Is It Sinful to Shack Up If Everyone Promises To Be Celibate?

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Salvation in Christ Alone and the Coming Judgment

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject 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.

Defining the Question of Shacking Up

Alright, Tim, the question for today's episode is, is it sinful to shack up if everyone promises to be celibate?

I think most people, when you use the term shack up, are assuming that if a person actually is shacking up, that there is no way possible that they could possibly be celibate. But then, you know, for the sake of this question, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say, let's just treat it as a hypothetical.

Let's suppose that maybe they could pull it off, even though we believe they probably won't. Would it be sinful in and of itself? And I think maybe it's helpful to try to define the term, what we're even talking about there, because when I talk to people about this subject in general, it's interesting because their mind goes to any number of scenarios that are not at all comparable to this sort of scenario.

So they may go to different scenarios, like in terms of living arrangement in different parts of the globe or in different time periods. Or, you know, let's assume that this zombie apocalypse happens and, you know, it's just you find a girl who is being attacked by a zombie horde and you have to make shelter together.

What do you do, right? Are you in sin by living in close proximity to her to try to keep her safe or something along those lines? But most of these ridiculous scenarios that you can imagine, it seems like the answer is always, well, they should just get married anyways, right?

But let's assume that there's some sort of arrangement that you can come up with where it may be a little bit different than the common notion of shack up. We do know what shacking up means. I mean, the term itself, if you look up the term shack up, it is to start living in the same house as sexual partners without being married.

So it is a slang term that's being used for a romantic couple, essentially pretending like they're married, like living together as if they were a married couple by themselves, alone, in isolation, despite the fact that they're not.

Right. It's the free trial before marriage. That's right. Yeah, that's right.

So the assumption is that they are sleeping together, but then for the sake of our moral question that we're asking, we're asking the question, well, let's suppose they promise to be celibate and then, you know, you have to swallow the, do you believe that they actually are?

Right, right. Refrain from rolling your eyes.

Refrain from rolling your eyes. But then, you know, can you imagine, does the Bible prohibit that in general? And I think there's good answers to this question. Well, there's some good answers to this question that we'll try to give.

There's a lot of bad answers to this question. So as I've talked to people about this, most people lean on a lot of the bad answers to this question. But it is really a test case scenario to think about how you apply the Bible to ethical dilemmas like this in general.

I think most people, when they get to questions like this, there's an expectation that wells up within them that in order for this to be wrong, they need a Bible verse that says, thou shalt not live in the same house as an unmarried woman of the opposite sex.

So they want something almost that specific, right? They want something that specific. And then in the absence of that, then you consider it a slam-dunk case. But then this isn't the kind of thing that really, this kind of expectation is a pretty unrealistic expectation in general.

And there's plenty of scenarios that you can come up with where something would be prohibited, that you can't find a specific moral or a specific passage that addresses that particular scenario. I mean, a great example of that is just porn.

The Bible doesn't, during that time, there was no such thing as computers or internet or anything else. And so if you want to get that level of specific, then you're not going to find anything there. But then in terms of bad answers, a lot of people, when they think about this, they go straight to the avoid all appearance of evil kind of calculus.

And so in their mind, that's kind of the go-to that people will lean on to say, well, it may not be technically wrong in itself, but then you need to avoid giving the impression that you could possibly be doing something wrong to anyone on the outside.

And the problem with that, though, is that when you're thinking about that phrase, that's a phrase that's found in the King James, avoid all appearance of evil. And that phrase, that word appearance, has undergone some transformation over time.

So we think of appearance now as giving the impression that you're doing something wrong when you aren't necessarily doing it. We think that's what appearance means. Like giving the appearance that you're doing something wrong, but that isn't really the use of the word in the King James.

So the use of the word is more of an older use where you might imagine like the queen making her appearance. Like if a queen made her appearance, she showed up, right? Like, so she made an appearance, she showed up.

Well, that's the kind of use that's being described there in a lot of the newer translations essentially say avoid all kinds of evil. So avoid every manifestation of evil. Avoid evil showing up. Like when evil shows up, go the other way.

That's essentially what that verse means. But I think the better way to think about a topic like this is to think about it in terms of just the commands the Bible gives to flee sexual immorality. So if the Bible gives you commands to flee sexual immorality, and you have examples of Joseph running from temptation, right?

And then you're supposed to pray in the Lord's prayer, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. So how can you pray, Lord, lead us not into temptation when in the very moment you are putting yourself in the path of temptation?

Right? And so if that's to be a model prayer for us, and it is, like there is a principle in the Bible to say that we're asking God to lead us not into temptation. And that assumes that we're not doing everything we can to put ourselves in the most tempting situation possibly imaginable.

And so you can imagine the young man who goes beside the prostitute's house in Proverbs, who's like a lamb to the slaughter, so to speak. And so you have that kind of principle. You have Joseph who's fleeing.

You have New Testament commands telling us to flee youthful lust. And I think it would be sinful to put yourself... Basically, if the Bible gives you a command to flee temptation and you do something which is necessarily the opposite, that would be violating that command.

