ABOUT SEXUAL PURITY (Pt. 4)

Recently, there was a date marked for the celebration of Sexual Purity. I don’t know the people who set or chose that date or the fact the Sexual purity is worth something worth celebrating, but it is worth commending though. I believe apart from the celebration, I hope it spurs people to have conversation around this topic or create more awareness about the truth surrounding this topic. Anyways, I was got to reminiscing about some of the things God had taught me about Sexual Purity and I believe it is an important thing to address in our discussions of Purity generally.

Let’s start with a story, in one of my relationships I realized it was very easy getting physical with this person, like the kissing and hugging was getting on another level and I realized it could easily slip to outright crossing the boundaries and having sex. Now, both of us were believers and we had already set all those boundaries but at the back of my mind, I strongly believed we were going to get married and how will we know what our sexual life will look like if we do not explore some of these. P.S. That relationship ended up not even working out. Then, I understood why, there was always that story of people who had kept themselves from sex till marriage but close to the wedding period, they succumb and have sex. Some families even encourage it. The popular question is “How will you guys know you are sexually compatible?” Especially, where one of the parties has been sexually active once and the other is a virgin or where both parties have been sexually active before. Another one is “How will she know she can bear children?” All these fears are not invalid but like I said in the first episode of this series, we look to scriptures for answers to our questions and fears.  

Jesus taught me a great lesson from the relationship. The thing is I have heard about being a virgin all my life, the doctrine of keeping yourself until marriage and all of those popular sexual purity messages they preached to us as teenagers. Now, these messages are not wrong in themselves oh, but this is what I learnt, they ended up creating a mindset for us that the reason why you should remain a virgin is for marriage. Sometimes they even make it seem like virginity is a necessary ingredient for a good marriage, so those that had sex before marriage will automatically have bad marriages. This is so damaging, and I know a lot of people have been damaged by these notions.

Now, let’s examine scriptures, Paul in I Corinthians 6 vs 12-20 gives an important message about this topic. I will just highlight some necessary verses from this passage, but I encourage us all to read it.

“You say, ‘I am allowed to do anything’ but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything” I must not become a slave to anything. You say, ‘Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.’ (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies…Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ?…But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” (Verse 12-13, 15, 17 NLT)

“Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So, you must honor God with your body.” (Verses 18-20 NLT)

This scripture is clear, our bodies are the indwelling, temple, house of the Holy Ghost. Our bodies no longer belong to us. It is for this reason that I will stay pure. This is the Logic, if my body has an owner, it no longer belongs to me then such owner should be able to dictate what I do or do not do with it. I can no longer say everything goes for me. I must be able to reconcile that I am only a steward of this body, so I must stay within the confines of what is expected of me. Hence, my singular motivation for staying pure is that my body belongs to Christ and since He has set the boundaries on what I can do with this body, I will stick to those boundaries. The price Christ paid for me is worth more than I can ever imagine. Now, getting married as a virgin is the icing on the cake, but it is not the main cake or the foundation upon which to build a sexual purity doctrine. One thing I have learnt is that you can never build any doctrine upon any other thing but Christ and Him alone, every other foundation will and can come crashing down by some very slight issues, but Christ will always stand sure

Now, the problem is that a lot of people seek to stay pure by their own will, but they realize they keep falling over and over again. Hence, they declare that it is impossible. In our next episode, we will address this issue.