The Pleasure of Sin

Essay #3, Biblical Sexuality

It’s fun while it lasts, but the consequences aren’t

In the first essay on biblical sexuality, we looked at the body’s spiritual importance. In the second essay, we considered the conflict between body and spirit: the body has a mind of its own. Both were published in August.

In this third essay, we examine consequences of sex outside of the husband/wife relationship. As a reminder, I’m just a grandmother and writer. I don’t have a counseling degree; I’m not a scientist. I don’t have a theology degree. The only thing that qualifies me to write about sex is personal experience, observations of others, and the study of scripture. I’m sharing thoughts shaped and honed over many years.

That being said, here’s how this essay is structured. First, an acknowledgment: unsanctioned sin is thrilling. Second, despite the thrills, it causes harm in at least five ways: to the conscience, to others, to our bodies, to our future, and to our relationship with the Lord.

Sex Outside of Marriage Is Exciting*

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, and of course I mean consensual sex. If you’ve had sex outside of marriage, you know what a thrill it is. The passion, the secrecy, the butterflies of the first touch. Taking off clothes, the creativity and exploration, the vulnerability and risk. As great as married sex is, it doesn’t compare with illicit sex for the thrills, lust, and unbridled passion.

Sin is like this. In the beginning, there’s something about it that feels incredibly good. In fact, it feels right. It feels like truth.

The risks appear low when we first cross the line. Even if we’ve been warned, we believe the risks won’t be that bad. By the time we make a decision to engage, one very important thing has happened. We’ve ignored the conscience. This is the first harm we cause.

*This section is not meant to impugn my husband, Phil. We conducted ourselves with purity throughout our dating relationship and engagement.

Be Quiet, Jiminy Cricket

In order to become sexually intimate with someone other than our spouse, we either tell ourselves lies or we listen to someone else telling lies. An ancient story bears witness to this process. Satan, in the form of a serpent in the Garden of Eden, plants doubts in the woman’s mind (Has God said?). Then he tells a bold-faced lie (You won’t die!). In the end she decides that the risks are exaggerated and the fruit will be good. “She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her.” (Gen. 3:6 NLT)

We often follow a similar pattern in committing sexual sin. We doubt the Bible means what it plainly says. We decide the consequences are exaggerated. By the time we start enjoying the thing that was taboo, our conscience has been silenced. We fall into sin one decision at a time, distancing ourselves from the voice that pleads, “Uh oh, don’t do that.”

Thanks to Disney, we’ve been informed of this process since childhood. The story of Pinocchio is an allegory of it. As Pinocchio makes decisions to join Stromboli’s show and later to go to Pleasure Island instead of home to Geppetto, he ignores the objections of Jiminy Cricket, the conscience provided by the benevolent Blue Fairy. He falls deeper and deeper into trouble.

We too, like Eve or Pinocchio, take a similar path. We’ve heard the warnings about sex (It’s wrong! You’ll get pregnant! You’ll get an STD! He’ll drop you!), but passion trumps reason. It just feels so …  exciting. So … right.

Here are three more things to consider about the conscience.

NO ONE CAN CLAIM THEIR CONSCIENCE DIDN’T BOTHER THEM

The Apostle Paul writes that everyone knows what is right or wrong, even those who have never heard the Jewish law. “They show that in their hearts they know what is right and wrong, the same as the law commands, and their consciences agree. Sometimes their thoughts tell them that they have done wrong, and this makes them guilty. And sometimes their thoughts tell them that they have done right, and this makes them not guilty.” (Rom. 2:15 ERV) Thus, even those who haven’t heard God’s law still have a conscience that directs them. Because humans are made in God’s image, we have a general sense of right from wrong.

THE CONSCIENCE CAN BE DAMAGED

Ignoring the conscience can sear it. It can be silenced. Paul, in giving advice to Timothy about false teachers, calls them “liars whose consciences are seared.” (I Tim. 4:2) Other translations use the word, “cauterized.” Even though Paul isn’t writing about sexual sin, it’s worth noting that he connects lies with a seared conscience. Believing and speaking lies is a dangerous situation for the Christian.

Take a minute to think about the meaning of the word “sear.” If you love to braise meat in the winter as I do, then you know the meat is usually seared first. I get a cast iron skillet very hot and then carefully put in the meat; it crackles and pops. The raw edges sear, turning deep brown and somewhat crusty, which yields a unique flavor. The caramelized crust cannot be undone.

We probably associate a seared conscience with hardened criminals—an apt term—who show no remorse. But I’ve also known Christian men and women involved in adultery, premarital sex, or homosexuality who appear to have a seared conscience. They justify and defend their actions, often using scripture. Their hard edges indicate that a thick crust is keeping the truth from penetrating.  