So I think if you look at something like living together as an unmarried couple, by yourself, no accountability whatsoever, what you're doing is you're doing the exact opposite of fleeing from temptation, essentially.

Temptation, Lust, and the Sin of Presumption

Okay. So I guess the first question I would want to ask in response to that, and this might sort of just be a semantic kind of thing that I'm bringing up here, but if that whole avoid the appearance of evil, if that doesn't mean like, hey, avoid the impression of...

Giving the impression. You're giving the impression that you're doing something wrong even though you're not, it means actively avoid sin. Evil in all of its form, yeah. Right. So wouldn't that still fall into the category of flee sexual immorality?

What do you mean? Maybe spell it out a little bit more. Yeah. Well, I guess if we're... I'm probably asking that question more in the like, I don't believe that the person is actually staying celibate.

So I guess if they are actually being celibate, then there's... I don't know. I don't even want to say that there's not still something evil happening there because I think there probably is. Because I don't think it stops at, and I know you don't think this either because we've had episodes on this before, but it's not just the act that would be evil, right?

It's the thought process behind it. Or it's the thoughts of being tempted internally by it, desiring it to begin with. So it seems like... In my mind, it just feels a little difficult to separate it still, even with the appearance definition that you're giving for that passage.

Where is that at, by the way? I've forgotten. Yeah, let me look it up. Well, while you're looking that up... It feels like, in my mind, it's still hard to separate it from applying in this situation, even if they are being celibate.

Just because you're not physically having sex doesn't mean that you're not desiring... I mean, if you're interested in marrying the person, surely you have at least a desire that you're provoking.

Yeah, in the KJV, 1 Thessalonians 5 .22 says, abstain from all appearance of evil. And then in the ESV, it says, abstain from every form of evil. But then, basically, you're just trying to avoid every kind of evil that you can imagine.

Now, the point that you're making is a point that I think many people... I did a Twitter poll on this, and not many people picked up on this dynamic that you're picking up on, but it was something that I mentioned.

But then, the issue is not simply that, in this arrangement of shacking up, everyone promises to be celibate, and so let's take them at their word that that would be something that they could possibly do.

The problem, though, is that the only sin involved in this equation is not just the sin of fornication. And that's the point that you're making. And so, what we're being asked to believe is this is a situation that's not only...

Like, in order for it to be a good situation, like a permissible situation, a helpful situation, not only does it have to be a situation that's free of fornication, but it also has to be a situation that's free of lust, right?

Right, yeah. And it's not just heaping, like, burning fire on the lust equation and the mental fantasy equation and all the other forms of sexual immorality that can happen beyond just basic fornication.

So, what you're doing, though, when you think about something along these lines, is you're putting yourself in the path of temptation, essentially. And so, instead of abstaining from every form of evil, if you want to put it in that way, instead of fleeing sexual immorality, you're putting yourself in a place where you're going to be tempted without any kind of accountability with all sorts of sexual sin, not just...

Go ahead. Yeah, you're the fool from Proverbs that you mentioned earlier, walking down where he knows the prostitute is going to be, and then he's like a cattle to the slaughter. He's the person who's basically...

He sleeps with the girl, and then afterwards he's thinking to himself, well, how could this have even happened?

I couldn't possibly have known. So, you're the person who's putting yourself, essentially, in the path of temptation. And so, that's the opposite of fleeing temptation. You're putting yourself in the path of temptation.

But then, because you're supposed to model the Lord's prayer, you're also committing a different kind of sin. So, you're committing the sin of presumption, essentially. What I mean by that is, one of the Satan's temptations of Jesus was that Jesus would throw himself off the building, right?

Because God had promised that God would not allow him to dash his foot against a rock, and he would send his angels to bear him up and keep him from doing that. So, essentially, what Satan is telling him to do is, why don't you put God to the test there?

Throw yourself off and just prove that God's going to do what he says he's going to do. And so, you're doing something very similar when you're shacking up while you're supposed to be praying, Lord, lead us not into temptation.

What you're doing is you're basically doing everything possible to put yourself in a situation, like you're pursuing temptation with everything you have, and then you're asking God to deliver you from it.

You're doing something very similar. It's like you're throwing yourself off a building, right? You're asking God to protect you. So, that's the sin of presumption, essentially. So, what you have is you have a violation of the command to flee sexual immorality, but then you also have this presumptuous posture that you're adopting, where you have the audacity to pray, to ask God to do something that you're at the very moment violating, right?

Right. Yeah. So, however you cut it, I think this is one of those moral test case scenarios to say, how well do you know the Bible, and how are you thinking about these things? And there may not be some command in the Bible that says, thou shalt not shack up, but it is the definition of folly and stupidity.

You mean that's not the hidden secret 11th commandment?

If you're looking for that command, you might get yourself off the hook, but you might want to think about some of the other commands that are there.

