The aim of this arti­cle

In this arti­cle, we want to help peo­ple to become aware of the respon­si­bil­i­ty that is con­nect­ed with the right behav­iour con­cern­ing sex­u­al­i­ty. It should also encour­age espe­cial­ly those young peo­ple who still have a sense for the val­ue of sex­u­al puri­ty to resist the mas­sive pres­sure from their peers or the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty in the media.

1 Only Few People Are Aware of God’s Standard

Sex­u­al­i­ty is an issue every per­son is faced with. Few peo­ple, how­ev­er, are aware of the impor­tance of tak­ing the right course, espe­cial­ly in this area, for the devel­op­ment of their con­science and their whole per­son­al­i­ty, as well as for respect­ful behav­iour with oth­ers, espe­cial­ly those of the oppo­site sex.

We see that very many people—the so-called Chris­t­ian world or “church­es” included—in their feel­ing, think­ing, speech and behav­iour are far removed from God’s stan­dard in this point—a fact made clear by the fol­low­ing exam­ples. For instance, whether or not mas­tur­ba­tion is a sin is unclear for many and you can sel­dom find peo­ple who still believe that it is right to enter mar­riage chaste­ly, that is to say, to wait with hav­ing a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship until they have made a pub­lic com­mit­ment to one anoth­er. Such opin­ions are com­mon­ly regard­ed as old-fash­ioned and nar­row-mind­ed. Pornog­ra­phy is still often seen as some­thing bad or abnor­mal, and yet even among “Chris­t­ian” young men, you can find pre­cious few who have not “con­sumed” such dirty pic­tures which so utter­ly despise human dig­ni­ty. Puri­ty with­in mar­riage is rarely dis­cussed, and re-mar­riage fol­low­ing divorce is wide­spread in church cir­cles. The con­tri­bu­tion that girls and women make to this prob­lem by the way they present them­selves, so that men are seduced to impure looks and thoughts, is hard­ly addressed.…

2 The Holy Scriptures Urge Us to Be Pure

In the Bible we find clear admo­ni­tions and encour­age­ments to remain pure in the area of sex­u­al­i­ty. The high moral stan­dard for the behav­iour of the sex­es with one anoth­er which is com­mand­ed in God’s word is a hall­mark of the rev­e­la­tion giv­en to us by God con­cern­ing his nature and will, and in this point it stands in con­trast to oth­er reli­gions and world views.

To begin with, some pas­sages from the let­ters in the New Tes­ta­ment:

There­fore be imi­ta­tors of God, as beloved chil­dren. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave him­self up for us, a fra­grant offer­ing and sac­ri­fice to God. But sex­u­al immoral­i­ty and all impu­ri­ty or cov­etous­ness must not even be named among you, as is prop­er among saints. Let there be no filth­i­ness nor fool­ish talk nor crude jok­ing, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanks­giv­ing. For you may be sure of this, that every­one who is sex­u­al­ly immoral or impure, or who is cov­etous (that is, an idol­ater), has no inher­i­tance in the king­dom of Christ and God. (Eph­esians 5:1–5)

Let mar­riage be held in hon­our among all, and let the mar­riage bed be unde­filed, for God will judge the sex­u­al­ly immoral and adul­ter­ous. (Hebrews 13:4)

Or do you not know that the unright­eous will not inher­it the king­dom of God? Do not be deceived: nei­ther the sex­u­al­ly immoral, nor idol­aters, nor adul­ter­ers, nor men who prac­tise homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunk­ards, nor revil­ers, nor swindlers will inher­it the king­dom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanc­ti­fied, you were jus­ti­fied in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spir­it of our God. (1 Corinthi­ans 6:9–11)

Put to death there­fore what is earth­ly in you: sex­u­al immoral­i­ty, impu­ri­ty, pas­sion, evil desire, and cov­etous­ness, which is idol­a­try. On account of these the wrath of God is com­ing. (Colos­sians 3:5–6)

It is worth not­ing that for­ni­ca­tion and impu­ri­ty are often men­tioned along with greed in one breath. In Eph­esians 4:17–20 this con­nec­tion is made clear:

Now this I say and tes­ti­fy in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gen­tiles do, in the futil­i­ty of their minds. They are dark­ened in their under­stand­ing, alien­at­ed from the life of God because of the igno­rance that is in them, due to their hard­ness of heart. They have become cal­lous and have giv­en them­selves up to sen­su­al­i­ty, greedy to prac­tise every kind of impu­ri­ty. But that is not the way you learned Christ! (Eph­esians 4:17–20)

The Bible expos­es the ego­tis­tic and greedy char­ac­ter of this kind of sin, and demon­strates how great­ly it con­tra­dicts love—which is self­less by nature—and there­by destroys a per­son­’s abil­i­ty to love.

