Foundation and Introduction || Boundaries of Your Sexuality || Part 0

Today begins a study on a tricky topic. Sexuality immorality is something that is often talked about, including everything from adultery to lustful thinking to pornography and more. Because it’s so expansive, I was curious to see what the New Testament defines it as. It’s different than I expected and directed differently than I thought. I have three pages of notes about defining it by itself. I want to look at this from the biblical perspective, legal perspective (explained later), and denominational perspective.

To summarize the concepts, verbs, and roots of the Greek words “sexual immorality,” this is the definition we’ll be working with. Sexual immorality is:

• A male or female prostitute surrendering their sexual integrity for gains of bribery, lustful desires, and gratification.
• Committing promiscuous acts that are against the law and go against the cultural norms of typical relationships.

The roots of sexual immorality are pornos and porné. Pornos means a male prostitute as showing or motivated by susceptibility to bribery. Porné means a prostitute that indulges in unlawful lust of either sex.

The concept of sexual immorality is the Greek word porneia, which means a selling off or surrendering of one’s sexual purity. This includes all types of promiscuity (which, based on Romans 13:13, refers to sexual excesses.)

The act of committing sexual immorality is the Greek word porneuó, which refers to the act of prostituting one’s body to the lust of another OR to give oneself to unlawful sexual intercourse.

Now, two words come up often that I want to describe:

• Immorality – conflicting with traditional (biblical) moral principles (based on a concordance)
• Promiscuous – having or characterized by many transient (short-term) sexual relationships (based on the Oxford Dictionary)

With this in mind, it feels like we’re talking about prostitution and pornography, right? Definition #1, which we’ll be working with, leans toward prostitution, and definition #2 leads more toward pornography (kind of).

This is why I wanted to include the legal definitions of pornography and prostitution because the ordinary person would define it based on a sliding scale. The definitions will be based on the Legal Information Institute of Cornell University. These legal definitions are important as they provide a framework for understanding the societal and legal implications of sexual immorality.

• Prostitution: engaging, agreeing, or offering to engage in sexual conduct with another person in return for a fee.
  • Two court cases help us define what sexual conduct can look like:
    • Sexual intercourse
    • Deviate sexual intercourse
    • Masturbation
    • Specific acts that are suggestive of conduct done to satisfy a sexual desire.
    • Contact of the genitals, buttocks, or female breasts of either the prostitute or the customer for the sexual arousal or gratification of the customer or the prostitute.
• Pornography: material that is either purchased or accessed that depicts nudity or sexual acts for the purpose of sexual stimulation.
  • The presence of nudity or sexual acts in a piece of media doesn’t necessarily make that media pornographic if the purpose of that media form is something other than sexual stimulation.
  • Illegal material includes knowingly producing, distributing, receiving, or possessing pornography to minors.

The legal definition of prostitution aligns with the biblical view of it: performing sexual acts in return for money, items, desires, gratification, etc.

Pornography is material that depicts nudity or sexual acts for sexual stimulation. This means that media that contains sex scenes or nudity that wasn’t designed for the sex stimulation of the viewer isn’t considered pornography. Let’s look at the idea of promiscuous acts listed in the second working definition. It’s committing sexual acts or nudity that go against the law or cultural norms. These acts are done in short-term relationships (typically one-night stands in our culture today.) Rephrased: it’s committing sexual acts or being nude with the intent to accomplish sexual satisfaction with someone in a noncommittal manner.

Prostitution is illegal (almost everywhere), but the slants of sexual immorality against pornography feel disconnected from each other. It feels like the church uses it to not partake in the media, while the Bible is saying don’t commit sexual acts portrayed in porn with people in a noncommittal manner.