The Trial-Run Argument and Compatibility Before Marriage

So, I mentioned this jokingly earlier, but a lot of people refer to shacking up as sort of like the trial run before marriage, right? I've seen a lot of secular people justify it by saying, hey, look, if you're going to be married to someone for the rest of your life, you have to know what it's like to live with that person, because you could get married, and then all of a sudden, you realize they have all these habits that don't match up with yours, or whatever it is that are going to make married life far more difficult, and you could have avoided it if you had lived with them, right?

I've seen Christians fall prey to that sort of logic, and so what's your response to that? Is that a necessary component to knowing whether or not you can marry someone and you're compatible with them?

Is the only way to know if you can live with them is by actually living with them before marriage?

Yeah, well, I think you bring up some interesting things with this topic too, because I think there's a lot more to the shacking up discussion than even the sexual sin component of it as well. Meaning, I mean, I think one of the things that the way that individuals normally approach a dating process is, in general, that many people are basically conceiving of dating as some sort of mechanism where it confers upon you certain rights and privileges of marriage, and what it does is it's basically just like dating for many people is basically all the benefits of marriage short of the real commitment that's involved in marriage.

And so when you're thinking about this, let's say that you could be celibate in your shacking up, right? Let's say that you could be celibate. Let's say that you could even flee from lust, which I think you're putting yourself in a...

I mean, if you have any attraction to this person whatsoever, I think you're engaging in utter folly at this point. Let's say that you can be free from all sexual sin. You are still doing something very inappropriate in that you're getting all the benefits of a marriage relationship apart from commitment.

So there's other benefits to a marriage relationship besides that. And so this essentially is functioning as a pretend marriage for you where you're still short-circuiting God's process or His divine prescription of marriage, and you're trying to get what you can get out of it without having the commitment involved.

So that's another feature of this that would be inherently problematic as well. But then your question along those lines is asking, is that a necessary thing to try it before you buy it, so to speak? The free trial, man.

Hey, all the companies do it, so... Yeah, I mean, there's certainly a lot of things that you can learn about someone in the context of marriage, like in the context of living with them for a few weeks.

I mean, a lot of people get married and there's a lot of surprises that they find out that they had no idea. But then, you know, the... So certainly, I mean, I think a good process, you know, a good...

However you want to define this process, whether you define it as, you know, quote-unquote dating or courting or whatever you call it, I'm not as invested in the words you use, but in what you're actually... the substance of what you're doing.

It is very important to be in proximity to the individual and have some kind of... like to get some kind of awareness of who you're committing to so that you can free yourself from a lot of surprises.

And I mean, I think with our pre-engagement counseling... pre-engagement counseling or pre-marriage counseling episode, we talked about the importance of trying to get, you know, maybe pre-engagement counseling to get a counselor to get in there and help you to see things that you're unable to see.

But I mean, I think there's a lot of mechanisms that you can find out, the kind of things that you need to find out. You're not going to find out everything, but you can find out enough. You can find out enough through wisdom in a multitude of counselors, through seeing them as they, you know, interact with the church body, with the family.

There's enough opportunities, you know, just seeing how they interact on a day-to-day basis and treat the people that don't matter. There's a wide variety of ways you can do that without having to, you know, pretend like you're married in order to find everything out.

And you're never going to find everything out. There will be things you find out along the line that you're not going to find out at the beginning. So it's best just to avoid folly. All right. Last question.

David, Abishag, and Descriptive Old Testament Narratives

So if you look at, I guess maybe it's King David. And second, Samuel, as he's old, he's basically on his deathbed. He needs someone to take care of him. And so they go, the Israelites go, and they find a beautiful woman, you know, to be his nurse.

And, I mean, basically, like, she cuddles him, essentially, is kind of what it sounds like. And that's not the only time that happens in the Old Testament. I think that happens another. There's at least one other place, I think maybe in 1 Kings, somewhere for one of the kings.

I can't remember who, but that happens a few different times in the Old Testament, at least two. So are those examples of proof texts for it actually being okay to live with the opposite sex? I wish you would have asked me about that.

I could have looked this up. No, I think everyone kind of viewed her as a wife to him. So one of the individuals who was trying to be involved in the succession plan, and I need to look this up. I wish I would have known.

But he tries to get a hold of this girl or whatever, and it was a power play for him, basically. And so I think she's kind of like an unspoken wife for David in certain ways. But then I would just say, yeah, descriptive, not prescriptive.

I don't think we want to model anything. I think the subtext, though, as you keep on reading through the narrative, is she's viewed kind of like a wife, like one of his concubines or his wife. And so I think if you want to go the polygamy route, then that would be evidence for you.

But I think it's a little more complicated than that.

So in the Old Testament, there's definitely a lot of things going on that you don't want to emulate, and that's probably one of them. That's one of them. Okay. I wasn't trying to ambush you. I just thought of that in the middle of us talking.

And look, hey, that's what happens when you commit to the audio Bible bash challenge, man. You start knowing all these things. But yeah, that makes sense. We don't want to be the kind of people who are like, I don't know how old he was, like 80 years old or something.

And time to find the most beautiful woman in all of Israel to be my cuddler. Yeah. There you go. All right. Fair enough. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion.

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Amen.