By bro Lee Tian Seng
There is a promiscuous attitude towards sexual relationship in the modern world. This has an impact on marriage and the family. Some people think that sex before marriage and extra-marital relationships are not wrong. These are becoming widely accepted today. Marriage is no more sacred and honoured, and some married couples would just divorce if their marriages do not work out. Singles do not even want to get married but choose to just stay together.
The Bible teaches that a man and a woman should be married if they choose to be an intimate couple and sexual union should only be allowed within the marriage. When God created man and woman, and instituted marriage, He said that Adam and Eve shall be “one flesh”, suggesting that the intimate union should only be between husband and wife.
Genesis 2:24 - Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
In the New Testament, the writer of Hebrews teaches that sexual union within marriage is pure before God, but fornicators and adulterers are in sin and subject to God’s judgment.
Hebrews 13:4 - Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
Also, in Corinth, where fornication was a common practice, the apostle Paul wrote to the church that Christians should have sexual intimacy only with one’s own husband or wife.
1 Corinthians 7:2-3 - Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband.
The Book of Proverbs also teaches that married people should not have sexual intimacy with others outside marriage, otherwise they would be committing adultery.
Proverbs 5:15-16 – Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well. Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets?
Proverbs 5:20 - For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman, and be embraced in the arms of a seductress?
We should be very careful about sexual sins like adultery and fornication, because those who commit such sins will not have eternal life.
Galatians 5:19-21 - Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Adultery causes broken marriages and is one of the reasons for divorce. Divorce brings so much pain to couples and their children. God do not want married couples to divorce, but to be faithful to one another and to keep the marriage covenant.
Matthew 19:4-6 - And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
We need to be careful to keep ourselves pure and be faithful to our spouses, following God’s teaching on this matter.