PictCry
Apr 13th 2009, 04:19 PM
I wonder..what if there is someone who was in a love realtionship but it wasn't right? One of the members was a devout Christian and the other was a Christian but with different, stranger ideas and beliefs. Well if they "did things" but did not have sex..and then broke up and moved on...Would either of them be commiting adultry if they got married to the one God wanted them to marry later on? There is those verses about Adultry. SO I was wondering what they would say according to scripture. And if they would not be commiting adultry with after they were married to someone else why not?:blush:
JesusMySavior
Apr 13th 2009, 04:28 PM
If you're talking about doing "things" before marriage that are sexual in nature or can lead to those things inexplicably, that is called fornication. We're called to abstain from it (I Thess. 4:3).
If either of them were married they would both be committing adultery. But see even Jesus said if you look upon a woman with lust you are committing adultery. Perhaps He was talking about looking at a married woman; if you look upon a woman that does not have a husband, you could probably consider that fornication with your heart, not adultery (though both are equally grotesque). Even with that, you're committing adultery with God if you are a Christian...you are allowing things that shouldn't be there to get in the way, lusting after them instead of pursuing God. I perhaps am guilty of lusting after other things every day. Lord forgive me and help me.
But maybe you're thinking "what 'things' could be considered sinful, leading to adultery/fornication". Anything that gets your heart racing in a lustful way and gets you thinking wrongful thoughts about the other person. For me, when a girl holds my hand, my heart races. But I'm not thinking sexual thoughts. When the phone rings and it's her, my heart races, but it's not sexually-related. Now, if the girl began to put her hand on my thigh and maybe start rubbing my leg, I would put the brakes on real quick. Even "frenching" is too much before marriage. Those things are sexual in nature and can lead you down a slippery path very fast.
God bless you
Skipscan
Apr 13th 2009, 04:30 PM
At least 1 person has to be married in order for it to be considered adultery. I understand your stance on waiting to marry before having sex, but if you did that already, you'd be guilty of premarital sex and not adultery provided neither person was married at the time. To answer your question, it's just "messing up" as you put it.
JesusMySavior
Apr 13th 2009, 04:40 PM
To answer your question, it's just "messing up" as you put it.
At the risk of sounding uptight (I'm not directing this at any one person), it's not considered just "messing up" to God. Sin is sin, and it can only be solved if dealt with effectively.
What we must do when we find ourselves in lust or fornication, is run to God, call it what it is - sin, ask Him for His forgiveness, make an effort to change your routines and patterns, and press on in victory.
:)
//corrective mode off
Skipscan
Apr 13th 2009, 05:04 PM
JMS, I believe there are different levels of sin and I believe that adultery is unquestionably worse than premarital sex. I'm not encouraging the op to do either, but he was asking if he committed adultery and from what I've read, he did not. Dating someone's future wife can not be considered adultery in any way, particularly if the girl hadn't even met her future husband.
PictCry
Apr 13th 2009, 05:20 PM
the point of the question was not whether or not one sin was as bad as the other, just the question of whether the deed was adultry or not (in this case it was forinication) So the answer was good on both counts!
NotMyOwn
Apr 13th 2009, 05:27 PM
the point of the question was not whether or not one sin was as bad as the other, just the question of whether the deed was adultry or not (in this case it was forinication) So the answer was good on both counts!
Well I agree that this was an act of fornication not adultery.
Scruffy Kid
Apr 13th 2009, 10:08 PM
Hi, PictCry!
Welcome to Bibleforums! :hug:
It's great to have you here!!! :pp :pp :pp
Your Basic Questions
Getting Clear about what you are saying
As I understand your question you are giving background, and asking a specific question:
(1) The background situation. A man and woman (neither of them married to another person at the time) in a loving relationship interacted pretty freely, sexually -- heavy petting, or perhaps intimate touching or unclothed embraces -- but did not engage in sexual intercourse.
(2) Your question. Later, after they broke up, one of the people wants to marry another person. Your question concerns Jesus's saying that to marry someone divorced involves one in adultery; and you want to know is it forbidden by Scripture, then, for one of these people, later, to marry (some third person).
Sorry to be so pedantic and explicit, but it seemed to me that most of those replying were not actually grasping what you said, and I wanted to make sure that I correctly understood both the situation and your question about it.
How Marriage, Fornication, and Adultery are Understood, or Defined
With respect to the prior situation, ordinarily the word "fornication" refers to sexual intercourse, or perhaps (less commonly) oral or manual stimulation of the sexual organs to climax. While you are not exact about what happened, I would guess that what you describe was not fornication, but was a kind of sexual uncleanness. The Bible actually does not have a specific word for "fornication." There is a word for adultery, but the other word is the general term "porneia" which means sexual wrongdoing or uncleanness.
