Year 1, Day 107: Leviticus 18

God’s View of Extra-Marital Sex

Leviticus 18 gives us another list of sexual sins.  This is an important chapter.  Two chapters ago we spoke of the fact that marital sex is not sinful, but it still makes us unclean before God.  In this chapter we see the difference between marital sex and sex outside of marriage.  Sex outside of marriage not only makes us unclean, but it is sin.

At one point God even calls a specific act of sex outside of marriage as an abomination.  The Hebrew word here is a word that expresses strong revulsion, and typically in the Bible it is used to describe something that is morally objectionable rather than something ritually improper.  This should make sense to use, because we have seen from an earlier chapter that any act that brings about semen makes the participants ritually unclean.  Thus, here we see a moral penalty applied in addition to the ritual uncleanliness that comes every sexual act.  In other words, this chapter is about that which adds sin to an act that already brings ritual uncleanliness.

Are We God’s People?

There is something neat to be found in the very beginning of Leviticus 18:2-4.  God tells the people to not do as those in the world (specifically Canaan).  The land they were going to, Canaan, was known for its sexual sins – especially ritualistic ones.  The land they were coming from, Egypt, was a land where its leaders especially were known to marry and have sex with their siblings and half-siblings as well as perform other deviant approaches to sexuality. 

So God is clear with His people.  He makes it quite clear – “do not do.”  God’s ways are different than the world.  We need to accept that fact or quit convincing ourselves that we are God’s people.  Either we want to be a part of the world and do the things of the world or we want to be a part of God’s people and do the things that God’s people do.  There is no gray area, there is no muddy water.  There is only “do” and “do not do.” 

We can either try to live God’s way – and inevitably do wrong thus asking for forgiveness and confessing our sin – or we can live as though there is nothing wrong with our actions.  We can absolutely deceive ourselves and pretend that we are in the first category while actually being in the second category.  Only true surrender to God brings about living in the first category – trying to live according to God’s ways.  And of course, true surrender is neither easy nor common.

More on Sex

So having set a pretty high bar, let’s talk sex.  I’m going to return to a topic earlier: “do not do as they did in Egypt or Canaan.”  In today’s American culture – and elsewhere in the world, too – it is easy to go along with the crowd.  It is easy to fall prey to the excuse that “everyone else is doing it.”  That’s just not acceptable according to these verses.  We are not to do like the world – especially in terms of sexuality.

So let me add a statement.  I was different than the world, sexually speaking.  When I married my wife, I was a virgin.  I had – and have – never had sex with anyone other than my wife.  That’s odd in this world, but I am proof that it not only can be done but it is one of the most satisfying things I can say about myself. 

Just to make sure I am not lying, please do not think that I did not – or do not – struggle with lust.  There were many moments in my life where had my parents not spent such time instilling a strong sexual ethic within me and had God not protected me, I should have been unable to resist the temptation to have sex.  The world would have certainly thought it acceptable!  Of course I have lusted after girlfriend and fantasy.  And I am truly guilty of that, I acknowledge.  But one can defeat lust through God and God’s Word.  We need not “do as the world does.”  We can – and should – be different, beginning with sexuality.  So there is no need to buy into what the world says or expects.  We can be different from a sexual perspective regardless of our fleshly nature.

Moving on, I haven’t even spent any other time talking about the rest of sexuality here.  God continues to set a pretty high bar.  Deviant sexual behavior just isn’t acceptable.

• Men are not to lie with anyone as though lying with a woman unless it actually is a woman.  This description of homosexual behavior is the case I spoke of earlier where God says it is an abomination. 
• Men aren’t to have sex with sisters while they are both alive. 
• We aren’t to have sex with family, or even people married to our genealogical family. 

God’s point is really quite clear.  There is one acceptable way to have sex: man and woman within the confines of marriage.  Any other form of sex – anything outside of marriage, within the family, within family of someone with whom we are having sex, with anything other than one man and one woman, any deviant sexual behavior – is not according to God’s ways.

Sex, Sin, and Forgiveness

Rather than end on that note – which would have been a great place to end – I do think that I should make one thing clear.  Nobody, me included, is free from sin.  So as strong as the paragraph above is, remember that there is forgiveness.  As God forgives me of my lust, so God can forgive you of any sexual deviance that this chapter may have uncovered.  God can forgive the adulterer.  God can forgive the participant in homosexual sex.  God can forgive the person who has sex with multiple partners.  God can even forgive the person who has sex within their own family. 

Just because God can forgive it does not make any of this behavior acceptable.  But remember that God can forgive it.  We must first understand it as against God’s ways.  Then we must confess it to God.  Then we must try to live a different way.  This confession/change is what we call repentance.  Then we can live knowing that God forgives.

So as strongly as I stated a rebuke for the sexual acts that God finds deviant, please hear the statement of forgiveness even more strongly.  Judgment is a necessary part of repentance and forgiveness.  But greater still is the life that comes after we are forgiven!  I do not want anyone to get hung up in the weight of their sins.  Understand the weight of your sins as I understand the weight of mine.  Then confess them to God, change your life, and live free of their bondage upon your life! 

If this has stirred up the need for anyone to talk about their sinfulness – even sexual sinfulness – please feel free to contact me.  I promise that so long as repentance is a part of the process, I will help you get to forgiveness.

God bless.

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