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Living Honorably
in
a Sexual Age!
Hebrews 13:4
This is a short passage but one filled with shocking significance,
especially in our day. Marriage is honorable. It is acceptable
since God is the one who provided it in the beginning (Gen.
2:18-24; Matt. 19:4-6). Large numbers of people degrade marriage
and disparage it. We probably all know of some who could
well ask, "Who needs marriage? I have a meaningful relationship
with someone right now so we really don’t need to get
married. We have all the pleasures of marriage with none
of the responsibilities. After all, what’s so important
about a piece of paper?" In contrast, God says that
marriage itself is good, right, proper, and honorable. Marriage
must not be corrupted by impurity, degraded by unfaithfulness,
or ridiculed by libertines.
The sexual relationship within marriage is also holy and
right, providing it is a loving and pure expression of a
rightfully married husband and wife (1 Cor. 7:2-5). However,
the sexual relationship (the "marriage bed") may
be "defiled" and often is defiled by the unbelieving
world. The Hebrew writer says that two sins against a rightful
marriage are fornication and adultery. Both
of these will bring God’s terrifying judgment. The term "fornication" (porneia)
refers to "prostitution, unchastity, fornication, of
every kind of unlawful sexual intercourse" (Arndt and
Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament).
The marriage relationship may be defiled when one commits porneia or
indulges in one of many different sexual sins (cf. 1 Cor.
5:1; 6:9-20; 1 Thess. 4:3-8). Marriage is also less than
what God wants when the parties entering marriage have forsaken
their virginity through premarital sexual relationships.
Next, marriage may be defiled through adultery (moichos,
as here, and also moicheia). Adultery is committed
when a married person has sex with someone other than his
or her spouse. An amazing number of marriage partners have
indulged in illicit "affairs" while married. Adultery
also is committed when one partner wrongly divorces his or
her spouse and marries another person (Matt. 5:31-32; 19:9;
Mark 10:11-12; Luke 16:18; Rom. 7:2-3). This second marriage
is adulterous in the sight of God. While it is a marriage,
it is a prohibited and adulterous marriage. Again, this seems
to be a sin of our age since millions of remarriages occur
with adultery as a consequence. Obviously, a high percentage
of divorced persons who have not yet remarried likewise are
involved in sexual relationships which are adulterous in
nature.
The terrifying aspect to this widespread sexual activity
today is that there are tens of millions of people who are
defiled and are involved in defiled "marriage" relationships
through fornication and adultery—and many of these are
oblivious to the full present spiritual and eternal consequences
of these sins. Sexual sin "defiles" the participant
(Mark 7:21-23), prevents him or her from inheriting the kingdom
of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21; Eph. 5:5), brings the
vengeance (1 Thess. 4:3-8) and wrath of God (Eph. 5:5-6;
Col. 3:6), and destines one to the lake of fire (Rev. 21:8).
In view of the contemporary laxity among most people in society,
these truths are shocking! We can see that this verse from
Hebrews is definitely a startling statement of the Lord!
Richard
Hollerman |
