Purity
Before we start I would like to say that Marriage and sex are not the greatest joys you will have in this life. According to III John 1:4 discipling others is the greatest joy you will have in this life.
Furthermore the only two sins you can commit exclusively in dating is dating a non Christian, or having sex outside of marriage.
Without a doubt sex outside of the bounds of marriage is sin. The Bible uses the word fornication when it talks about sex outside of marriage. The word is used 36 times in the Bible, and 32 times the word is used in the NEW TESTIMENT. The new testament church is warned about fornication 8 times as many times as the nation of isreal was in the old testament.
So why is sex a bigger deal in the new testament than the old? I believe it is because in the New Testament God directly commands his children to have very deep intimate relationships intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually in the local church.
I Corinthians 12:25b says “the members should have the same care one for another.”
This means that members of the church should care for other members of the church the same way they care about themselves.
I Corinthians 12:26a says “And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it”
When you suffer who do you talk to about it? According to this verse you should talk to other members of the church and then they will share your suffering. But in turn other members of the church should be able to share their suffering with you, and you suffer with them.
I Corinthians 12:26b says “one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it”
When you get honored other members in the church should know about it and rejoice with you. But when others are honored you should be close enough to them that they can share that with you and you rejoice with them.
Gal 6:2 Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
Whatever burden you carry you should be able to share with other Christians in your local church, no matter how big or small. But in turn other people in your church should be able to share their burdens with you and you help them bear the load.
Jas 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
Whatever your struggle, sin, or failure is you should be able to confess that to another Christian in the local church, and have another Christian to talk with your fault about, and pray about it and heal from it because you confessed your fault. But in turn other Christians in the local church should be able to come to you and confess their struggles, sins, and failures and you just bear their load, and pray with them and watch as God heals them, through confessing ,what they have likely never talked with others about, to you.
In the new testament the church is directly commanded over and over again to be intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually intimate with one another. What is left for your spouse at the end of that? Sexual intimacy is one of the things reserved for your spouse (there are a few more things but we are not getting into that).
Unfortunately today most of us have very shallow intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy which opens the flood gates to sexual intimacy outside of the bounds of marriage. The reality is that physical intimacy is the easiest type of intimacy to develop. It feels good to hold hands, hug, kiss and have sex. Every level of physical intimacy feels good so its very easy to develop, and abuse.
In contrast intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy is much harder to develop and often times requires doing things that make you uncomfortable. For instance telling someone about your struggle with pornography is an act of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy. It is very uncomfortable to talk about, and thus much harder to develop than physical intimacy. Telling someone about your dreams is an act of trust, and an act of emotional intimacy. Telling others of how you have been hurt in the past is very uncomfortable and very intimate. These are difficult things in contrast to physical intimacy.
I believe one of the best tools for reserving sex for marriage is developing intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy with those inside your local church, despite or maybe because of the uncomfortable nature of developing intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy.
When God made you he made you a sexual creature because God made us male and female. There are two sexes. But you will not die or go crazy if you are a virgin. When God made humanity, he also made us creatures that need intimacy. Want to make someone go completely crazy, put them all by themselves for a few months.
You have a need for intimacy in your life. If you do not get it intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually then you will seek it out physically and sexually. My generation has proven this true by seeking it out through porn. Porn is easy false sexual intimacy. Without porn you would have been forced to find some other avenue of intimacy.
If you wish to obey God’s word on saving sex for marriage the best thing you can do is learn to develop a healthy avenue of intimacy long before you date/court. This is best because as an unmarried person with avenues of healthy intimacy you will not have a need for the easy to reach sexual intimacy outside of marriage. You need intimacy as an unmarried person, choose and develop healthy intimacy.
The church of Corinth is a good Biblical example of needing other types of intimacy to avoid sexual sin. The church of Corinth had many members committing adultery and fornication and sexual sins that even the unsaved Corinthians were not committing. And yet in the midst of all that sin, Paul’s admonition to the church, whether married or unmarried, was to have the same care for one another, for members to suffer with one another, and when one member is honored for the rest of the church to rejoice with them. Clearly in I Corinthians 12 we find one strategy to avoid sexual immorality being emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually intimate with those in our local church. Whether married or unmarried.