In any case, marriage is defined not just by sexual intercourse taking place, but by sexual intercourse in the context of a commitment to a permanent relationship, at least. In most cases, "living together", by itself, wouldn't necessarily constitute marriage -- although after a number of years, and were living in a common household, and especially if there are children -- it might be understood that way (which, in English and American law would be called a "common law marriage").
Therefore, even if the parties had engaged in sexual intercourse, then -- according to the way that Christians (the Church) has understood the biblical teaching historically -- they still would not have been married. In fact, if they had come under conviction about that, most Christians would have said -- and they probably would have felt -- that the two of them were "living in sin" and ought to stop that right away, and decide whether to get married or not.
The Practical Implications for the Question You Asked
Accordingly, even if a person regards marriage as indissoluable (not able to be dissolved) -- and Christians are divided on this point, though on the face that is what Jesus seems to be saying -- the previous relationship would not be a marriage to which either party was bound, and thus there would be no bar, no barrier, to either party later finding another person, and marrying that person.
Other Issues Which Seem To Come Up in Your Post
Various people who have posted seem to be very eager to inform you that, even if there was no sexual intercourse, what you were doing was seriously wrong. They say things like "This is serious, not 'just messing up'" and of course that's right.
Of course, it's very important to take sexual purity seriously, and to take what God says about what we may or may not do in matters of family, marriage, and sex very seriously.
The Basic Situation
Nevertheless, to me some of the responses seem to be somewhat oblique to (not directly relevant to) the actual situation you are describing, because it seems to me from your post that you are already very sad about what was done in the past. You are weeping over what was done, your little emoticon says, as you should, and to drive that home your screen name is "PictCry". In other words, you are mourning that you got into the degree of sexual intimacy that you did, even though it wasn't (if I understood right) actual fornication. And you're mourning about how that may have messed up your future, and your future with one whom you now love -- and that's the one who, you think, is the one God has chosen for you.
Let's just pause there for a second.
We are all sinners;
and God in mercy and Grace, touches our hearts and heals us!!
The fact is that -- just like me and every other member of this board -- you are a sinner. That sinfulness is more than just particular misdeeds: it's a whole wrong orientation, in which we are willing to abandon what we know is right, or talk ourselves temporarily into telling ourselves it doesn't matter -- an orientation in which our hearts are set on what we want, not on what God wants, an orientation in which we are selfish, rather than filled with thanks and love to God, and real self-disciplined love toward other people. All that would be true whether you had got into a too-physical relationship with someone you were fond of or not.
Our sins, and the general selfish, and deaf-to-God way we often go around living even apart from particular sins, arise from our bad hearts -- your wrecked and sinful human nature and mine -- and these specific sins also wreck us up further. Actually, we don't have the power to get ourselves unscrambled, disentangled, from harmful things that are inside us, and these things then harm us further. :cry: :cry: :cry:
But fortunately, God loves us :kiss: each -- loves you, individually, and the people you've known, and even me -- very generously, and very intensely. Thus, God has come to us, in Jesus Christ our Lord, to bear our sins, to transform our hearts, and to give us, increasingly, the power to live for Him, and according to His ways.
Now in the middle of this whole process you did something really dumb and destructive, as you've told us. First off, God loves you, and the person you did this with, very much. And also, second, in your rather bad deeds and in the extra brokenness that comes your way because you did them, God loves you still, and intends your life to be a good one, although perhaps a tough one in various ways.
Good Grief
Your tears, all our tears, are a good thing, which God gives us
To help us draw closer to Him
Further, third, God in His great kindness has placed in your heart a lot of sorrow about what you did in this case. This is a great gift, something to continue to walk in, and something that shows God's continuing love for you!
Jesus says "blessed are those who mourn!" (Matt. 5:4) While in part Jesus may be stating that all who are in pain and trouble or sadness have hope in God, I think His main point is that it is blessed when we are sad about the sin and brokenness of this world, and of our own lives. It's a great gift!!
So I think you have cause, in an odd way, to be thankful over the grief you feel about what went wrong in the past, for this is God's way of summoning us to understand His great mercy and love for us, sinners, and also His way of helping us to be very serious about seeking to follow Him in every aspect of our heart and being. Our sorrow over our sins, or the sins of the world about us, unites us to Jesus's sorrow and the pain He endured to wash away our sins, and bring us to God, and to transform us that we might walk with Him, and care most about God's kingdom, and about those who are in need, and those who are far from Him.
