christian. In actuality, however, a Christian is one who is not ashamed of the Gospel, nor a shame to the Gospel (Romans 1:16; II Corinthians 6:3; cf. II Samuel 12:14).

What is Pre-marital Sex?

• The prefix, “Pre” connotes before.
•  “Marital” refers to marriage. Marriage is a union of a man and woman in a covenant relationship for the rest of their lives.
•  “Sex” is an act of intimacy between a man and a woman a legal relationship of marriage.

Succinctly stated, Pre-marital sex is sex before marriage. It is fornication. Pre-marital sex is jumping the gun, it is an experimental act that jeopardizes the spiritual, physical, emotional, psychological and social interests of those involved. It is an act of opening a package meant for its owner before it gets to the owner.     

CAUSES OF PRE-MARITAL SEXUAL ACTIVITIES

Unrestrained chemical reactions

What young people call Love is not love but Lust. Lust is an unrestrained chemical reactions between two young unmarried people.

Peer influence

Peer groups encourage young people to engage in pre-marital sex. This, they do by making mockery of anyone who is chaste by referring to them using unkind remarks. They tell them to “wise up” and to “belong.” Young people who lack judgement and do not have moral strength buckle under such pressures but those who their God are strong and resist such pressures.   

Curiosity

Another reason young people indulge in pre-marital sex is their great curiosity to explore what sexual activity is all about. They do this without considering the damaging consequences.

Cohabitation

Cohabitation breeds sexual immorality and leads to pre-marital sex. Examples of people who fall into this category are betrothed couples who engage in sexual activity before the anticipated marriage.

UNIVERSE OF PREMARITAL SEX

Pre-marital Sex is Prostitution

In Bible, a prostitute is one who commits fornication. One may prostitute himself or herself for any kind of gain, not just money. It may be the pride of continued association, or friendship with someone.

Premarital Sex is A Three-Dimensional Sin:

Fornication is a sin against God. Pre-marital sex goes across or contravenes God’s explicit commandment. Pre-marital sex is a sin against God. Sin is transgression of the Law of God (I John 3:4). Pre-marital sex goes against, or across, what God has commanded.

Fornication is a sin against the other person involved. It is always a mutual sin 

engaged in by two or more persons. By involving others in your own sin, you sin against them and vice-versa. If your convictions had been strong perhaps they would have been encouraged to do right. The sin, the shame, the wrong is shared by both.

Fornication is a sin against oneself.  I Corinthians 6:18 says, "Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body, but he who commits fornication sins against his own body."

Pre-marital Sex Will Provide Temporal Pleasure But It Will Leave You Tormented.

By default, sin provides passing pleasures (Hebrews 11:24-26), which leaves the sinner with a terrible sour taste (Romans 6:21). Someone aptly remarked a few moments of joy will usher in an eternity of misery. Would you want to trade in a few moments of pre-marital sexual pleasure for pain and shame?            

CONSEQUENCES OF PREMARITAL SEX

There are many consequences of pre-marital sex. There are damages which cannot be remedied because colossal damages have been brought by young promising persons on themselves which they have to live with it for the rest of their lives.

God knows that there are dangers in pre-marital sex that is why He wants us to flee from youthful lusts (2Timoty 2:22).

Sex is a powerful force that can destroy if not used properly. Like atomic power, sex is the most powerful creative force given to man. When atomic power is used correctly, it can create boundless energy, when it is used in the wrong way it destroys life. Sex is the same kind of powerful force.

Sex is a gift from God to be expressed within marriage. But if you play with this powerful force outside the bounds of marriage, it will destroy you and those who are close to you.

Following are some of the consequences of pre-marital sex:

1.     It arrests their psychological, social and academic development of youths. Studies show that when young people engage in pre-marital sex, their academic performances. It also affects their social relationships with family and friends. This is because adolescents are too immature to deal with the explosive sex drive and it tends to dominate their lives.

2.     Pre-marital sex is fear-inducing. Pre-marital sex usually takes place sneaking around in hidden places, dealing with the fear of being caught, the fear of pregnancy and feelings of guilt.

3.     Pre-marital sex leads to loss of a vital asset. Your virginity is to be given to the most important person in your life – the person you will be committed to stay forever in marriage. Your virginity is the most precious thing you have to your spouse. Once you lose it nothing in the world can bring it back.

4.     Fornication is one sin that attracts other sins. Most pre-marital sex ends up in pregnancy, sickness, abandonment or sale of babies. The rate of abortion has increased because of increase in pre-marital sex. A large percentage of youths have committed murder before reaching age 25. Some of them abandon their babies in dustbins, gutters and other public places which is an increase to their original sin of fornication. Some secretly sell their babies to ready buyers who use such babies for rituals.

5.     It creates an ungodly soul tie (Genesis 34:1-3a). A soul tie is an agreement one enters with another that creates a special bond between two people. Soul ties are common and exist everywhere – husband and wife.