“Some people have made a mess of their faith because they didn’t listen to their consciences.” (I Tim. 1:19 CEV)

A CLEAR CONSCIENCE IS OUR BIRTHRIGHT

It’s popular to bemoan our failures and sins these days, as if one couldn’t possibly have a clear conscience. However, the Bible speaks otherwise. Paul said, “I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.” (Acts 24:16 ESV) To the church in Corinth he wrote this amazing boast: “We are proud that our conscience is clear. We are proud of the way that we have lived in this world. We have lived with a God-given holiness and sincerity, especially toward you.” (2 Cor. 1:12 NOG) He wrote Timothy that the goal of his instruction was love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith (I Tim. 1:5).

As a woman influenced by the theology of the Reformation, I believe the heart is corrupt and we are blind to our faults. But I also believe transformation and sanctification are our calling. Repentance and change are our birthright as children of God. Living with a clear conscience should be our norm. We are not trapped in death, and we should reject the popular teaching in the church that shrugs at sin (meh) and gives lip service to confession.

Love Your Neighbor As Yourself

Jesus said the second greatest commandment is to “love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:31 HCSB) It should not come as a surprise that causing our neighbor harm contradicts this commandment. When we sleep with someone who is not our spouse, we’re not only hurting ourselves, but we’re hurting the other person.

Paul rebukes the Corinthian church over harming fellow believers regarding food sacrificed to idols: “when you sin like this against the brothers and wound their weak conscience, you are sinning against Christ.” (I Cor. 8: 12 HCSB) To wound a believer’s conscience is to sin against Christ. If to eat food, which is neither good nor bad, can injure the conscience, how much worse is the wound of sexual sin!

But we’re slow to consider our responsibility to others. In America we enjoy thinking of ourselves as independent. We’re mobile, and we love our freedom to come and go as we please. Despite the many good things about American culture—our free expression, our strong volunteer ethic, our desire to help the world—I believe our dominant cultural priority is self actualization. Abraham Maslow’s theory is definitely American made: live a fulfilling life and achieve your potential. How many self-help books, talk shows, Instagram posts, magazines, classrooms, and TED talks promote this?

Embracing this ideology incubates a “me first” identity. It causes one to ask, “What’s good for me?” before asking, “What’s good for my neighbor?” Sexual expression and satisfaction are treated as a fundamental right. But Jesus has taught us differently. The one who came to serve, not to be served, has given us a different standard. “Nothing should be done because of pride or thinking about yourself. Think of other people as more important than yourself.” (Phil. 2:3 NLV) 

When we have sex with someone outside of marriage, we join our body to theirs so deeply that Jesus terms it “one flesh.” For the rest of that person’s life, he or she will remember the intimacy we shared. We may justify ourselves by thinking, “I wasn’t their first” or “we plan to get married.” But the fact remains; we’ve cheated them. We’ve stolen an intimacy meant for a covenant relationship. In our selfishness, we’ve defrauded them of a clear conscience.

The Body Is Harmed

“Did you know our grandfather had syphilis?”

I held the phone still, not knowing what to say. Finally, I managed, “What?!?”

“Yes, it’s on his death certificate. Gregory found it on ancestry.com.”

My sister shared more details from her son’s high school research project. She never knew our grandfather, who died when I was four. According to the death certificate, a two-decade-old case of syphilis was the secondary cause of death, after heart disease. I was stunned. Here was an Ivy League-educated New Yorker who had traveled and enjoyed a successful professional life. He must have gotten syphilis before the advent of antibiotics, in the 1930s. He was married to my grandmother at the time.

For hundreds of years Europeans feared syphilis: the foul-smelling abscesses and sores, the nighttime bone pain, and, in late stages, insanity. For those of us who grew up with antibiotics and vaccines, it’s hard to grasp how much the world changed in the twentieth century. Not until 1943, with the widespread production of penicillin, could syphilis be cured. According to a 2014 article in the peer-reviewed Journal of Medicine and Life, titled, “A Brief History of Syphilis,” famous people ranging from Thomas Chatterton, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Ludwig van Beethoven to Friedrich Nietzsche, Vincent van Gogh, and Franz Schubert had or were presumed to have had syphilis. It was a widespread consequence of infidelity.

Despite modern sex education, sexually transmitted diseases are still spreading in America. Imagine the harm being done to the body! Not all STDs can be cured. Of those that are curable, there may come a time when drugs don’t work. The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention states that antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest public health challenges of our time. As organisms mutate, our drugs become less effective; in fact, 35,000 people die in the US each year from antibiotic-resistant infections. One STD is particularly worrisome. “Gonorrhea has progressively developed resistance to the antibiotic drugs prescribed to treat it,” the CDC states.

It’s widely believed that “knowledge is power,” but in our country, knowledge hasn’t empowered us to radically change our behaviors. According to the US government, there are 20 million new cases each year of STDs, which include syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, herpes, HPV, and HIV. Sixty-nine percent of new HIV cases are in men having sex with men. These diseases are spread when one person gives it to another during a sexual encounter, which means that two virgins cannot get or give each other an STD, a fact acknowledged even by Planned Parenthood.

