originally posted at http://www.regenerator.com/8.2/harrell.html; cache retrieved from archive.org
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by Daniel Harrell
Many years ago now a couple walked in my office desiring to get married. I explained to them how weddings worked in our church—you needed to be a part of our community, a believer in Jesus, and committed to the biblical ideals of marriage as a lifelong covenant. I then asked them to fill out our customary wedding forms. As they handed these forms back, I glanced down and noted that both indicated the same address.
“Are you living together?” I asked.
“Yes, we are.”
“Uh, well,” I sheepishly responded, “Are you sleeping together?”
“Yes,” they replied, staring at me as if I had two heads. “Is that a problem?”
Obviously they hadn’t been around our conservative evangelical church very long. “I’m afraid it is a problem,” I said. I recited the well-worn Christian standards regarding premarital sex. Sexual intercourse, while created by God as good, was bad outside of wedlock. I sounded like a youth pastor from a summer camp I’d attended years before: “Sex is like fire. The same fire that warms a house can burn it down!” Marriage was the fireplace where fire belongs . . . well, you get the point.
Mustering a hesitant amount of righteous indignation, I politely informed the couple that I couldn’t in good conscience perform their wedding as long as they were living (and sleeping) together. They’d have to separate for the duration of the engagement period and abstain from intercourse until after the wedding. The disappointment was apparent on their faces. No question, they were in love. Theirs was going to be a good marriage—a passionate marriage. Nevertheless, I insisted they refrain from what God had created as the chief expression of marital love until after they said, “I do.”
It was as if some sort of magical transformation was going take place at the altar whereby all that I was now declaring bad about sex would suddenly—seconds later—be virtuous. Wasn’t there something strange in the notion that sex, created as good by God, needs to be made good again by marriage vows? Still, the couple did want to be married in our church, so they reluctantly complied. At least that’s what they told me.
Ten years later, another couple walks into my office. I explain to them our church’s approach to weddings and ask them to fill out our customary forms. As they hand them back, I notice that both have listed the same address. “Are you living together?” I ask.
“Yes, we are.”
“Well,” I respond, “I’m glad you’re getting married. Let’s set the date.”
What caused my change of heart? My own uneasiness, combined with some careful exploration of Scripture. Was it really true that the marital love embodied in sexual intercourse was dependent upon spoken vows? When I turned to the Bible, I couldn’t find that idea in Scripture at all.
Indeed, you’ll be hard pressed to find any reference to marriage vows in the Bible. Instead, in both the Old and New Testaments, sexual intercourse itself is what binds a man and woman together as “one flesh”—ceremony or no ceremony. “If a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged to anyone and sleeps with her, he must pay the customary dowry [or marriage present] and accept her as his wife” (Ex. 22:16, NLT). In other words, if a man has sexual relations with a woman, then in the eyes of God they are married. The one action, intercourse, makes the two people one flesh. There is no two-step process of vows plus the consummation of those vows. Considered this way, premarital sex makes no more sense than a premarital wedding.
Jesus acknowledges this reality in the New Testament when he says, quoting Genesis 2, “Therefore what God has joined together, let no man separate.” How did God join a man and woman together? With sex. It’s debatable whether wedding ceremonies as we know them even occurred in Jesus’ day—the event Jesus attended at Cana was more accurately a wedding reception.
Over time, marriage and sex became disconnected. But that very disconnection, motivated by the desire to sacramentally validate sex within marriage, succeeded instead in pitting one against the other in contradiction of the Biblical intent. The result was the nonsensical notion that a wedding legitimizes sex—as though God’s creating it wasn’t enough. The alternative may seem to lead to grave problems of its own: Does any sort of consensual sex, or worse, nonconsensual sex, constitute marriage? It would seem so, which is why the biblical writings are so forcefully opposed to casual sex and rape.
My views on pre-wedding sex also changed as my approach to ethics shifted over time. I’ve long been frustrated with the way in which ethical discussions quickly deteriorate when we have only the mutually exclusive categories of right and wrong, good and bad, to work with. In this dichotomized, idealized way of thinking, unless a particular attitude or behavior is totally good, then it is bad. But moral reality rarely functions this way. Experience teaches us that even if something is not totally good (as most things aren’t), some good may still be present. Indeed, as writer Philip Turner has argued, grace and mercy require us to affirm the good wherever it may be found. It’s not that we lower our ethical standards—that’s why we speak of grace and mercy—but neither do we treat those standards as all-or-nothing propositions. Christians are aware as anyone that we do not yet inhabit a perfect world.
When we rush to label as “bad” any sex that occurs without a marriage contract in hand, we ignore the evidences of love and commitment that may well be present. Such blanket condemnation is confusing, and often needlessly hurtful. Moreover, it threatens to associate sexual expression itself with guilt and shame. One couple that came to me for marriage counseling attributed their current conflict to having slept together before their wedding, even though I could see no such connection. Once I assured them that their pre-wedding relations were congruent with their life as husband and wife, they were freed to see their current conflict in its true light.
As long as the couple intend to “sign” their marital love in a marriage contract (like baptism, a public sign of a personal, spiritual reality), then a sexual relationship can be affirmed as good, if not yet ideal. But what if an “unmarried” couple doesn’t view their loving, committed, and sexual relationship in marital terms and has no intention of living as married? We should still refuse to pit marriage against sex. We can affirm that what they now experience is good, while calling them to a full and faithful expression of that goodness in public marriage. Only that combined affirmation and call can fully reflect who they are in the eyes of God—and it makes for much more productive conversations in the pastor’s office.