Sex is not just a causal fun as most people think and take it to be. It is much more than that, it involves blood. The Bible says “Life is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:14). When you have sex with a person, you have given a part of your life to that person and in return the person has given you a part of his own life in the spirit realm. In the spirit realm, two of you have become one. You start to share things in common. That is why disease, sickness, demons and many things and many things pass through during sexual intercourse. In addition, you have just created “a soul tie” between you and the person involved. Since God does not permit pre-marital sex, it becomes an “ungodly tie” in the sight of God. That is why some girls find a special liking or memory on the day of dis-virginity, the blood that flows out that day becomes the blood of the covenant or agreement. Genesis 34 Shechem the prince of the land of Hivite committed fornication with Dinah, the daughter of Jacob. The soul of Shechem claved unto Dinah.

6.    It fragmentizes your soul. Since sexual intercourse creates soul ties, each person you have sex with you have given part of your heart or soul in the spiritual realm. That is why people who were promiscuous before settling down for marriage find it difficult settling down at all because their souls have been divided; they are always thinking of their relationships with their previous partners, thus making it impossible for them to settle down in their marriages. If a person has slept with a thousand persons in his life, his love, heart and several other things has been shared with these thousand persons. A close look at the society shows that wayward people find it difficult to have a fulfilled marriage life because they have shared their lives with several people.

7.     Premarital sex will lead to extra-marital sexual activities. Most promiscuous people are involved in extramarital relationships. They are never satisfied with one person just for no reason, always looking for their lost souls. It is dangerous engaging in pre-marital sex because it can affect your marriage in future.

8.     Pre-marital Sex Is Lust

Love is from God. It gives unconditionally and it can wait. Lust is from Satan. It is selfish and wants immediate gratification. Any man that loves you will never demand sex from you as a proof of your love for him. Love is patient, is long suffering and endures. Many young people today have the spirit of Ammon (2nd Samuel 13:12-14). Beware!

Other Dangers of Pre-marital Sexual Activities:

•  Premature parenthood – becoming a father or mother before time.
• It makes you marry the wrong person who may not be supportive, friendly or compatible.
• It leads to rejection, abandonment by family or a benefactor.
•  Infertility.
•  It kills your vision. 
•   It takes away your dignity and makes you cheap.
•   It brings shame – shame is accompanied by sense of guilt, whose consequence is death (Romans 6:21).

EFFECTS OF PREMARITAL SEX IN CHRISTIAN LIVING

1.     It Destroys Your Spiritual Fortifications. This is perhaps the most worrisome part of pre-marital sex. Demons and other problems gain entrance into your body and spirit through pre-marital sexual activities. Ecclesiastes 10:8 says:

He who digs a pit shall fall into it and whoever breaks his hedge, a serpent shall bite him.

1 Corinthians 6:16 declares:

“Know ye not that he which is joined to a harlot is one body? For two saith He shall be one flesh.”

2     2. It Taints Your Testimony. Nothing counts more than your testimony. When you taint (soil) your testimony, you would have nothing more to live for. A good name remains better than silver and gold (Proverbs 22:1). When you lose your good name, it is as good as losing everything.

Sinful lifestyles dim the light that should be the Christian youth. No matter how beautiful you can sing, preach or pray, tainting your testimony makes nonsense of all these. The name of the Lord and image of our local Congregations will be subjected to ridicule when Christian youths make a mess of their testimonies.  At Romans 2:17-23, Apostle Paul by inspiration of Holy Spirit asks several powerful rhetorical questions:

But if you bear the name of Jew and rely upon the Law and pride yourselves in God and your relationship to Him. And know and understand His will and discerningly approve the better things and have a sense of what is vital, because you are instructed by the Law. And if you are confident that you [yourself] are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, and [that you are] a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the childish, having in the Law the embodiment of knowledge and truth– Well then, you who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you teach against stealing, do you steal (take what does not really belong to you)? You who say not to commit adultery, do you commit adultery [are you unchaste in action or in thought]? You who abhor and loathe idols, do you rob temples [do you appropriate to your own use what is consecrated to God, thus robbing the sanctuary and doing sacrilege]? You who boast in the Law, do you dishonor God by breaking the Law [by stealthily infringing upon or carelessly neglecting or openly breaking it]? For, as it is written, The name of God is maligned and blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you! [The words to this effect are from your own Scriptures.]

When we give in and listen to the allure of the world, we stand to lose. An anonymous writer had asks and observes,

What happens to the testimony and influence of a Christian youth who becomes … delinquent? His or her reputation is damaged and a good name forfeited. Pointing to this failure, others excuse their sins and question the validity of Christianity. More happen, too, a life for which the Lord shed His blood is marred. A voice that spoke for Christ is stilled, or else mumbles the hollow testimony of a hypocrite. A witness is compromised… a family is saddened… and a Church weakened… a society looses.

3 3. It Defeats the Purpose of Your Christian Race.

The purpose of our Christian race is to make Heaven. However, Scripture inundates us with several warnings of what immorality will do to us: deprive us of inheritance of God’s eternal Kingdom (Galatians 5:19-21; I Corinthians 6:9-11). Hebrews 12:14 attests that “without holiness no one will ever see God.” We are encouraged in Scripture to make pursuit of sanctification our moral watch-word (I Thessalonians 4:3). We should as a matter of urgency remove from our lives every form of “moral and spiritual defilements, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (II Corinthians 7:1).    