Another area that we need to talk about in purity is the area of physical intimacy. Lots of people have hard set rules. I really don’t. I think the question of how far should you go physically falls into the category of wise and unwise. I can give my advice, but not following my advice is not a sin.
There is only one verse in the entire Bible that gives us any command on physical contact outside of marriage. I Corinthians 7:1b “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.”
I believe we must be careful when we apply this verse. Does this verse mean that you cannot shake hands with a woman? Does this verse mean that you can never hug a woman? I have even been told this verse just uses the word touch instead of fornicate.
Many times in the Bible when God commands us to do something the Bible gives us a picture of either someone obeying, or disobeying God’s command so we have some sort of reference. I know of no place in the Bible that gives us a picture of this verses being obeyed or disobeyed. So the only help we have with understanding this verse is in context.
Leading up to this verse in I Corinthians 6 the Bible is warning against fornication, following this verse in chapter 7, there are 2 verses that say point blank that if you get married you avoid fornication, and that its better to marry than to burn with lust.
Before I give my understanding on this verse I think every Christian needs to pray about what I Corinthians 7:1 means to them.
My understanding in context is that any touch that sexually arouses an unmarried person is wrong. So its not a question of whether holding hands, hugging, or kissing is wrong, but a question of whether holding hands, hugging, or kissing will sexually arouse you. If so you should not do it.
In my life the vast majority of my friends were married before I ever knew them, so I have not been to a lot of weddings and have not seen a lot of people go through the courtship/dating process to marriage. But I have two friends who stand out. One friend kissed before marriage, and the other did not.
The one who kissed before marriage was clearly touching in sexually arousing manor, but in all honesty he should have broken up with that girl he was dating because all they ever did was fight, and kiss and make up. If they had not been turning each other on through touch and making out they would not have dated a week. They made each other miserable. He ended up getting her pregnant and they got married(ladies you cannot know the sex of your baby 2 weeks into pregnancy, you know the sex of your baby 4 months into pregnancy, so 2 weeks after you are married don’t go around telling people you are pregnant with a boy/girl if you want to hide the fact that it was a shot gun wedding). They ended up having two kids and then got divorced. I watched as two people who made each other miserable could not stay apart because of physical, sexual intimacy. Eventually once the sexual intimacy wore off they got divorced.
I had another friend who came to the conclusion that he kept getting into relationships that made him miserable because he would make out with these girls and no matter how miserable they made each other it was hard to break it off with them as long as they made out. So he decided not to kiss until he got married. He went without dating for a few years. Eventually he started dating a girl and when they refused to kiss as a couple he was shocked by how different the relationship was. They actually developed a healthy and happy relationship. In fact the refusal to kiss or do any physical intimacy that was beyond kissing forced them to develop their relationship in other healthy ways.
Watching these two very different relationships helped me to make a decision to save kissing for marriage. Honestly if you can kiss someone and it not sexually arouse either one of you then its probably fine. But it is so easy to develop a terrible relationship where the only thing keeping you two together is the physical intimacy so I would not encourage it.
Again this falls into the category of wise and unwise. Pray about it, seek God’s face about it. But there is also a flipped side to this discussion that needs to be discussed.
We have a lot of people in the Christian community that teaches any touching between male and females who are not family leads to sex, and in all honesty if any touching between male and female non family members leads to sex, then we have some real heart issues that needs to be addressed.
As a human being you have a need to touch others, and be touched. Even if the touching is only a hand shake. God made you to need some physical contact with other people.
In all honesty I was one of these guys that somehow got it in my mind that all touch between non family member male and females led to sex. That was a terrible place to be at. I was so fearful of sinning just because a girl would hug me, or I shook a girls hand too long. Fortunately for me I really wanted to take karate and in karate there is a lot of physical touch between males and females of all ages, and none of it leads to sexual immorality.