With the disconnect of pornography being present still, what do different denominations say about it? I have three perspectives from three mainline denominations: Methodism, Catholicism, and Baptist. Here is what they say:

• Methodism: Pornography is sexually explicit material intended primarily for the purpose of sexual arousal that often portrays violence, abuse, coercion, domination, humiliation, or degradation. (Quoted from: https://www.umc.org/en/content/pornography-and-sexual-violence)
• Catholicism: Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. (Quoted from: (https://www.usccb.org/topics/natural-family-planning/pornography#:~:text=Pornography%20Harms%20Everyone&text=It%20does%20grave%20injury%20to,It%20is%20a%20grave%20offense)
• Baptist: pornography as the portrayal of explicit sexual encounters which highlight violence and coercion. (Quoted from https://www.abc-usa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/PORNOGRAPHY.pdf)

I found it interesting that it condemns the use of aggressive pornographic content, which I can understand honestly. Porn that portrays abuse, forced sexual encounters, and treating the sexual partner(s) less than a human shows a very unethical, unhealthy view of what sex can be like. However, there’s no condemnation of watching pornographic content that displays passion, consensual, or romantic sexual content.

I’ve often found myself questioning whether or not “Is watching porn sinful?” “Is masturbation sinful?” “Am I going to hell because of that?” This series and the last series were so important to me; they removed a denominational slant from understanding the biblical concept and kept it focused on just the Bible alone. That said, let’s create some working definitions for this series. We’ll discuss these items through all six parts for consistency and continuity. Even my definitions before this preview have changed a little in explaining everything.

• Sexual immorality is defined as sexual acts/encounters/desires that conflict with traditional (biblical) moral principles.
  • The biblical teaching of this concept centers around prostitution.
    • Prostitution: a male or female prostitute surrendering their sexual integrity for gains of money, lustful desires, and gratification.
  • The more pressing definition we’ll talk about is an expansive topic that includes pornography, sexual impurity, and sex in general. The definition is:
    • Committing sexual acts or being nude with the intent to accomplish sexual satisfaction with someone(s) in a noncommittal manner in a way that possibly involves abuse, force, and inhumane treatment of those involved.

Let’s actually simplify this a little further:

Sexual immorality (simplified): sexual acts, encounters, and/or desires that conflict with traditional (biblical) moral principles.

Sexual immorality (explained): committing sexual acts or being nude with the intent to accomplish sexual satisfaction, obtain money, satisfy lustful desires, and/or obtain gratification with someone(s) in a noncommittal manner in a way that involves a variety of forms of abuse, force, and/or inhumane treatment of those involved.

This will be our working definition of sexual immorality throughout this series that I’m calling “Boundaries for Your Sexuality.” We’ll talk about different ways sexual immorality was taught and experienced in the Bible, modern-world connections to it, and the lessons we can learn from it to design healthy God-first boundaries regarding our sexuality. Let me share with you a couple of my own key foundational beliefs for this series so that you’re aware of the direction I’ll be taking this:

• I support those in non-heterosexual relationships. I believe that relationships and marriage are between two consenting, of-age persons regardless of gender.
• I am a straight man. I have many friends in the LGBTQIA+ community and have learned a lot about their struggles with Christianity’s condemnation of homosexuality and the church hurt that comes with it.
• I’m in support of those who create sexual content. As long as they’re not hurting themselves or others physically, mentally, or emotionally in doing so or as a side effect of that.

We are humans at the end of the day. We try to find ways to survive. For some, this is their way. As long as they have their own healthy boundaries surrounding them and are committed to embracing those physical, emotional, and spiritual boundaries in a God-honoring way. I feel like the movement we’re seeing in today’s culture regarding body expressions and comfortability is pulling us to the Eden-like state of not being ashamed that we’re naked. We are becoming both comfortable and vulnerable with the self-expression of the body God created us with. How and why we’re sharing our bodies is the crucial point of our immorality regarding it, and that’s where I want to focus our series on.

Part 1 starts tomorrow, and I hope you’re ready for some great discussion and insight into what God says about sexual immorality. Until then, stay blessed.