I'm not making up new sins..the word of God says it is wrong. If you don't agree, then you'll need to correct me on my interpretation of these scriptures:
1 Thessalonians 5:22
Abstain from all appearance of evil.
A situation of an unmarried man and woman living together gives the appearance of evil. Many people are going to look at that and assume they have a sexual relationship. Whether it is true or not makes no difference; according to this scripture, we must avoid doing anything that even seems like it could be morally questionable.
"Avoid every kind of evil." NIV
"Abstain from every form of evil." ESV
"abstain from every form of evil." ASV
"Abstain from all appearance of evil." KJV
This verse means 'stay away from evil' or 'when evil appears, you stay away', not 'don't ever even look like it's possible that maybe you might do something evil'. That's absurd. To someone outside my house, it might look like I'm surfing porn. Should I get off the computer?
And how could we ever hope to walk with Christ while following this newly proscribed law? There were plenty of folks who thought he
must be sinning because of the people he hung out with. If this is a law, Jesus surely broke it.
Ephesians 4:27
and give no opportunity to the devil.
Living with roommates of the opposite sex has so much potential to lead to sin that it scarcely needs to be explained. Living together with someone is intimate, and you see and experience the intimate details of peoples lives. No matter how careful you are, you will end up seeing things you shouldn't see, and hearing things you shouldn't hear. When you become so intimately familiar with someone, temptation to sin will never be far behind. This is giving enormous opportunity to the devil.
Does it? I don't know that roommates become 'intimately familiar' with each other. Mostly they just yell about who ate their food and who left that pile of laundry by the door. Though
that might certainly 'give the devil a foothold', because the context of that verse is
anger.
1 Corinthians 8:9
Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.
Regardless of your amount of self-control, there are plenty of Christian brothers and sisters who do not possess the fortitude necessary to handle that kind of temptation to sin. You set up a stumbling block for such Christians who might see you doing this and think its okay.
Let's deal with the scripture. As Christians we are called a higher standard; to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him. We must discern everything to see if it matches up to the word of God. If it doesn't, we should walk away. God says be holy as I am holy, and to do that we have to follow His word and not our own desires, or what we think is right.
I absolutely agree that we should not cause our brother to stumble with our freedom. But that means we must
have that freedom first. If you say that individuals of opposite genders sin by living in the same house, then we
don't have that freedom and this verse doesn't apply.
As Christians, we
are called to a higher standard. Including not brow-beating each other with non-sins. Isn't this what the Pharisees did to Jesus?:
"Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”
"Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’ he is not to ‘honor his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:"
“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men." (Matthew 15)
