Last updated on October 31, 2020
Question:
Hi.
I am a Christian and need help and guidance. Lately, I have uncomfortable thoughts in my head that bother me. I cannot share it with my parents because I am afraid of their reaction. When I was 18 years old, I met a guy and fell in love. It was my first experience. It took a long time until I got to know him and really started to love him. I thought he was the one. My parents were against me having any boyfriend, so I had to hide from them.
Long story short. He asked for my hand and I accepted it. We were supposed to wait for a couple of years until I grew a bit more and talk about our marriage with my parents. We were supposed to keep our relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend secret until the right time come. However, we had sex. At those times I felt no guilt because I thought he is my man and I am going to live the rest of my life with him.
Two years passed and we were still together. Now I have grown more and I understand that I rushed very fast to get married. I was only 18, and now I’m 20. I know that I am not ready to get married. Marriage is a big responsibility, and I am not ready for it, so we broke up. Now that I think back on what I did, I feel guilty that I gave up my virginity.
Would you please give me some guidelines, whether what I have done was a sin by giving up my virginity according to what I told you? Am I guilty?
I will appreciate your guidance.
Answer:
It is not the giving up of your virginity that is the true problem. That happened just once. It is just a symptom of the true problems. You and your boyfriend were involved in fornication — having sex without being married. “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God” (I Corinthians 6:9-10). While you call yourself a Christian, you have not been living as a Christian ought to live. You placed your soul in jeopardy before God and that needs to be addressed with God.
You didn’t sin because you feel guilt. Guilt comes with the realization that you did sin. But sin exists regardless of how you feel.
Solomon points out the problem when he asked, “Can a man take fire to his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?” (Proverbs 6:27). You can show a hot coal all the affection you want. You can cuddle it and dote on it and it will still burn you. Your kindness to it doesn’t change its nature. How often do you hear someone say, “But I love him!” Solomon’s point is that your feelings toward your boyfriend didn’t change the fact that both of you have built-in desires and capabilities for sex. Trigger them and they follow the instincts built into you. Nor did love change your sin into something good. Your feelings doesn’t change the nature of what you did.
Solomon also asked, “Can one walk on hot coals, and his feet not be seared?” (Proverbs 6:28). Using the same example of a hot coal, if you accidentally walk on it, it will burn you. You can apologize and say you didn’t mean to step on it, but you’ll still be hurt because your intentions doesn’t change what it is. Thus, the excuse, “But I didn’t mean for it to go this far!” becomes an empty one because your intentions doesn’t change your body’s drive. You’ve excused your sins because of your intentions of getting married, but intentions does not create a marriage nor can intentions change something sinful into something righteous.
That is why Solomon concludes, “So is he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife; whoever touches her shall not be innocent” (Proverbs 6:29). Though he is talking directly about adultery, the same point is true about fornication. When you start stirring up sexual feelings, you are never innocent when thing go further than you wanted.
However, you and your boyfriend began sinning long before you started having sex. There are other sins that lead up to fornication. “Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts” (Romans 13:13-14). Lust is those thoughts and desires you kept battling about taking things even further. Lewdness is engaging in sexual foreplay that gets the body ready for intercourse. The Christian must recognize the danger and not start a sequence of events that can’t be legitimately completed.
Oral sex and mutual masturbation are still forms of sex. Let me be frank, “sex,” as we are using the word, are those actions that generally lead to orgasm, and for males the release of semen. It does not have to be restricted to intercourse.
Under Old Testament law, uncovering a person’s nakedness was frequently used as an euphemism for engaging is sexual activity. For example, see Leviticus 18:6-19. I believe this more general “picture” is used because most sexual acts involve access to intimate areas of the body. The laws in Leviticus against incest are described as uncovering a person’s nakedness to emphasize that God doesn’t just mean a man inserting his penis into a woman’s vagina. Oral sex involves exposing the genitals to another person. It would be included under uncovering a person’s nakedness. “Thus says the Lord GOD: “Because your filthiness was poured out and your nakedness uncovered in your harlotry with your lovers …” (Ezekiel 16:36).
