By Pastor Gregg Laurie, Harvest Ministries
It Does Hurt
Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
The argument has been made that illicit sex doesn’t hurt anyone. I disagree. I think it hurts a lot of people. It damages a person spiritually, and according to one study, it can even cause depression. Researchers at the University of Tennessee found that in young women, there seems to be a direct correlation between illicit sexual behavior and serious emotional problems.Then there is the issue of teenage pregnancy. Every year, one million teens become pregnant. Many of these pregnancies never make it to term because one in every five abortions is performed on a woman under the age of 20. And 400,000 of the 1.6 million abortions occurring annually are done on teenage mothers. Does illicit sex hurt anyone? What about the baby who is never given the privilege of living out his or her life? What about the mother who carries the lifelong shame of aborting her baby? Who knows what some of these children could have done in our world today—the difference they could have made?
There is no such thing as a “one-night stand.” Sex is not some casual toy; it is a gift from God to be saved for marriage. When you engage in sexual contact with another person, you become one. The Bible says, “Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, ‘The two are united into one’ ” (1 Corinthians 6:15–16).
So does illicit sex hurt anyone? It does hurt. And it does bring spiritual devastation. That is why the Bible warns against this sin.
Disciples for Purity 