Fornication - Is It Still A Sin, TODAY?

Rhamiel said:

yes, yes it is, fornication is sex outside of marriage

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"Is it" is an invitation to justify your statement.

Armoured said:

Um... so many questions! I'll start with why would God care about whether a committed monogamous couple has a marriage licence or not?

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Because He cared to go to the wedding in Cana and He's going to marry His bride. It's a covenant. They had a bethrothal certificate in the Old Testament and a marriage ceremony and it was public.
If He didn't mind He'd have said: Live like the gentiles. You don't have to abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality.

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, 5 not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. 7 For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness.
Paul doesn't say: go have sex and live together with one woman, but:
It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2 Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.
Now what is a husband and wife, do they need a legal marriage?
We have to listen to the laws of the country. If you don't have a marriage licence you are just not married, simple as that. Even an unbeliever can see that and say: we live together, but believers say they're married, while they're not, they fool themselves. I know, 'cause I have done it.

But I say to the unmarried and to the widows: It is good for them if they remain even as I am; 9 but if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry.

Messy said:

Because He cared to go to the wedding in Cana and He's going to marry His bride. It's a covenant. They had a bethrothal certificate in the Old Testament and a marriage ceremony and it was public.
If He didn't mind He'd have said: Live like the gentiles. You don't have to abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality.

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, 5 not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. 7 For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness.
Paul doesn't say: go have sex and live together with one woman, but:
It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2 Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.
Now what is a husband and wife, do they need a legal marriage?
We have to listen to the laws of the country. If you don't have a marriage licence you are just not married, simple as that. Even an unbeliever can see that and say: we live together, but believers say they're married, while they're not, they fool themselves. I know, 'cause I have done it.

But I say to the unmarried and to the widows: It is good for them if they remain even as I am; 9 but if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry.

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*eyeroll* Yes, but WHY would he care? And no, a random selection of verses to claim that he DOES care doesn't answer the question.

So, let's take two hypothetical couples, one is committed to each other and faithfully monogamous, the other is committed to each other and faithfully monogamous AND has a marriage certificate. WHY would God prefer one over the other?

Armoured said:

*eyeroll* Yes, but WHY would he care? And no, a random selection of verses to claim that he DOES care doesn't answer the question.

So, let's take two hypothetical couples, one is committed to each other and faithfully monogamous, the other is committed to each other and faithfully monogamous AND has a marriage certificate. WHY would God prefer one over the other?

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Why? I think it's protection. Not everyone can be trusted.
Why wouldn't someone want to marry?
Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches - Why not just live together?

Inward commitment does form the basis of marriage. But the Bible also points out that in every area of life genuine commitment cannot stand alone. Rather, true inward commitment naturally comes to outward expression.

The wedding ceremony is a reminder of the public aspect of the bond between man and woman. Two people who enter this intimate relationship are more than merely “two consenting adults.” Rather than being merely a private matter, wider society has an interest in the forming of this intimate bond. This is so, of course, because the union of a man and woman generally forms the context for the conception and raising of children, and thus remains the foundational building block of society. The wedding ceremony, with its publicly witnessed reciting of vows and its legally signed marriage certificate, is therefore an important public declaration that these two people have entered into the intimate bond of marriage.

A public ceremony serves to solidify inward commitment. The declaration of fidelity to one another in the presence of witnesses can be a sobering experience. While it may be relatively easy to pledge ourselves to each other in private, voicing that same commitment in the presence of others suddenly makes us publicly accountable for our words and subsequent actions.

The wedding ceremony is important for an even deeper reason. Marriage points beyond husband and wife to a greater reality, namely, to the covenant God seeks to enjoy with us. According to the Bible, God has chosen marriage as a picture of his union with us.

Yes it's a still a sin and it always will be one, it's only that this generation glorifies it and make many believe that it is not a sin (along with masturbation and pornography, drunkenness and drugs), it it wasn't a sin, it would't have it's consequences such as cheating and early pregnancy.
There is a reason that the Bible says not to be of the world and the glorification or fornication is a perfect example of that fact.

Armoured said:

So, let's take two hypothetical couples, one is committed to each other and faithfully monogamous, the other is committed to each other and faithfully monogamous AND has a marriage certificate. WHY would God prefer one over the other?

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Messy said:

The wedding ceremony is important for an even deeper reason. Marriage points beyond husband and wife to a greater reality, namely, to the covenant God seeks to enjoy with us. According to the Bible, God has chosen marriage as a picture of his union with us.

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You two are expressing different things.

The "marriage certificate" is an instrument of human government. God does not require a marriage certificate.

The public ceremony, however, is an expression to the community--particularly the Body of Christ, which is the membership we are most concerned with--that two people have formed a covenant and that their relationships with all other members of the Body of Christ will take that covenant into concern.

We see throughout scripture that the horizontal relationship with other believers is nearly as critical to Jesus as our vertical relationship with Him, and it's impossible to have a correct relationship with others if they are not aware of our marriage.

There are two things I'm uncomfortable with in our modern society's treatment of sexuality:

1) Virginity as commodity. There is a sense that a person's virginity--almost always the woman's--is a commodity that she is to retain, and that if she gives it up before finding her life-mate she is damaged goods. I recently read about Mark Driscoll's new book that he co-wrote with his wife in which he describes finding out that his wife wasn't a virgin when they were married, and that had he known about this sin of hers before they were married he wouldn't have married her. In spite of the fact that he himself had been far more promiscuous than her single youthful indiscretion. Virginity, in particular female virginity, as commodity, and that a person's value, including their sexual value, is determined by some nebulous sense of "purity" is degrading and disgusting.

2. Unconstrained sexual appetite. This idea that people should be having sex, lots and lots and lots of sex. Without really thinking it through. This is emotionally destructive. Not to mention it is taking incredible amounts of health risks. Coupled with the above issue it also results in the incredibly twisted social narrative where men will shame a woman who doesn't "put out" and when she does, shame her for being promiscuous, what is usually called [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]-shaming. And it results in the continued objectification of women in society whose value lay entirely in her sexuality, and again her virginity. Men are conversely expected to be Don Juans, exploiting women for personal gain and through this gain status.

I'm far less worried about two people who are committed to one another, who have sex before marriage, and yet nevertheless are truly invested in one another than I am the things I describe above.

And let's not pretend like this is simply "the world's" fault. As Christians we are plenty culpable for the creation of a rather twisted culture of "purity".

The fact that we are so willing to shame people, usually women, for not being "pure enough" is a far greater sin than whatever possible sin may take place if a committed monogamous couple engaged in coitus prior to their wedding night.

I'm not aware of any Scripture that condemns the latter, but there is plenty in Scripture which condemns the mistreatment of our fellow man. The Great Commandment in no uncertain terms says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." So perhaps we should be looking at our own eye-logs when we mistreat, objectify, and devalue others through our deeply sinful, flawed standards of uprightness.

-CryptoLutheran

Wow, how did I miss this entire section of CF until now??

It is SO refreshing to see the poll responses for this thread. Seriously, after battling throug the "non-Christians-allowed" Ethics area, this is like a breath of fresh air