Last Sabbath, the Sligo pastor Alexander Barrientos said this in a sermon (at 52:31). First he quotes Acts 15:19-20).
“And so my judgment is that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead, we should write and tell them to abstain from eating food offered to idols, from sexual immorality, and from blood” (Acts 15:19-20).
Saith Barrientos:
“And by the way, sexual immorality here is unique to Luke because he really doesn't really amplify what it actually means. If we ask the Apostle Paul of what that means, there are different descriptions of what it is. Let us not as a church suddenly go and start telling ourselves that sexual immorality means you cannot have intercourse outside of marriage. That's the American translation of sexual morality. By the way, there is a fetish our country has with being purity culture.”
Observations
The word James uses for sexual immorality is pórneia. It covers a wide range of sexual sin, including incest, adultery, fornication, and the LGBTQ array. Each of these moral deviations occur through sex outside of the biblical marriage covenant.
Paul agrees with James in 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 where he appeals to these converts to Christianity to keep their bodies in sanctification and honor. And that they would abstain from sexual immorality, not in passionate lust like the Gentiles, for God did not call us to uncleanness, but to holiness. Same word. Same meaning.
The Bible’s exhortation to moral purity and sanctification, therefore, are not a puritanical artifact of American fetish, but rather the singular path to moral freedom and sanctification, and human flourishing.
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