I can remember being told in class to grab the gi top of the girl so that she could learn how to get out of a hold, and thinking about how any touch is sexual, and feeling really bad about grabbing her gi top, grabbing her gi top and coming to the realization that this is not sexual at all. Honestly I was very confused because I just knew all physical touch between males and females led to sex. Took me a while to come to terms with the fact that a lot of physical touch between males and females are 100% plutonic.
I am writing this to say that you do not have to live in fear of physical touch. It is just as bad to live in fear of any physical touch, than to take touch a little too far in a romantic relationship.
Perhaps I should say that when physical touch is used in place of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy it is bad. But when physical touch can be used along side of the other aspects of intimacy it is good. Sexual intimacy in marriage is good because it can enhance intellectual, emotional and spiritual intimacy. Sexual intimacy outside of marriage, especially porn is terrible because it is often accompanied by dehumanizing another person. Porn makes women into objects, and often times men who have sex with women outside of marriage dehumanize the woman they have sex with so they do not feel bad about the pain they cause. The thing is God made sex specifically to make a couple closer together than anything else can. If physical touch leads you to demeaning a person, then its sinful and bad.
I wonder if the reason why so many women struggle with sex within marriage is because of how often the world uses sex to dehumanize women.
Honestly I do not know you, or your views on sexuality. I cannot draw a line for you on what is too far for you when it comes to physical intimacy. I can only say that if all physical intimacy leads to sex for you (including hand shaking) then you have a huge problem with your heart. I would strongly encourage you to pray about what physical intimacy is okay outside of a romantic relationship, and what is not okay. What is okay inside of a romantic relationship, and what is not okay. With this idea that anything that turns you on sexually is clearly wrong, and anything that makes you dehumanize the other person is clearly wrong.
But again much of this stuff falls into the category of wise and unwise, and you need to spend time in your Bible and Prayer to come up with your standards.
Another area of purity that is talked about a lot is the idea of not being alone with someone of the opposite sex.
First before we go anywhere else, there is zero Bible verses saying that it is a sin for a man to be alone with a woman. In real life there will be times where your job requires you to be alone with someone of the opposite sex. This is NOT a sin. Even if you are dating/courting someone it is not a sin to be alone with them (Unless you or they are not yet adults and are thus under the authority of your parents, and your parents told you to not be alone with someone).
There are certainly times and places where it is unwise to be alone with them. Like your house, or in the middle of the woods on lovers lane. Being alone in certain places can easily lead to sin, so it is unwise. But being alone with someone of the opposite sex is NOT a sin.
I have a friend who used to drive his truck into the country down a little dirt road and then walk deeper into the woods so he could be totally alone with God. He would go out there a few times a month. Eventually he started dating this woman and when things started getting serious he drove her out to his prayer spot just him and her and they prayed together about whether they should get married or not. Whether you think that is wise or unwise, the reality is that they did NOT sin by doing that.
So far we have talked about intimacy, physical touch, and being alone with someone and how it relates to the subject of purity, but there is one Bible verse that I think really needs to be brought up, and this is an incredibly important Bible verse on the subject of purity.
1Timothy 5:1 Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren;
1Timothy 5:2 The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity.
I Timothy 5:2 directly commands us men to treat our sisters in Christ with ALL purity. I believe first of all this means we will not commit the sin of fornication with any of the girls we date, period. But I also believe that we should take a giant step further on this subject. Most things involving emotional/intellectual/spiritual intimacy, physical touch, and being alone fall into the category of wise and unwise. As you make decisions about what is wise and unwise for you to do, the girl you end up dating will also make decisions that are wise and unwise for her. To treat her with all purity means that whatever her standards of purity are, we will respect them.
Parental supervision is not a biblical requirement, but if that’s her standard of purity we will respect it. Because we will treat her with all purity.
Not holding hands until marriage is not a biblical requirement, but if that’s her standard of purity we will respect it. Because we will treat her with all purity.
Never being alone with her is not a biblical requirement, but if that’s her standard of purity we will respect it. Because we will treat her with all purity.
Whatever standards she has in the area of purity, as men we must respect and guard. Yes it is wrong for a married person to tell you that you are sinning because you are not upholding a standard of purity they never kept. That is hypocrisy. But if you are dating a girl and she has very high standards in the area of purity, whether the relationship ends in a break up or marriage, she is living her standard. If she is living her standard it cannot be hypocritical. So you must do your best to preserve her standard.
