Culture screams that sex is just a part of life and nothing more than a Saturday night entertainment activity. You can turn on the T.V. or open a magazine and find that most pop stars, movie stars, and sports stars demonstrate a life style that years ago was only promoted by porn stars.
Frankly, I’m sick of culture portraying that sexually interaction before marriage is acceptable. The intimacy that God intended to be shared between a husband and wife has become a mere social interaction for most of my generation and younger. I’m over it… I want God’s standard to be proclaimed and upheld.
As I flipped through the pages of my Bible, Ephesians 5:3 came to mind – “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity.”
By that verse, God has drawn his line in the sand. He said, “Not even a hint!” Since that’s God’s desire, that’s what all Christ followers should strive for – inside marriage and out.
For those who are single, they should strive not just to have virginity as a sexual state, but it should be a mindset.
As a single man I learned that virginity is not about having a clean record, its about having a clean mind. I know that there are a lot of people that walk down that isle on their wedding day, with a short history sexually, but a long past of perverted thoughts. We need to understand that our purity is a matter of flesh and spirit. We are accountable to God for our thoughts and our actions. That verse says that we must strive to “not have any kind of impurity.”
When we fall into sexual immorality through our actions, we are not only creating an offense against that person and our future spouse, but we’re taking up and offense with God. Purity and virginity are God’s ideal, and to fall below this is sin.
I know this isn’t easy, I dated my wife on-and-off for over eight years, I know first-hand that the temptations to give in are strong and real. But we can’t let infatuations engulf us. There are no points for style here, we just must determine to fight. If it means that we have to put up extreme boundaries, then we must, no matter the cost.
One of my closest friends understood the importance of virginity as a mindset. He decided to wage war on his sexual temptation to look at pornography on the internet by not even knowing the password to get on the web. His friend was the only one that knew it, and that made it so that he could only surf the net whenever he was around.
Another girl told me that she and her boyfriend loved to kiss and they were afraid that they wouldn’t be able to stop there if they were ever alone late at night. So they made it a point to do most of their activities outside in the day or would make sure they were with friends when they hung out at night.
Its time to fight our temptations, and push back on culture. As John Piper once said, “If you aren’t at war with sin, then you aren’t at home with Christ.” Let’s hold to God’s ideal now, so that we can enjoy the ultimate unity of marriage to its fullest in the future.
