Biblical Sexual Ethics in the Local Church: A Necessary Course of Instruction

By John Holmes

          The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s accelerated a shift in Western attitudes and public policy concerning gender identity, gender expression, and sexual freedom. Three main ideas dominated its public discourse: contraception’s ability to separate sex from childbearing, easy divorce separating sex and childbearing from marriage, and the call to eliminate all distinctions between men and women except those differences an individual embraces.² National discourse on sex continues to impact American society’s moral and social fabric today, influencing attitudes towards sexual freedom and views on the biological family.³ The U.S. Census in 2020 showed that the number of children living with only their mothers has doubled in the past fifty years and that nearly one-third of U.S. children do not live with two parents, while almost half of all U.S. adults aged 55 to 64 no longer remained married.⁴ Professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Daniel Heimbach, argues that sexual morality is the most crucial moral-spiritual issue facing our time. A cultural shift towards pagan morality, Heimbach says, will eventually lead to complete social collapse.⁵ Christian philosopher and author Francis Schaeffer likewise lamented the legality of abortion, the entertainment industry’s promotion of sexual perversion, and the attacks on marriage and family life under the banners of sexual freedom and personal happiness.⁶ Schaeffer urged the church to urgently talk about these issues, fearful of the day when “all morality becomes relative, the law becomes arbitrary, and society moves towards disintegration.”⁷ Feminist calls to “bring an end to God” and “castrate Christianity by abolishing [its pillars of] supermale arrogance: the myths of sin and salvation” indicate that opponents of biblical sexuality do not intend to remain silent.⁸ Although the secular world emphasizes sexual fulfillment and identity as “the essence of human happiness” that is justified by science, individual freedoms, and the need to eliminate sexual distinctions to achieve equality, the church is called to teach a different sexual ethic. An examination of Paul’s exhortations in 1 Corinthians 3–6 to grow in Christ and guard against impurity by avoiding spiritual immaturity and the folly of human wisdom demonstrates that churches should instruct biblical sexual ethics by teaching God’s design for gender, marriage, sex, and procreation to help Christians respond to the social narratives of gender identity, gender expression, and sexual freedom.⁹

Want to read more?  See the entire article, which was published in the Fall 2023 edition of the Journal of Biblical Soul Care, located on the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors' website.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
¹  The entire journal is available online for free at: https://biblicalcounseling.com/jbsc/

² Jennifer R. Morse, The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives and Why the Church Was Right All Along, (Charlotte: TAN Books, 2018), chap. 2. For agreement on the sexual revolution and western attitudes, see Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 22–34.

³ Bailey, Beth. “Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America’s Heartland.” Journal of Social History 30, no. 4 (July 1, 1997): 827–56. Bailey attempts to document the “multiple sites of power, languages of negotiation, and critical structural changes” in which the birth control debate occurred. As one example of shifts in social acceptance, see Jason Rantz, “School board director to host 9-year-olds for classes on sexual pleasure, gender ID at sex shop,” 770 KTTH Radio, July 4, 2022, https://mynorthwest.com/3539919/rantz-school-boarddirector-sex-classes-shop-jenn-mason/. Politically elected Washington state school board director, Jenn Mason, teaches classes directed at 9-to-12 year olds on sexual anatomy for pleasure and safer practices for all kinds of sexual activities. Mason says “there’s no such thing as ‘real’ sex” because it is self-defined.

⁴ "Families and Households,” U.S. Census Bureau, July 1, 2022, https://www.census.gov/ content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/timeseries/demo/families-and-households/ch-1.pdf; See also, “Number of Kids Living Only With Their Mothers Has Doubled in 50 Years,” U.S. Census Bureau, July 1, 2022, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/number-of-children-living-only-with-theirmothers-has-doubled-in-past-50years.html#:~:text=The majority of America's 72.9,with mother only (21%).

⁵ Daniel Heimbach, True Sexual Morality, (Wheaton: Crossway, 2004), 39. Heimbach says that sexual morality is the pivot point on which America’s cultural foundations will erode, leading to teen pregnancy, crime, drugs, murder, poverty, family breakdown, homosexuality, gender role confusion, weakened law, attacks on family life, threats to the sanctity of life and more.

⁶ Francis Schaffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, (Westchester, IL.: Crossway, 1984), 20, 22–23, 101–103, 106–112, 188, 191.

⁷ Carl F. Henry, Twilight of a Great Civilization (Westchester, IL.: Crossway, 1988), 15, 19. Francis Schaffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, (Westchester, IL.: Crossway, 1984), 22–23. Francis Schaffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, (Downers Grove, IL.: Intervarsity Press, 1970), 15–6, 81. 

⁸ Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1973), 71–2. Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaphysics of Radical Feminism (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1978), xi. Naomi Goldenberg, Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1979), 90.

9 Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution, (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2020), 222, 261. Trueman observed that “Freud’s emphasis on sexual fulfillment as the essence of human happiness also leads to a reconfiguration of human destiny.”