 Holiness remains the beauty of a Christian. Without moral purity, a Christian loses his or her relevance to God and society.

HOW TO OVERCOME OR AVOID PRE-MARITAL SEX

1.     Have A Die-Hard Heart And Spirit Of No Retreat, No Surrender            

One of the most appropriate responses to immorality is an uncompromising stance that says, “No!” and standing by it (Titus 2:11). When faced with such tempting moments the only good thing to do is to throw your heart over the bar and stand firmly on what you believe.

No matter what, do yourself a favour: “Do not give” your “holy treasure” to “the dogs” nor your “pearls to the swine because they would not only trample them down but also turn around to attack you” (Matthew 7:6).

In other not to be trapped by the deceitfulness of loose living, make a strong covenant with your eyes (Job 31:1) and ears (II Peter 2:8).

How do we protect against this? Simple - watch your heart. Renowned Bible teacher and author, John Henry Jowett in Swindol       (1990:51) writing on the power and place of human thoughts on moral character of an individual observes,

A man’s thoughts determine the moral climate of his life, and will settle the question whether his conduct is to be a poisonous marsh or a fertile meadow; a fragrant garden or a barren sand.

Knowing this and how you can handle your thoughts are      important in our quest for victory over pre-marital sex in particular and immorality in general. R. B. Sweet (1965:30) points out,

The root causes of immorality could be traced to the misuse of certain members of the body. The eyes feasts upon a seductive picture, giving the green light to evil thoughts. The impure thoughts poison the mind until the mind loses control and calls upon the body to act unwisely.  

Realize that when you “Sow a thought you will reap an act; sow an act you will reap a character; sow a character you will reap your destiny.” Always work on your heart and endeavour to bring every evil thought and imaginations captive to obedience to the will of      Christ (II Corinthians 10:3-5).

Our actions are the by-products of our thoughts. Someone pointed out that we may not be what we think we are but what we think we are (cf. Proverbs 23:7). To watch over our hearts, we need to cultivate the culture of positive thinking (Philippians 4:8) as well as developing godly mindsets (Colossians 3:2-3).        

2 2. Flee (I Corinthians 6:18; Genesis 39:7-12).

Sometimes where we are in moments of temptations make us more susceptible and unable to put up any meaningful resistance. In such situations, the only way out is to walk away, Flee!

a.  Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, craw. But by all means keep moving!”

b.  Potipher’s wife wanted to make Joseph a sex tool but Joseph ran away, leaving behind everything which would keep a firm grip on him by Potipher’s wife.

(i). Some of us would have jumped at such an opportunity and then let the

good times roll. But Joseph knew that to do what her madam wanted her to do would to sinning against himself, his master, Portiphar and more importantly against God, his Creator. So, he ran away! (Genesis 39: 9, 12).

3 3. Cultivate Godly Relationships (II Timothy 2:22).

a.           Bad association corrupts (I Corinthians 15:33).

b.           Your relationships influence you (Proverb 22:24-25; Psalms 100:34-40).

c.            If Dinah, one of Jacob’s daughters had not gone to “visit with Daughters of the land” she would not have been “Violated by Schechem” (cf. Gen. 34:1-2).

Do not let any son or daughter of the land violate your righteousness! 

CONCLUSION

Heaven is so precious and our souls too valuable that we should allow our environment to destroy the beautiful life ahead of us in eternity with our Father and His Saints glorified. All we need to do to an environment that hinders righteousness is to “Say No” to all its suggestions (Titus 2:12-13).

What the Lord has in store for us are too precious to lose by messing up with low living and all forms of unrighteousness (I Cor. 2:9).

May the Lord strengthen us to remain focused on living for Him!

HILARY JOHNSON CHUKWUMA CHUKWURAH

Township/Campus CHURCH OF CHRIST,

14, Agbugwu Lane, off, University Market Road,

P. O. Box 84 and 351, Nsukka – 410002,

Enugu State, Nigeria.

PHONES: 0803-959-6919.

E-MAILS: hilaryjohnsonc@yahoo.com,

                                hilaryjohnsonc@gmail.com.

REFERENCES

Barclay, W. (1976). The Letters of James and Peter. Philadelphia, Pa: Westminster Press.

Eze, Ada (Mrs).  (2014). “How To Overcome Premarital Sex” being a Speech to youths of St. Paul’s Catholic Parish, Umuodagu Ntu,  18th-23rd August.

Halley, H.H. (1962). Halley’s Bible Handbook. Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House.

Sweet, R.B. (1965). Achieving Success: Living Word Series Vol. 124.  Texas: R.B. Sweet Company.

Swindoll, Charles R. (1990). Conquering Through Conflict: A Study of Second Peter. Dallas: Word Publishing Company.

The Holy Bible, New King James Version (1982). USA: Thomas Nelson Inc.