3 Love

It may sound strange to some, but love and sex­u­al­i­ty are not iden­ti­cal. Sex­u­al­i­ty is only the phys­i­cal part of the rela­tion­ship between man and woman, and should be one expres­sion of their love for one anoth­er. Sex­u­al­i­ty can also “func­tion” with­out love, but God nev­er intend­ed it to be that way. The fact that peo­ple often mean sex­u­al sat­is­fac­tion when they speak about love is a sad indi­ca­tion of the loss of high­er moral val­ues.

These words from Paul give an insight into what should char­ac­ter­ize love:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arro­gant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irri­ta­ble or resent­ful; it does not rejoice at wrong­do­ing, but rejoic­es with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love nev­er ends.(1 Corinthi­ans 13:4–8a)

Love seeks the best for the oth­er per­son, even when it means bear­ing dif­fi­cul­ties. Love is not ego­tis­tic and does not live in expec­ta­tion of hav­ing one’s own wish­es or ideals ful­filled. Love wants to pro­tect oth­ers from every­thing that would destroy what is lov­able and respectable about them. For this rea­son, love can express itself in strict­ness towards oth­ers, and above all, strict­ness towards one’s own self­ish­ness and van­i­ty. Love does not want to pos­sess oth­ers, but respects their free­dom and respon­si­bil­i­ty in front of God, their mak­er. Love is self­less, and does not turn into bit­ter­ness when it is not loved in return or is despised.

4 Many People Confuse Love with “Being in Love”

…an emo­tion­al high, which can eas­i­ly fall to a deep low. This “rush” often occurs when two peo­ple make them­selves the cen­tre of atten­tion for each oth­er, and by doing so, take the place that only belongs to God. Many, whether con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly, seek their val­ue in how desir­able they are for the oppo­site sex. When such a rela­tion­ship breaks up, the dis­ap­point­ment is very great. The con­fronta­tion with the real­i­ty of not being as impor­tant for some­one as was thought is very dif­fi­cult for many to bear—leading peo­ple even to despair of any sense in life.

How­ev­er, even in rela­tion­ships in which both mar­riage part­ners remain faith­ful to the end, they will final­ly be separated—by death. It is at this point, at the very lat­est, that it becomes clear that we can­not build our hap­pi­ness in life on peo­ple, who we will cer­tain­ly lose soon­er or lat­er. Only those who find secu­ri­ty and com­fort in God’s love will be able to escape the despair aris­ing from the loss of a loved one. The secu­ri­ty in God pro­tects us from build­ing a part­ner­ship on feel­ings which can change so quick­ly. This does not mean that feel­ings don’t belong to a rela­tion­ship to a cer­tain extent, but life­long faith­ful­ness requires sober, self­less love. This love express­es itself in the readi­ness to put aside one’s own wish­es, con­cepts and feel­ings, and to take on a serv­ing atti­tude toward one anoth­er and to seek God’s will togeth­er and for each oth­er.

Most young peo­ple lack the matu­ri­ty to assess and to deal with such emo­tion­al forces of attrac­tion, and they eas­i­ly get entan­gled in a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship. Before they devel­op a sense for sex­u­al­i­ty as some­thing which car­ries with it as much respon­si­bil­i­ty as it does val­ue, they destroy the very foun­da­tion. For the use of sex­u­al­i­ty for the sat­is­fac­tion of one’s own lusts feeds the insa­tiable appetite of the ego, and dri­ves a per­son to a dis­as­trous depen­dence on the sex­u­al rush. It ends up hav­ing lit­tle to do with rela­tion­ship, for rela­tion­ship is con­nect­ed with being focused on the needs of the part­ner, and seek­ing the best for them and what tru­ly serves them. It is pre­cise­ly this abil­i­ty to love and to hon­our the oth­er person—to approach them as a per­son and not as an object of desire, which is destroyed more and more by this ego­tism. An ear­ly search for such excite­ment is sup­port­ed by the unin­hib­it­ed and unashamed pre­sen­ta­tion of this top­ic in the media. Impure, seduc­tive and sug­ges­tive innu­en­dos used in images, texts and adver­tis­ing slo­gans are unfor­tu­nate­ly ever-present in our soci­eties.

