Should Churches Overlook Sexual Sin in Relationships?

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Salvation in Christ and the Coming Judgment

Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ. Christ, therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

So what about speaking about the kind of going back to the unity aspect of this. We read a couple verses about we're supposed to be prioritizing that and reference some more. What about a situation where it's not just you broke up and it was a completely normal relationship outside of the breakup.

What if that breakup involved some sort of sin on both people's part? Probably the most common thing would probably be some sort of sexual sin. For example, you have a guy and a girl dating in a church, they break up, but then they were sexually intimate with one another while they were dating.

So you're essentially taking what you were talking about earlier, where people just get far too attached to one another, and then you're turning that dial all the way up as far as it goes when you're talking about that level of intimacy.

So what do you do in that situation? How do you counsel someone or the two people that are in that situation where they're kind of looking at each other and saying, Hey, we were that close and now we're not anymore.

I feel like I can't be around you anymore. How do you counsel that kind of person?

It is difficult to give a one-size-fits-all kind of answer to that kind of question, particularly when you're living in the kind of society that we're living in, because there are some factors that are probably relevant for that topic in general.

Under the Old Covenant, one of the relevant verses related to that topic is, if a man seduces a virgin and lies with her, there's an expectation that you get married, right? Sure. There's an expectation that you get married and that kind of thing, because you have changed the virgin's status, right?

So you're not really living in a society right now that values virginity anymore, and there's almost an expectation that everyone is going to fornicate before marriage. And that expectation is based on the reality that almost everyone does, right?

So in that kind of way, is the woman a virgin or not? So what kind of sexual sin is this? His 10th person that he has fornicated with and her 20th person, or his 20th person, her 10th person, whatever, that would change the nature of what the right thing to do in that moment might be, for sure.

And then you're not really living in a society that really has that as part of its civil code, or moral code, or anything else. So there's no bride price that is being paid for virgins and all that. I think it's a more complicated kind of arrangement than what you might imagine.

Pregnancy might introduce certain complications into it as well. I mean, there should obviously be some kind of church discipline process initiated. I'm not trying to say that. I mean, presumably they could be repentant, and it may not go to the third step or something.

So I'm not trying to say that fornication should instantaneously go to the third step with no hope of restoration or whatever else. But I mean, there should be some kind of oversight elders. Are the elders dealing with it in a godly way?

Are they not dealing with it in a godly way? Is the church that's going to practice church discipline? Is the church that isn't going to practice church discipline who's responsible for this encounter?

So I think you can multiply complications at that point. So sin obviously complicates everything. And depending on how the situation is handled, and the status of everyone involved, and how willing everyone is to follow the Bible, it may be that, yeah, there's a departure that is unnecessary that has occurred as a result of sin, if that makes sense.

But I mean, yeah, I think in a normal world, you're going back there. Well, I don't know. It's probably more the normal situation than the opposite situation of a breakup or whatever, which is why everything is so difficult at that point.

But I mean, you should be—the main point is you should be pursuing marriage in such a way that it's okay to stay at the same church, for sure.

Repentance, Church Discipline, and Staying in the Same Church

Do you think—so imagine you're dealing with that kind of situation, and it's kind of like whatever the—obviously, it's not an ideal situation to be in. But whatever the ideal scenario is in terms of everyone's response to that situation, meaning the two people that we're dating, they recognize that they are both in sin.

They recognize that there needs to be repentance. The church leaders are willing to follow the church discipline process. They're willing to submit themselves to the church discipline process. Whatever that ideal situation looks like in terms of the response to it, do you think in that scenario it's possible to still, for those two people who we're dating who were intimately involved, to still have come out of the situation having some sort of unity where they say, hey, look, we don't have to—one of us go, the other one stays, or we both go, something like that.

I mean, we can both stay here, and we've repented of whatever was going on. We've moved on from one another maybe, but we can still be a part of the same church. Do you think that's possible, or do you think that you've kind of gotten to a point where it's basically—there's just no fixing it at this point?

Yeah, I mean, I think part of the way that you answer a question like this is to consider the nature of the severity of what fornication actually is. So Exodus 22 .16, if a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride price for her and make her his wife.

The idea is that—what is marriage? It's a man leaving father and mother, holding fast to his wife to become one flesh, right? So marriage is two becoming one flesh. So what you have in a scenario where two people are fornicating is you have a— basically, you're people who are performing the act of consummation of a marriage, right?

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, obviously that's going to tie them together in a physical, tangible way. It's like when a man lies with a prostitute, the New Testament says, right? He's making—he's becoming one flesh with her.

That's using the language of marriage, right? So this is not a—I would say that this really isn't a trivial act. So I don't necessarily have the expectation with that act that it's just like, you know, a handshake or something like that.

Let's go our separate ways and pretend like it never happened. Like it really is—it's—this is—you are unifying yourself with another person in a way that's like profoundly like physical, you know, spiritual, right?

So there's like a unity that has happened there that, yeah, like when you rip those two things apart, it's indistinguishable from ripping two married people apart. Yeah. The only difference is one of time, right?

Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, it does. Yeah. So people treat it as like a very casual act, you know, where you can just say, okay, we were wrong. Can we just move on, you know, kind of thing. I would say, well, no, it's not—this isn't a casual act.

This is a, you know, a profound act that does unify two people because, I mean, this is an act that's intended to happen in the context of marriage. So, yeah, I mean, it's like the idea of casual sex is an oxymoron, right?

It's not casual. It's not casual and there are entailments to it and everything else. So I wouldn't say that the, you know, if you're—let's say that woman's not a virgin, whatever, man has seduced her, like you still have marry whom you will, marry in the Lord kind of stuff.

I wouldn't say that instantaneously, therefore, then like the—like, you know, if there's not a marriage that happens as a result of it, they decide that this was a sinful relationship. They don't want to go down this road, whatever.

Like, all that—like, I don't think that there's some demand that they must leave. One of them must leave or else it would be too awkward or something like that. At the same time, I do understand that this is like a divorce in a lot of ways due to the nature of what they've done.

So, yeah, I could imagine how one of them would have, through that act, so tied their emotions to this other person that it may be difficult to be around them all day long. But, I mean, that's, you know, every single week, week in and week out.

So, you know, the idea that they would come away from that encounter just having completely separated emotions is, you know, would probably indicate a different kind of failure, you know, on their part where they're so desensitized to what they've done that, you know.

I mean, like if this is the 20th person in the line, you know, for both of them or something, then I imagine at that point, then it really wasn't all that meaningful and they can maybe stick around, you know, that kind of thing.

But I would imagine that if it wasn't that, it may be very difficult. Yeah. So, now that's to their utter failure that they need to leave, right? Does that make sense? But it's more understandable in that situation for sure.

But, I mean, you should not be approaching marriage in such a way that you are getting yourself into those kind of messes. You know, so like you're leaving your church because you were so sinful to the point where you can no longer, like you put such a stumbling block in your way of faithfulness that now you have to leave or something like that.

That's not ideal and that would be, you know, a sad outcome for sure.

Closing Thanks and Support for the Podcast

Yeah. Okay. Well, fair enough. I think that's a good place for us to wrap up the conversation on. So, thank you, Tim, for answering all my questions related to that. Yeah, certainly a difficult topic to talk about from a lot of different angles, especially once you start involving sin in the relationship and especially when it's sexual sin for all the reasons that you've spelled out and probably even more that we haven't even had time to really touch on in a significant way.

So, thank you for answering all my questions related to that. We want to thank you guys for supporting us week in and week out. All of you who are listening to us regularly, who are following the podcast, who are interacting with us online, we certainly appreciate all that support.

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