If you will not protect her standard, and thus her, you are unworthy of her, and the relationship should end.
That said as men, you are to lead the young women you date. So in the areas of purity where you have higher standards than her you must abide by those standards. If she will not follow your leadership, then she will never follow your leadership. You should obviously break up.
Finally in conclusion I want to say that God is not harsh in His standard on purity. God said not to commit fornication. God specifically said in I Corinthians 7:1-2, and I Corinthians 7:9 that if you are going to have sex anyway, just get married before you have sex.
God does not call you a bad person for wanting to have sex, God just says to go say “I do” first.
If you are on a first date and are having a hard time keeping your clothes on then you have a spiritual problem, that really needs to be addressed and fixed.
If you have been dating someone 6 months, a year, two years and are having trouble keeping your clothes on then you probably just need to get married. God specifically said if you are married then when you have sex with your spouse you are not sinning.
The problem is that so many ministries are so fearful of divorce they do not encourage marriage as a way to avoid fornication. They claim that getting married to have sex is a sin.
First of all as long as you marry a Christian you have not sinned. Even if you are getting married only for the purpose of having sex. Getting married just to have sex is not a sin. Its stupid. But not a sin.
Second, and more importantly, someone who has been dating 6 months, a year, or a couple of years who really really want to have sex, is not getting married just to have sex. They are moving their wedding date up so that they can keep sex in marriage. Sex is not determining whether they get married or not, but when they get married. And God not only okays that, God encourages it in I Corinthians 7.
In America as long as you are 18 and up, and dating someone 18 and up you have no excuse to have sex outside of marriage. You can go to any courthouse in America and get married at any time. God approves of this. And if your parents disagree, then they are directly disobeying God. See Numbers 36:6, I Corinthians 7:9, and 36.
God has two commands on dating. Only date a Christian, and don’t have sex outside of marriage. If you are over 18 and dating someone over 18 you can easily avoid premarital sex in the U.S. by going to a courthouse. It is that easy.
Furthermore the only two sins you can commit exclusively in dating is dating a non Christian, or having sex outside of marriage.
Without a doubt sex outside of the bounds of marriage is sin. The Bible uses the word fornication when it talks about sex outside of marriage. The word is used 36 times in the Bible, and 32 times the word is used in the NEW TESTIMENT. The new testament church is warned about fornication 8 times as many times as the nation of isreal was in the old testament.
So why is sex a bigger deal in the new testament than the old? I believe it is because in the New Testament God directly commands his children to have very deep intimate relationships intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually in the local church.
I Corinthians 12:25b says “the members should have the same care one for another.”
This means that members of the church should care for other members of the church the same way they care about themselves.
I Corinthians 12:26a says “And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it”
When you suffer who do you talk to about it? According to this verse you should talk to other members of the church and then they will share your suffering. But in turn other members of the church should be able to share their suffering with you, and you suffer with them.
I Corinthians 12:26b says “one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it”
When you get honored other members in the church should know about it and rejoice with you. But when others are honored you should be close enough to them that they can share that with you and you rejoice with them.
Gal 6:2 Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
Whatever burden you carry you should be able to share with other Christians in your local church, no matter how big or small. But in turn other people in your church should be able to share their burdens with you and you help them bear the load.
Jas 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
Whatever your struggle, sin, or failure is you should be able to confess that to another Christian in the local church, and have another Christian to talk with your fault about, and pray about it and heal from it because you confessed your fault. But in turn other Christians in the local church should be able to come to you and confess their struggles, sins, and failures and you just bear their load, and pray with them and watch as God heals them, through confessing ,what they have likely never talked with others about, to you.
In the new testament the church is directly commanded over and over again to be intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually intimate with one another. What is left for your spouse at the end of that? Sexual intimacy is one of the things reserved for your spouse (there are a few more things but we are not getting into that).