The final upshot for you (as I understand it)
The way this works out is good -- and I am grateful for it.
For as I understand, from what I understand of what you've said, you are free to marry the one you now desire to marry, and whom you believe God has chosen for you. Praise God!!
Your sorrow about the past should not weigh you down, but give you thanks and joy that (despite your foolishness) God loves you (as He does me, despite my sins) and also has gotten you to a place where you may go on to a good Christian marriage. Thanks be to God!
Yet your sorrow about the past is proper, and not a bad thing. Mingled with thanks to God, it should teach us -- for each of us has done bad things that we mourn -- how much we want to seek God's ways, and give our lives and relationships over to Him in thanks. My sorrow about things that I've done wrong is helping me to love God more for His great compassion and help, and above all for the way that Jesus bore our sorrows, and our sins, and heals us! It makes me more compassionate for others who are in trouble, or who have done wrong, and more careful to avoid wrong things in my own life.
We can have ongoing sorrow over the fact that we've messed up, and the fact that our basic attitudes are often selfish and self-willed, together with joy at God's love and help. These things give us thankfulness and joy, and also a deep motivation to live, henceforth, for Him.
This will help you in your new relationship -- the marriage you are looking towards -- also. We all carry into our families and marriages various problems and bad attitudes. Entering with a keen awareness both of the need to forgive one another, and of our own need to grow and change in difficult ways, can really help us a lot.
Blessings
Blessings upon you, dear one!!
Please forgive me if I have said too much, or have not rightly understood your situation and your question.
I started trying to understand as well as I could, and this is what came out.
May God bless you!!
In friendship,
Scruffy Kid :hug:
I wonder..what if there is someone who was in a love realtionship but it wasn't right? One of the members was a devout Christian and the other was a Christian but with different, stranger ideas and beliefs. Well if they "did things" but did not have sex..and then broke up and moved on...Would either of them be commiting adultry if they got married to the one God wanted them to marry later on? There is those verses about Adultry. SO I was wondering what they would say according to scripture. And if they would not be commiting adultry with after they were married to someone else why not?:blush:
FaithfulSheep
Apr 13th 2009, 10:39 PM
I wonder..what if there is someone who was in a love realtionship but it wasn't right? One of the members was a devout Christian and the other was a Christian but with different, stranger ideas and beliefs.
What exactly do you mean here? A Christian with strange beliefs? What exactly does this person believe?
Well if they "did things" but did not have sex..and then broke up and moved on...Would either of them be commiting adultry if they got married to the one God wanted them to marry later on?
First of all, sin is sin. Period. Messing around or "doing things" is still sin even if it isn't the actual act of sex itself. If you are participating in fornication (the "things" leading up to it included) you are sinning. We are told in James that for one who knows to do good but does not do it, it is sin. Not only that, but we are told in Romans (13:14) that not only are we not to satisfy such fleshly desires, but we are not to even plan to commit such sin.
Is it adultery? Not unless one of you is married. Is it acceptable to do? Absolutely not.
Romans 13:13 - Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy.
1 Thess. 4:3 - For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality.
PictCry
Apr 14th 2009, 05:15 PM
Thank you very much Scruffy Kid! You really did give me the answer I was looking for. I had wanted to fully understand the situation and you were right on target. I had already knew the sin but I wanted to understand more fully what God might have thought about it all. So I am eternally grateful and so are many many people that I know, that I can share the answer with. You truly are an inspired Christian!
JesusMySavior
Apr 15th 2009, 05:31 AM
JMS, I believe there are different levels of sin and I believe that adultery is unquestionably worse than premarital sex. I'm not encouraging the op to do either, but he was asking if he committed adultery and from what I've read, he did not. Dating someone's future wife can not be considered adultery in any way, particularly if the girl hadn't even met her future husband.
The only way that I see a difference is that it hurts the other person severely, which is breaking the law of love, the most important commandment; and you are violating the marriage oath before God. But you see that adultery is primarily a matter of the heart, though also the body, and as a Christian, we are committing adultery with God when we fornicate or put ourselves in the way of fornication/lust/etc.
Hear also that Jesus said whoever looketh on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her in his heart - now, obviously the woman, "victim", is oblivious to it, she doesn't know anything about it. Yet Jesus still called it adultery even though the man never laid a hand on her.
For me I'd rather not play with fire and say either sin is "lighter" because to think like that leads to depreciating morals down the future line. 7-10 years from now I could be saying to a fallen friend, "that's alright man, at least she wasn't married". Eek :o God forbid!
Let each man and woman search their own conscience on this matter.
Glad you got your question answered pictcry :)
