What about sexual purity?

Question 12024

Sexual purity is a concept that the surrounding culture regards as outdated, repressive, and unnecessary. The assumption in much of Western society is that sexual expression is a private matter to be governed by consent and personal preference, with no reference to any standard beyond the individual. Scripture takes a fundamentally different view. It treats sexuality as something designed by God, governed by God’s purposes, and directly connected to what it means to honour Him with the whole of one’s life.

The Biblical Framework for Sexuality

God created sex. This point must be made clearly because much of the church’s historical teaching on the subject has given the impression that sexuality is inherently suspect, tolerated within marriage but never quite clean. Scripture says nothing of the kind. Genesis 2:24-25 describes the union of husband and wife in terms of unashamed intimacy: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” The Song of Solomon celebrates sexual love between husband and wife with an openness that has made some readers uncomfortable across the centuries. Sex is God’s creation, good in itself, and intended for pleasure, intimacy, and procreation within the covenant of marriage.

The boundaries are equally clear. Marriage, defined as the lifelong covenant between one man and one woman (Matthew 19:4-6), is the only context in which sexual union is sanctioned by Scripture. Everything outside that boundary falls under the biblical category of porneia, sexual immorality, which encompasses premarital sex, adultery, homosexual practice, and every other form of sexual activity outside the marriage covenant. These boundaries are not arbitrary restrictions imposed by a God who disapproves of pleasure. They are the guardrails that protect the goodness of what God has made.

Purity of Heart, Not Performance

Jesus took the standard beyond outward behaviour to the condition of the heart. “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Sexual purity in biblical terms is not simply the absence of physical transgression. It is a condition of the inner life in which desire is ordered rightly, directed toward what God has sanctioned and held in check where it would lead toward sin. This is why Paul writes to the Thessalonians that God’s will is their sanctification, specifically that they should “know how to control his own body in holiness and honour” (1 Thessalonians 4:4). The body is not separate from the spiritual life. What we do with our bodies is an expression of what we believe about God.

Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 grounds sexual purity in the believer’s union with Christ: “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” The body belongs to the Lord. The Spirit dwells within it. Sexual sin is not simply a violation of a rule; it is a desecration of the temple.

The Reality of the Struggle

The church does no one a service by pretending that sexual purity is easy. We live in fallen bodies, in a culture saturated with sexual imagery, and the desires of the flesh are real and powerful. Paul’s honest acknowledgement of the war between the flesh and the Spirit (Galatians 5:17) applies here as much as anywhere. The call to sexual purity is not a call to a life without struggle. It is a call to fight the right battle, with the right weapons, and with the confidence that the Spirit who indwells the believer is stronger than the desires of the flesh.

For those who are single, the call to purity means abstinence, not as a burden to be endured until marriage arrives, but as a genuine expression of trust in God’s provision and obedience to His design. For those who are married, it means faithfulness to one’s spouse in thought and in action, guarding the marriage bed against everything that would corrupt it (Hebrews 13:4). For every believer, it means the ongoing discipline of the mind, the will, and the habits, sustained not by moral effort alone but by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

So, now what?

Sexual purity is not prudishness. It is the recognition that God designed sex for a specific context and that honouring Him means living within that design. The gospel does not simply impose rules on reluctant sinners. It offers a new heart, a new power, and a new motivation: gratitude to the God who bought us at the cost of His Son’s life. The believer who struggles with sexual temptation is not alone, not hopeless, and not beyond the reach of grace. But grace does not leave us where it found us. It calls us to holiness, equips us for holiness, and will one day bring us to the place where the struggle is over and the design of God is fully and finally realised.

“Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.” 1 Corinthians 6:18