Unfortunately today most of us have very shallow intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy which opens the flood gates to sexual intimacy outside of the bounds of marriage. The reality is that physical intimacy is the easiest type of intimacy to develop. It feels good to hold hands, hug, kiss and have sex. Every level of physical intimacy feels good so its very easy to develop, and abuse.
In contrast intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy is much harder to develop and often times requires doing things that make you uncomfortable. For instance telling someone about your struggle with pornography is an act of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy. It is very uncomfortable to talk about, and thus much harder to develop than physical intimacy. Telling someone about your dreams is an act of trust, and an act of emotional intimacy. Telling others of how you have been hurt in the past is very uncomfortable and very intimate. These are difficult things in contrast to physical intimacy.
I believe one of the best tools for reserving sex for marriage is developing intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy with those inside your local church, despite or maybe because of the uncomfortable nature of developing intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy.
When God made you he made you a sexual creature because God made us male and female. There are two sexes. But you will not die or go crazy if you are a virgin. When God made humanity, he also made us creatures that need intimacy. Want to make someone go completely crazy, put them all by themselves for a few months.
You have a need for intimacy in your life. If you do not get it intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually then you will seek it out physically and sexually. My generation has proven this true by seeking it out through porn. Porn is easy false sexual intimacy. Without porn you would have been forced to find some other avenue of intimacy.
If you wish to obey God’s word on saving sex for marriage the best thing you can do is learn to develop a healthy avenue of intimacy long before you date/court. This is best because as an unmarried person with avenues of healthy intimacy you will not have a need for the easy to reach sexual intimacy outside of marriage. You need intimacy as an unmarried person, choose and develop healthy intimacy.
The church of Corinth is a good Biblical example of needing other types of intimacy to avoid sexual sin. The church of Corinth had many members committing adultery and fornication and sexual sins that even the unsaved Corinthians were not committing. And yet in the midst of all that sin, Paul’s admonition to the church, whether married or unmarried, was to have the same care for one another, for members to suffer with one another, and when one member is honored for the rest of the church to rejoice with them. Clearly in I Corinthians 12 we find one strategy to avoid sexual immorality being emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually intimate with those in our local church. Whether married or unmarried.
Another area that we need to talk about in purity is the area of physical intimacy. Lots of people have hard set rules. I really don’t. I think the question of how far should you go physically falls into the category of wise and unwise. I can give my advice, but not following my advice is not a sin.
There is only one verse in the entire Bible that gives us any command on physical contact outside of marriage. I Corinthians 7:1b “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.”
I believe we must be careful when we apply this verse. Does this verse mean that you cannot shake hands with a woman? Does this verse mean that you can never hug a woman? I have even been told this verse just uses the word touch instead of fornicate.
Many times in the Bible when God commands us to do something the Bible gives us a picture of either someone obeying, or disobeying God’s command so we have some sort of reference. I know of no place in the Bible that gives us a picture of this verses being obeyed or disobeyed. So the only help we have with understanding this verse is in context.
Leading up to this verse in I Corinthians 6 the Bible is warning against fornication, following this verse in chapter 7, there are 2 verses that say point blank that if you get married you avoid fornication, and that its better to marry than to burn with lust.
Before I give my understanding on this verse I think every Christian needs to pray about what I Corinthians 7:1 means to them.
My understanding in context is that any touch that sexually arouses an unmarried person is wrong. So its not a question of whether holding hands, hugging, or kissing is wrong, but a question of whether holding hands, hugging, or kissing will sexually arouse you. If so you should not do it.
In my life the vast majority of my friends were married before I ever knew them, so I have not been to a lot of weddings and have not seen a lot of people go through the courtship/dating process to marriage. But I have two friends who stand out. One friend kissed before marriage, and the other did not.
The one who kissed before marriage was clearly touching in sexually arousing manor, but in all honesty he should have broken up with that girl he was dating because all they ever did was fight, and kiss and make up. If they had not been turning each other on through touch and making out they would not have dated a week. They made each other miserable. He ended up getting her pregnant and they got married(ladies you cannot know the sex of your baby 2 weeks into pregnancy, you know the sex of your baby 4 months into pregnancy, so 2 weeks after you are married don’t go around telling people you are pregnant with a boy/girl if you want to hide the fact that it was a shot gun wedding). They ended up having two kids and then got divorced. I watched as two people who made each other miserable could not stay apart because of physical, sexual intimacy. Eventually once the sexual intimacy wore off they got divorced.
