A central hope and prayer of Christians is for the will of God to be a reality in our lives... "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So we take biblical ethical directives as a blueprint for living. On the face of it, sexual behavior does not seem an obvious area of life to focus moral guidance upon. As it turns out, our sexuality and sexual behavior goes deep into our identity, affecting body, mind, emotion and spirit. Sexuality affects many of our relationships - and is to be confined to appropriate relational spaces. Within that appropriate space, sexuality bears upon relational vulnerability, connection, trust, commitment. It is a realm of life appropriate for adults, not children. There is great potential for harm and abuse.
So it is no surprise that sexual morality ranks very high on the New Testament list of ethical teaching. Sexual values and standards affect family life, the life of every faith community, our social life, our civic structure and our laws. Biblical or Christian guidelines on sexual behavior do not translate seamlessly to the civil or legal sphere, thus application of biblical sexual ethics outside of the community of faith is a sensitive matter.
So it is no surprise that sexual morality ranks very high on the New Testament list of ethical teaching. Sexual values and standards affect family life, the life of every faith community, our social life, our civic structure and our laws. Biblical or Christian guidelines on sexual behavior do not translate seamlessly to the civil or legal sphere, thus application of biblical sexual ethics outside of the community of faith is a sensitive matter.
Virtually all of the New Testament references to sexual immorality fall into three groups of words – 1) adultery, 2) fornication / harlotry (promiscuity or unchastity), and 3) excess of sensuality / lewdness. There are over 200 references to these behaviors in the Bible as a whole, about one-third of these are in the New Testament (see chart below). In both the OT and NT, many of the references to adultery and harlotry are metaphorical in nature, calling the people of God out for unfaithfulness in their covenant with God, and also as a means of characterizing the people’s worship and devotion to other gods, to idols, and other commitments which compete with or usurp the their commitment to and worship of YHWH. These references are common among the prophets, the teaching of Jesus, and the other NT writers.
Three major groups of New Testament references are as follows:
1) The prohibition of adultery protects the intended faithfulness in monogamy. Sexual infidelity is a threat and harm to the commitment of a covenant relationship. The harm of unfaithfulness is destructive to the intimacy held between marriage partners.(1) Likewise, it is destructive in the spiritual covenant between God and God’s people. Adultery is indicative of a breach of covenant, indicative of deception, indicative of placing the interests of an outsider over the faithfulness intended in the intimacy of committed relationship. Monogamous commitment is not evidently “natural” in the sense of “in keeping with nature,” nor is it a consistent ethical norm in the various societies throughout history. But it is a core ethic for loving commitment through the biblical testimony and the history of the church, with the exception of certain occasions of OT history when the people engaged in polygamy. (This practice is woven into the fabric of the narrative in the Pentateuch as well as other historical occasions, but Christians have never regarded this as normative, but exceptional.)
2) Prohibitions indicated by the words fornication, immorality and harlotry come from a Greek word family including πορνεια, πορνευω, πορνος and πορνη. These words indicate the noun form, verb form, and the masculine and feminine person forms of the same basic Greek word which has interpretations and translations including fornication, fornicator or immoral person, “unlawful” or immoral sexuality, unchastity, harlot, harlotry or prostitution. Traditionally through church history, fornication has been taken to mean any sexual activity outside of marriage, generally for an unmarried person. Adultery is more specific to unfaithfulness within a monogamous relationship. There are two occasions in which Jesus uses the word pornos/pornia/fornication in reference to behavior that could undermine a marriage and lead to divorce. This could be an indication that Jesus is describing a more extreme or persistent problem of sexual immorality - a behavior of unchastity or promiscuity. In trying to discern the meaning through usage, the definition seems self-referential, in that fornication equals sexual immorality, and that is how many modern translations deal with the word. As such, attaching specificity of meaning is dependent on the teaching and understanding of the church.
