Last updated on October 31, 2020
Question:
I love Jesus more than anything and I only want to do what he has me to do. For a long time, my boyfriend and I have touched each other. Last fall we had sex about six times until we truly realized it was wrong. After that we kept touching each other like giving blow jobs, jacking him off, him eating me out, and touching and fingering me. I feel like that stuff is wrong. My heart has been heavy for this though. Is it wrong if we touch each other with clothes on? I’ve prayed very hard for God to show me, but I still don’t know. How do I stop myself from wanting to do those kinds of things? I’m a Christian and I’m not perfect, but I want to do better.
Answer:
There are unintentional inconsistencies in your story. They are due to you defining words more narrowly than reality. For example, you said you realized that sex is wrong after you did it several times, but then said that you continued to engage in oral sex afterward. Blow jobs and giving and receiving hand jobs are still forms of sex. Yes, they are not intercourse, but it is still stimulating each other to orgasm.
In answer to your question, please first read Is it OK to be sexual with someone you will marry soon? Sin doesn’t just start when your boyfriend ejaculates in you. That is just the endpoint of a whole series of sins. If you don’t want to reach a destination, then you don’t start traveling the road that goes to that destination. Too many people tell themselves they will turn off before they reach the destination but then don’t notice they passed the exit. “Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of evil. Avoid it, do not travel on it; turn away from it and pass on” (Proverbs 4:14-15).
Sexual acts start with lust for inappropriate sex. “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). Inappropriate sexual lust is followed by sexual touching. “Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman” (I Corinthians 7:1). Once you start touching each other to stir up sexual passion, you are no longer innocent in regards to the natural consequences. You can’t honestly say that you didn’t know one thing would lead to another, which eventually leads to fornication. “So is he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife; whoever touches her shall not be innocent” (Proverbs 6:30). The adulterer becomes guilty when he starts sexually touching another woman, not when he puts his penis in.
Of course, you have a desire for sex. That won’t go away because you are a living being. But just because a desire is there, it doesn’t mean it is appropriate to do it. We learn not to eat anytime we are hungry — we would get fat that way. Sex has its place, but it is only in marriage. Thus, these sorts of things need to be put off until the right time.