Returning to the matter of lust: Lust is generally defined as a strong desire, especially a strong desire for something that is sinful. Oral sex arouses all the passionate desire for sex, but sex with a person to whom you are not married is a sin. To strongly desire (to lust) for the body of a person you are not married to is equivalent to fornication or adultery. “But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Jesus is saying that there is no real difference between lusting to commit a sin and actually doing the act. The results of both are equally sinful. Speaking of the wickedness of false teachers, Peter states, “They are spots and blemishes, carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you, having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls” (II Peter 2:13-14). Oral sex easily matches this description. “Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves” (Romans 1:24).
It isn’t just limited to inappropriate actions. It also includes talking dirty or showing nude or semi-nude pictures to each other. “But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them” (Ephesians 5:3-7). You don’t stay pure by sexually arousing the other person.
Thus, in many ways you have sinned before God. You wanted to enjoy some of the pleasures of marriage, but you didn’t want the responsibility. Thus, you turned what is in marriage a loving acting of giving into a selfish act.
Don’t think that your situation is hopeless, but I want you to see just how far Satan dragged you into sin. And it all started by not being open and honest about your relationship.
It is past time to start learning why God limited sex to married couples, so I would like you to read:
Finally, in straightening out your life with God, see:
Question:
Thanks for your respond to my email. I read it carefully and I understand that I have done a mistake — a big one. But we really loved each other. He even asked for my hand and I accepted it.
To be honest, the reason I left him after two years was because of my parents. They were not satisfied that I be with that boy. They didn’t like him. So basically I left my boyfriend because I was afraid my parents wouldn’t forgive me. I believe that if I marry a man who is against my parents’ wish, I won’t have a happy life. So for the escape of these thoughts and sin, I left that boy.
We really loved each other and we made love. Is this still wrong? Even if we planned to marry? Even if he asked for my hand and I accepted? I believed he is a good man and we would be happy together.
I tested him a lot to make sure that he is the one, but now because of my parents I accepted to follow my parents rule and make them satisfied. Is it still wrong that I had intimate relationship with my boyfriend? If it is wrong, why do a lot of people say that it is all right to experience these things before marriage? Why should a man want me only for a little skin in my body that I have lost it to someone that I fell in love with?
I am confused. Please guide me through this.
Answer:
I’m afraid that I could explain it twenty times and you will still think that I have not answered your question. It isn’t because my answer is unclear; it is because you don’t believe the answer.
Love doesn’t change a sin into something righteous. “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God” (I Corinthians 6:9-10). “Do not be deceived” — do not lie to yourself — God does not accept sin. Calling an act of sin “love” is simply making a mockery of God’s teachings. “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20).
Your intentions do not change a sin into something righteous. Fornication is having sex when you are not married. It is never acceptable. There is no excuse that changes this sin into righteousness. “And why not say, “Let us do evil that good may come”? — as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just” (Romans 3:8). Notice that you prove yourself wrong. “We intended to get married;” yet, you didn’t get married and have no plans to marry this boy. Intentions are not reality.
Let me illustrate it this way. I enter your home and take $100 without your permission or knowledge. Can I claim that it wasn’t stealing because I intended to pay it back? The answer should be clearly no. It is stealing because the money wasn’t given to me. What if I never get around to paying it back, does the taking of the $100 become acceptable because I tell everybody that I intended to pay it back? Even more obviously, it is stealing. In the same way, fornication remains fornication regardless of what you intended to do in the future.
As I pointed out in the first note. This isn’t about you tearing your hymen on his penis. This is about you repeatedly committing fornication (along with lust, lewdness, and other sensual sins) with a boy and telling yourself that the sin would be acceptable to God when it never could be accepted. “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth” (I John 1:5-6).
You are correct that you are not ready for marriage, but it is not for the reason you claimed. God said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). You are unable to separate yourself from your parents; thus, you are not ready to form a new family.
I don’t know. Your parents might be right and your former boyfriend could be a bum. After all, both of you hid your relationship from your parents. And he didn’t respect you enough to wait until marriage to have sex. But from your note, it appears you are just as much at fault in these sins as he is.
Why do most people think having sex without marriage is fine? It is simple. Most of the world is lost in sin. “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).
“Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles — when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you” (II Peter 4:1-4).
Response:
Thanks for your response. I appreciate your help and please pray for me to find the light in my life and God forgive me for my mistakes.