3) The aspect of “promiscuity” contained in the meaning of πορνια overlaps with the third major concept applied to sexual prohibition – ασελγεια, translated as sensuality, lewdness or licentiousness. The underlying concept is excessiveness, perhaps illustrated by the words of Paul... "Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.” (Romans 13:13) Peter’s words are similar … “for you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do – living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry.” (1 Peter 4:3)
It is instructive to cite a comment by Jesus which emphasizes the internal or "heart" component of our sexual ethic, and incidentally, collects each of the ethical principles that we have addressed thus far in our exploration. In a dispute with the religious teachers over ceremonial purity, Jesus said (Mark 7:18-23)..
Do you not see that everything that goes into a person from the outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? It is what comes out a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.
The collective effect of these prohibitions (1) adultery (2) fornication / promiscuity and (3) sensuality / lewdness, in the biblical context, and in light of narrative background available in the Old Testament, is to promote integrity and fidelity and to warn against devaluing or debasing sexual behavior, or dishonoring self or others through promiscuous sexuality, or vulgarity, or by making it public, or a spectacle, or an object of voyeurism or entertainment, against treating sex or a person’s sexuality as a commodity, protecting people from abusive or exploitative sexual behavior, and protecting children from this adult realm of behavior.
As often the case with social ethics, Jesus did not as much try to rewrite the ethic but to interpret it, and as such, alter the power dynamic which he encountered. The existing religious practice on divorce left decisions in the hands of the man, and for any reason they deemed fit. Jesus recast this practice to hold the man morally accountable for approaching divorce in an arbitrary, one sided manner. (Matthew 19) Similarly, a women "caught in adultery" was brought to Jesus, for which she could have been executed, within the existing practice. Notably, the man was not brought forward. Not surprisingly, Jesus circumvented this action, sent the crowd away, and let the woman know that restoration was available for her. (John, chapter 8)
Outside of the above three groups of references, which are frequent and well attested in Scripture, there are a few additional references that warrant attention. The word κοιτη is translated variously in different contexts, with the simple meaning being “bed,” sometimes translated “marriage bed,” and one occasion used by Paul (Romans 13:13) is translated as "sexual promiscuity" or "sexual immorality," which would seem to be the intended meaning from context. A similar difficulty in interpretation applies to αρσενοκοιτης, a word used only by Paul, on two occasions, and translated in some modern translations as “homosexual.” The meaning of this word is obscure and in dispute, and will be discussed in a later article. Similarly, Paul devotes some discussion to the concept of “natural” versus “unnatural” sexual behavior, and this also warrants further analysis.
Relevant to this discussion is the biblical teaching on desire or lust of the flesh, often included with treatment of sexuality. This will be addressed later in a group including coveting, greed and lust.
To be continued…
To be continued…
Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_ring, 6th Century marriage ring.
Notes:
(1) I do not use the word "marriage" here in a technical sense, given the differing understandings of concept in different civil/government and congregational contexts. I respect that different people use the word with different meanings.
Bibliography
Bauer, W. (1979). A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Second Edition ed.). (W. F. Gingrich, Trans.) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Friedrich, G. K. (Ed.). (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume. (G. W. Bromiley, Trans.) Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans / Paternoster Press.
NASB-NIV Parallel New Testament in Greek and English. (1987). (A. Marshall, Trans.) Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan.
NCBC - North Clackamas Bible Community. (2010, October 25). Vice and Virtue Lists from the New Testament. Retrieved from Bible Study Resources from NCBC: https://bcresources.net/2200000-nts-frg12-lit-frm-vv-lists-nt-art-bcrx/
Renn, S. D. (Ed.). (2005). Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words. Peabody, Massachusetts, USA: Hendrickson Publishers.
Strong, J. L. (1984). Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
Thomas, R. L. (Ed.). (1981). New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Nashville: Broadman & Holman.
In the chart, word counts are approximate, and are intended to refer only to "vice" references, not all references for the given word.
