Last updated on October 31, 2020
Question:
Hi.
I was baptized not long ago. I and my boyfriend have been in a relationship for seven months now. After my baptism, I did not want to have sex with him until marriage. When we talked about it, he said that since I am going to marry you, there is no difference in making love to you now as I will after marriage.
I am perplexed because I love him but love God more. I still want to retain the white cloth that was placed on me during baptism. What do I tell my boyfriend and what should I do?
Answer:
Using your boyfriend’s logic, I should be able to go to a car dealership and be allowed to drive one of their cars because I’m planning to buy it sometime later. After all, there is no difference between driving it now as I would drive it later.
Intentions are not the same as reality. A person who intends to get married still isn’t married. “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away” (James 4:13-14). You don’t know absolutely that you will get married because you don’t have absolute control over the future.
The simple fact is that you are not married. “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4). If he wants to have sex, then he first needs to marry you. If he continues to push for sex before marriage, you need to let him go because he will continually come between you and your desire to serve God. “Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals”” (I Corinthians 15:33). Being a Christian is hard enough without having someone pushing you to sin.