The basis for this kind of rela­tion­ship is, more often than not, the exter­nal appear­ance of a per­son. They are “loved” for their body—the beau­ti­ful facade—without real­ly know­ing the inner char­ac­ter. Accord­ing­ly, among the young and not so young, much effort is focused on “improv­ing” the exte­ri­or, rather than work­ing on the beau­ty of the char­ac­ter and the soul and work­ing on becom­ing estab­lished as a person—a per­son who rules over their desires rather than being ruled by them. The shame­less­ness of fash­ion must be men­tioned in this con­text, which aims to present the body as espe­cial­ly “desir­able” and to tempt the thoughts of the oppo­site sex in an impure direc­tion. Peo­ple who are depen­dent on the “suc­cess” of their exter­nal appear­ance reveal their inner pover­ty and empti­ness.

The way God wants women to be beau­ti­ful is described in this pas­sage from the New Tes­ta­ment:

Like­wise, wives, be sub­ject to your own hus­bands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won with­out a word by the con­duct of their wives, when they see your respect­ful and pure con­duct. Do not let your adorn­ing be external—the braid­ing of hair and the putting on of gold jew­ellery, or the cloth­ing you wear—but let your adorn­ing be the hid­den per­son of the heart with the imper­ish­able beau­ty of a gen­tle and qui­et spir­it, which in God’s sight is very pre­cious. (1 Peter 3:1–4)

5 Sexuality

God gave humans sex­u­al­i­ty as a way for a man and a woman to give expres­sion to their self­less and self-giv­ing love through pass­ing on the gift of life to their off­spring. It belongs to human dig­ni­ty for a per­son to keep him­self pure for this great act of trust in sex­u­al union with­in a mar­riage partnership—in which each belongs to that one part­ner and no oth­er. This rela­tion­ship must be born out of the wish for life­long faith­ful­ness, care and respon­si­bil­i­ty. These high­er val­ues are what give sex­u­al­i­ty the val­ue God intend­ed for it, which is miss­ing in so many rela­tion­ships. The result of this is vis­i­ble espe­cial­ly in high divorce rates and large num­bers of sin­gle par­ents.

6 Partnership Without Commitment?

It is so nor­mal today for young peo­ple to begin a part­ner­ship with­out mar­ry­ing. How­ev­er, when a man and a woman want to live togeth­er with­out the pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion of mar­riage, they call the love of uncon­di­tion­al faith­ful­ness and respon­si­bil­i­ty for one anoth­er into ques­tion. In a rela­tion­ship where two peo­ple first want to “try each oth­er out”, they can­not build deep trust because this atti­tude reveals that they expect their own wish­es to be ful­filled, rather than hav­ing the aim to serve and give. The rela­tion­ship suf­fers under the omen that if it doesn’t “work”, they can eas­i­ly break up.

Many want to have their desires ful­filled, but they don’t want the respon­si­bil­i­ty. They want to be “adult”, but don’t want to bear the con­se­quences of their actions. They want the sex­u­al expe­ri­ence, but don’t want to pass on the gift of life. At this point, the abuse of sex­u­al­i­ty becomes a threat to life. When preg­nan­cy results, many turn to the dead­ly “solu­tion” of abor­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, even the grotesque sta­tis­tics of the killing of unborn chil­dren hard­ly lead any­one to the recog­ni­tion that a basic turn­around is required regard­ing the ques­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty.

The “pill” would seem to be a harm­less solu­tion, and its use by young women can be found as fre­quent­ly as can sex before mar­riage. Many are unin­formed how­ev­er, of what seri­ous health risks these drugs pose (infor­ma­tion on this can be found eas­i­ly). Still more seri­ous how­ev­er, is that fact that the “pill” is also abortive. The “pill” does not only aim pre­vent preg­nan­cy, but in case fer­til­iza­tion occurs it also pre­vents the fer­til­ized egg—that is, the per­son who has just begun their exis­tence, from find­ing their first essen­tial shel­ter in the womb—and they die.

Respect for God’s order of cre­ation, respect for mankind and for life itself there­fore oblig­es us to deal with the ques­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty with utmost respon­si­bil­i­ty. Such part­ner­ship serves the pur­pose of pass­ing on the mir­a­cle of life and in order to be capa­ble of bear­ing the respon­si­bil­i­ty for a fam­i­ly, a per­son must first edu­cate them­selves. The dis­tin­guish­ing mark of some­one who is mature is, among oth­er traits, the abil­i­ty to rule over their own desires. For this rea­son, it is of great impor­tance for every ado­les­cent to deal strict­ly with their own sex­u­al desires in order to be able to direct the sex­u­al dri­ve to its prop­er place with­in a mar­riage part­ner­ship.