I had another friend who came to the conclusion that he kept getting into relationships that made him miserable because he would make out with these girls and no matter how miserable they made each other it was hard to break it off with them as long as they made out. So he decided not to kiss until he got married. He went without dating for a few years. Eventually he started dating a girl and when they refused to kiss as a couple he was shocked by how different the relationship was. They actually developed a healthy and happy relationship. In fact the refusal to kiss or do any physical intimacy that was beyond kissing forced them to develop their relationship in other healthy ways.
Watching these two very different relationships helped me to make a decision to save kissing for marriage. Honestly if you can kiss someone and it not sexually arouse either one of you then its probably fine. But it is so easy to develop a terrible relationship where the only thing keeping you two together is the physical intimacy so I would not encourage it.
Again this falls into the category of wise and unwise. Pray about it, seek God’s face about it. But there is also a flipped side to this discussion that needs to be discussed.
We have a lot of people in the Christian community that teaches any touching between male and females who are not family leads to sex, and in all honesty if any touching between male and female non family members leads to sex, then we have some real heart issues that needs to be addressed.
As a human being you have a need to touch others, and be touched. Even if the touching is only a hand shake. God made you to need some physical contact with other people.
In all honesty I was one of these guys that somehow got it in my mind that all touch between non family member male and females led to sex. That was a terrible place to be at. I was so fearful of sinning just because a girl would hug me, or I shook a girls hand too long. Fortunately for me I really wanted to take karate and in karate there is a lot of physical touch between males and females of all ages, and none of it leads to sexual immorality.
I can remember being told in class to grab the gi top of the girl so that she could learn how to get out of a hold, and thinking about how any touch is sexual, and feeling really bad about grabbing her gi top, grabbing her gi top and coming to the realization that this is not sexual at all. Honestly I was very confused because I just knew all physical touch between males and females led to sex. Took me a while to come to terms with the fact that a lot of physical touch between males and females are 100% plutonic.
I am writing this to say that you do not have to live in fear of physical touch. It is just as bad to live in fear of any physical touch, than to take touch a little too far in a romantic relationship.
Perhaps I should say that when physical touch is used in place of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy it is bad. But when physical touch can be used along side of the other aspects of intimacy it is good. Sexual intimacy in marriage is good because it can enhance intellectual, emotional and spiritual intimacy. Sexual intimacy outside of marriage, especially porn is terrible because it is often accompanied by dehumanizing another person. Porn makes women into objects, and often times men who have sex with women outside of marriage dehumanize the woman they have sex with so they do not feel bad about the pain they cause. The thing is God made sex specifically to make a couple closer together than anything else can. If physical touch leads you to demeaning a person, then its sinful and bad.
I wonder if the reason why so many women struggle with sex within marriage is because of how often the world uses sex to dehumanize women.
Honestly I do not know you, or your views on sexuality. I cannot draw a line for you on what is too far for you when it comes to physical intimacy. I can only say that if all physical intimacy leads to sex for you (including hand shaking) then you have a huge problem with your heart. I would strongly encourage you to pray about what physical intimacy is okay outside of a romantic relationship, and what is not okay. What is okay inside of a romantic relationship, and what is not okay. With this idea that anything that turns you on sexually is clearly wrong, and anything that makes you dehumanize the other person is clearly wrong.
But again much of this stuff falls into the category of wise and unwise, and you need to spend time in your Bible and Prayer to come up with your standards.
Another area of purity that is talked about a lot is the idea of not being alone with someone of the opposite sex.
First before we go anywhere else, there is zero Bible verses saying that it is a sin for a man to be alone with a woman. In real life there will be times where your job requires you to be alone with someone of the opposite sex. This is NOT a sin. Even if you are dating/courting someone it is not a sin to be alone with them (Unless you or they are not yet adults and are thus under the authority of your parents, and your parents told you to not be alone with someone).