Sexual sin harms the body in a way that’s different from every other sin. It causes a person to violate the self. “Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body,” Paul wrote. (I Cor. 6:18 ESV)

An even more sobering harm occurs if a woman becomes pregnant and decides to abort: she harms her own child’s body. Nearly one in five pregnancies end in abortion according to the most recent US statistics (Guttmacher Institute 2017). This adds up to hundreds of thousands of abortions in a twelve-month period, which I will write more about later. From the time abortion became legal in 1973 until 2011, 50 million abortions have occurred in America. Conservatives and liberals generally agree upon this number; it’s not inflated.

Our Future Changes

We retain the memory of someone we touched, kissed, treasured, and loved. The soul, the mind, and the body unite in sealing these experiences into our memories. We will possess them, and they us, until death. Years later, even if we can’t stand the person we once slept with, the memory remains. We simply learn to live with the choices we made. As Christians, we lean into the grace of God.

Those memories taint marriage. Comparisons will arise in one’s mind, from technique to physique. This is human nature; it can’t be avoided.

We also harm our future by living together outside of marriage because we’ve entered a transactional relationship. In its crudest terms, it goes like this: if I like you, I stay. If I don’t, I leave. Commitment is withheld, yet judging occurs. A foundation is built on getting one’s needs met, needs as subtle as avoiding loneliness or as innocuous as saving money. I’ve seen many sweet and kind and generous people, even professing Christians, move in together. However, personality traits don’t mitigate a foolish decision that has negative consequences.

Some justify this decision because they’d rather live together and find out what a person’s truly like instead of ending up divorced. This is especially true of children traumatized by their parents’ divorce. They often think living together first will protect them from divorce. If only it were so.

A 2014 article in The Atlantic, “The Science of Cohabitation,” reported a higher rate of divorce among those who live together before marriage. 

Giving birth outside of marriage also changes our future. It’s a well documented prescription for poverty, and it’s becoming increasingly common: 40 percent of US births are to unmarried women. Forty percent of American kids don’t have dads who love and care for their moms.

America is sowing the wind and will reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7). We should be sobered by the consequences that lie ahead.

A friend once shared a sermon on sowing and reaping that changed my life. The gist of it came from Ephesians 6:8 (CJB): “Those who keep sowing in the field of their old nature, in order to meet its demands, will eventually reap ruin; but those who keep sowing in the field of the Spirit will reap from the Spirit everlasting life.”

            Here are three lessons from that sermon:

• If you plant an apple seed, you’ll get apples. You can’t plant one thing and expect something else to grow. [Transactional relationships reproduce.]
• The harvest occurs later. You plant in the spring and reap in the summer or fall. [Consequences come later, in a different season of life.]
• You get more than you planted. If you plant an apple seed, you get a tree that produces bushels of apples for many years. [The consequences will be greater than you think.]

“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” (Galatians 6: 7 ESV)

We Hurt Our Relationship with the Lord

God consistently describes his relationship with his people as that of a husband to a wife. One day we’ll be joined to Christ as a bride to her husband. When we choose sexual relationships that mar this image, we hurt our witness and our relationship with the Lord. We become jaded.

The only relationship the Bible sanctions for sexual intimacy is that of husband and wife.

That’s profound. This mysterious union, from which a human being is made, illustrates God’s love for his people.

The image that began in the Old Testament—of God as husband and his people as his wife—is confirmed in the New. Paul directs husbands to love their wives in the same way as Jesus loves the church.

Marriage is meant to be a pure and trusting relationship, one with an “undefiled bed” (Heb. 13:4), a euphemism for sexual faithfulness.

Sexual immorality conveys an intimate level of disregard for one’s calling as a Christian. Listen to Paul’s outrage over learning that believers are sleeping with prostitutes in Corinth:  “Don’t you know that your bodies are a part of Christ’s body? So should I take a part of Christ’s body and make it part of a prostitute? Absolutely not!” (I Cor. 6:15 HCSB) Even a sexual act involving money joins one human to another.

God is an emotional being. If unfaithfulness can break up a marriage, it can certainly cause God grief. Throughout the Old Testament, the Jewish nation’s unfaithfulness caused the Lord grief, anger, and frustration. Jesus was grieved when he saw hardness of heart (Mark 3:5), a telltale sign of unfaithfulness. We can’t engage in sexual immorality without hurting our relationship with the Lord.

We want to be ready for our destiny. A wedding feast is coming (Rev. 19:9). Our hero will appear with the armies of heaven to vanquish his foes, and then his city will arrive from heaven dressed like a bride. We’ll enter through gates set in walls of gold and jewels. God’s presence will light up the streets, the once-banished tree of life will flourish by the river, and saints will enter their forever home. We will be with Jesus in ways we cannot imagine.

Between now and then, we need power to live righteously. “God didn’t call us to be sexually immoral but to be holy.” (I Thes. 4:7 GW) How do we get the power we need? Willpower will fail us. My next essay provides an answer.