7 Celibacy / Sexual Abstinence

At this point we would also like to men­tion that both Jesus and Paul not only spoke about mar­ried life, but in fact even rec­om­mend­ed celiba­cy:

The dis­ci­ples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is bet­ter not to mar­ry.” But he said to them, “Not every­one can receive this say­ing, but only those to whom it is giv­en. For there are eunuchs¹ who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made them­selves eunuchs for the sake of the king­dom of heav­en. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.” (Matthew 19:10–12)

We know from ear­ly Chris­t­ian writ­ings that many believ­ers at that time chose celiba­cy — a life of sex­u­al absti­nence — for the sake of the king­dom of heav­en (although this is not com­pa­ra­ble to the celiba­cy required of mem­bers of reli­gious orders and priests in the Catholic Church). In con­trast, many peo­ple in today’s reli­gious world regard mar­i­tal hap­pi­ness as the cen­tral aim of life and as God’s high­est bless­ing. Most peo­ple do not even con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty of choos­ing celiba­cy.

Paul writes about this in 1 Corinthi­ans 7:17–38; it is as valu­able and rel­e­vant to believ­ers today as it was then.

8 The Value of a Pure Heart

As Chris­tians, when we speak about puri­ty, we do not refer only to the issue of sex­u­al puri­ty. Our pur­suit of puri­ty touch­es every aspect of who we are: our thoughts and feel­ings, atti­tudes and motives, rela­tion­ships, words and deeds. Jesus calls peo­ple who are pure in heart “blessed”, because a pure heart grants a per­son access to God, who is him­self entire­ly light (see 1 John 1:5).

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8)

Even the believ­ers in the Old Tes­ta­ment were aware of this:

Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceit­ful­ly. (Psalm 24:3–4)

For the Jews, the heart was the cen­tre of all thoughts, motives and deci­sions. Our inner being, which is invis­i­ble to the out­side world, should be entire­ly light, crys­tal clear and pure—for God sees the heart.

The pure heart is upright, free of all self­ish back­ground motives. It desires to serve in sim­plic­i­ty and humil­i­ty, and shies away from every­thing which is dis­hon­ourable. It seeks a clear con­science and does not cast curi­ous side-glances at world­ly entice­ments. It finds rest in God and in the knowl­edge that he pro­vides for our every need.

The love which God wants to lead us to should also be char­ac­ter­ized in this way:

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good con­science and a sin­cere faith. (1 Tim­o­thy 1:5)

Hav­ing puri­fied your souls by your obe­di­ence to the truth for a sin­cere broth­er­ly love, love one anoth­er earnest­ly from a pure heart…. (1 Peter 1:22)

The per­fect role mod­el of this love, we find in Jesus. He came to mankind in truth­ful­ness and upright­ness. With the same clar­i­ty with which he exposed the hypocrisy of reli­gious peo­ple he also called sin­ners to repen­tance. He went after the lost souls and spoke com­fort and for­give­ness to those of con­trite heart, who were tru­ly sor­row­ful about their sins. He set the hopes of those who are hum­ble on God’s mer­cy, and dashed the false hopes of those who were self-right­eous. By his readi­ness to die an unjust death he gave tes­ti­mo­ny to the truth­ful­ness of his words and the self­less­ness of his love. God raised him from the dead and this joy­ful mes­sage was what his dis­ci­ples, who had wit­nessed him after his res­ur­rec­tion, preached.

It was from this tes­ti­mo­ny that the Church arose—the fel­low­ship of those who seek God seri­ous­ly and want to live a pure life. Although there are not many peo­ple who have this wish, the Church still exists today.

Some of us were deeply trapped in the sins men­tioned above. When Jesus called us to repen­tance, we expe­ri­enced a great change. Ear­li­er we were enslaved to impure desires and sins, but through turn­ing to Jesus we found the strength to say no to such things. Our life has been giv­en sense through the love that God has for us. We know and expe­ri­ence that he wants the best for us and is always there for us, to help us in our temp­ta­tions and fights. In this way, we no longer need to seek our val­ue in being desir­able for peo­ple. We expe­ri­ence free­dom from self­ish­ness so that we can do good to oth­ers and tru­ly love them in all puri­ty. On this jour­ney togeth­er we are able to strength­en one anoth­er in our com­mit­ment to our deci­sion to live a life pleas­ing to God.

We invite you to get to know this life with God!

*******

Here we have only been able to give a brief insight into our con­vic­tions on this mat­ter, and are open for ques­tions and thoughts that come from an hon­est inter­est in under­stand­ing more.

1. eunuch: A per­son who is inca­pable of pro­cre­ation, in oth­er words inca­pable of mar­riage — either from birth or through human inter­ven­tion or because they decide to renounce mar­riage. ↩