There are certainly times and places where it is unwise to be alone with them. Like your house, or in the middle of the woods on lovers lane. Being alone in certain places can easily lead to sin, so it is unwise. But being alone with someone of the opposite sex is NOT a sin.
I have a friend who used to drive his truck into the country down a little dirt road and then walk deeper into the woods so he could be totally alone with God. He would go out there a few times a month. Eventually he started dating this woman and when things started getting serious he drove her out to his prayer spot just him and her and they prayed together about whether they should get married or not. Whether you think that is wise or unwise, the reality is that they did NOT sin by doing that.
So far we have talked about intimacy, physical touch, and being alone with someone and how it relates to the subject of purity, but there is one Bible verse that I think really needs to be brought up, and this is an incredibly important Bible verse on the subject of purity.
1Timothy 5:1 Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren;
1Timothy 5:2 The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity.
I Timothy 5:2 directly commands us men to treat our sisters in Christ with ALL purity. I believe first of all this means we will not commit the sin of fornication with any of the girls we date, period. But I also believe that we should take a giant step further on this subject. Most things involving emotional/intellectual/spiritual intimacy, physical touch, and being alone fall into the category of wise and unwise. As you make decisions about what is wise and unwise for you to do, the girl you end up dating will also make decisions that are wise and unwise for her. To treat her with all purity means that whatever her standards of purity are, we will respect them.
Parental supervision is not a biblical requirement, but if that’s her standard of purity we will respect it. Because we will treat her with all purity.
Not holding hands until marriage is not a biblical requirement, but if that’s her standard of purity we will respect it. Because we will treat her with all purity.
Never being alone with her is not a biblical requirement, but if that’s her standard of purity we will respect it. Because we will treat her with all purity.
Whatever standards she has in the area of purity, as men we must respect and guard. Yes it is wrong for a married person to tell you that you are sinning because you are not upholding a standard of purity they never kept. That is hypocrisy. But if you are dating a girl and she has very high standards in the area of purity, whether the relationship ends in a break up or marriage, she is living her standard. If she is living her standard it cannot be hypocritical. So you must do your best to preserve her standard.
If you will not protect her standard, and thus her, you are unworthy of her, and the relationship should end.
That said as men, you are to lead the young women you date. So in the areas of purity where you have higher standards than her you must abide by those standards. If she will not follow your leadership, then she will never follow your leadership. You should obviously break up.
Finally in conclusion I want to say that God is not harsh in His standard on purity. God said not to commit fornication. God specifically said in I Corinthians 7:1-2, and I Corinthians 7:9 that if you are going to have sex anyway, just get married before you have sex.
God does not call you a bad person for wanting to have sex, God just says to go say “I do” first.
If you are on a first date and are having a hard time keeping your clothes on then you have a spiritual problem, that really needs to be addressed and fixed.
If you have been dating someone 6 months, a year, two years and are having trouble keeping your clothes on then you probably just need to get married. God specifically said if you are married then when you have sex with your spouse you are not sinning.
The problem is that so many ministries are so fearful of divorce they do not encourage marriage as a way to avoid fornication. They claim that getting married to have sex is a sin.
First of all as long as you marry a Christian you have not sinned. Even if you are getting married only for the purpose of having sex. Getting married just to have sex is not a sin. Its stupid. But not a sin.
Second, and more importantly, someone who has been dating 6 months, a year, or a couple of years who really really want to have sex, is not getting married just to have sex. They are moving their wedding date up so that they can keep sex in marriage. Sex is not determining whether they get married or not, but when they get married. And God not only okays that, God encourages it in I Corinthians 7.
In America as long as you are 18 and up, and dating someone 18 and up you have no excuse to have sex outside of marriage. You can go to any courthouse in America and get married at any time. God approves of this. And if your parents disagree, then they are directly disobeying God. See Numbers 36:6, I Corinthians 7:9, and 36.
God has two commands on dating. Only date a Christian, and don’t have sex outside of marriage. If you are over 18 and dating someone over 18 you can easily avoid premarital sex in the U.S. by going to a courthouse. It is that easy.