Blog Thirty-Nine How then shall we live? Part Nine

We continue with Biblical guidance for the subject of “lust gone wrong. “

Most unlawful sexual sin; activity outside of God’s design, (of marriage; one man and one woman for life) falls under the name, fornication.

As we said in previous lessons, God created male and female to lust after each other in the confines of Marriage. It is the Biblical reason for divorce even though divorce is not God’s way, forgiveness is. But both individuals have to agree to make it work through God’s help.

Does God forgive divorce? Of course just as He forgives all of our sins and mistakes. But life for the entire family would be better if the union of marriage was treasured and protected and nourished with love for a life time.

People used to commit to marriage for a life time, but with the last few generations, marriage hasn’t been taken as serious by many. And blended marriages seem to be the norm for half the children.

Why has this generation become so comfortable to live together without marriage? You can’t try on marriage to see if it will work. Marriage is a relationship, it doesn’t work by itself. Both partners must work unselfishly daily to keep a close and loving union for love to grow. First there is infatuation and attraction mixed with youthful hormones, which God created for man and wife to become one while real love has a chance to grow.

What does the Bible say about fornication, sex outside of marriage?

1Co 6:18 Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he

that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

1Co 6:19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

1Co 6:20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.

This means that fornication hurts one’s self as well as others. Our bodies are not our own if we have received Salvation and Christ Spirit lives within us; then our body is also the temple and body of Christ. So sinning against our body is actually sinning against the temple (house/dwelling) of Christ.

The secret sin of pornography is one of Satan’s tricks to destroy:

Why does porno come under the sin of fornication? As discussed in the last lesson, it has destroyed many marriages and Jesus taught in His great famous Sermon on the Mount:

Mat 5:27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

Mat 5:28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

This addiction fills the heart and mind with guilt, shame and slowly robs the person from using their Spiritual gifts and vision God has given them. Satan’s trick, first tempting with his fruit of lies, “No one will know, this won’t hurt anything, treat yourself.” Then his second line, after sin is conceived, condemns you and makes you feel guilty and of little worth, “Now look at you, shame on you, you can’t possibly do anything for God, your ministry is over! Now all you can be is a guilty pew warmer, cause surly you don’t want to be a hypocrite!”

This is Satan at work; stealing, killing and destroying.

The named sins in the following verses are the works of the sinful flesh, and Scripture says they have no place in the kingdom of God.

So we know in Galatians 5, Paul teaches what our enemy uses when trying to destroy us, adultery and fornication are first on the list; Satan knows he can do the most damage by trying to keep married folks out of bed together and singles in bed together, of course , the very opposite of God’s plan:

1Co 7:9 But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.

Scripture list sins that harm and destroy:

Gal 5:19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

Gal 5:20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,

Gal 5:21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Look at idolatry and witchcraft first:

What is idolatry? This is simply worshipping any other God except the God Jehovah, through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Strong’s Concordance: idolatry: Greek #1495= image- worship lit. or fig. also from Greek #1497= an image for worship ; by impl. A heathen god, the worship of such;--idol.

What is witchcraft? Most know that witchcraft is a practice of rituals involving evil powers of magic, and sorcery. God gave mankind a human spirit to house His own Spirit and when it is empty (before Salvation; God joining to our spirit), there is a yearning for the supernatural. When people are exposed to witchcraft, they sometimes mistake it for what they are missing. From 1990 to 2000, Witchcraft was growing at a rate of 1575% among our youth.

We have covered the sexual sins of adultery and fornication; now let us discuss these other sexual sins named in Galatians 5:19 (Above). But in order to fully understand, we must do a word study which may take looking at several words to get to the base meaning of words like uncleanness and lasciviousness.

What does this uncleanness mean?

Strong’s Concordance: uncleanness Greek # 167= impurity physically and morally, uncleanness. Also from Greek # 169= impure morally, lewd or demonic, fowl, unclean.

Webster’s Compact Dictionary: lewd adj. 1) sexually unchaste 2) salacious

To find out what sexually unchaste means, we must find out what chaste means:

Webster’s Compact Dictionary: Chaste adj. 1) abstaining from all or unlawful sexual relations 2) modest or decent

Unchaste means to be involved in unlawful sexual relations; immodest and indecent.

It is amazing that different dictionaries express that same word with extra views of that word; like:

Webster’s New World Dictionary: lewd =lay, hence vulgar], indecent; lustful; obscene.

Webster’s New World Dictionary: obscene=Filthy] offensive to modesty or decency, lewd.

So uncleanness here in Scripture means impure morally and not abstaining, but participating in unlawful sexual relations immodest and indecent.

To be continued:

In next week’s blog, we will do a word study of Lasciviousness, and in the next blog we will study homosexuality from the view of God’s Word.