The worst sin?

[poeticlurker]

According to a friend of mine, the worst sin someone can commit without rejecting God or killing someone is pre-marital sex. I'm very confused about this. If sex is an act of love between two people*, married or unmarried that harms no one else, why is it worse than lying, cheating, stealing, coveting, or committing adultery, which DO hurt other people than the sinner?

*Just so the discussion doesn't get off-topic, let's assume that the two people are in love, are monogamous, and have had no other sexual partners and thus no STD's to spread.

I was an atheist at the time he told me this, so I was like "lolwut" because I didn't believe that pre-marital sex was inherently bad. I still don't really, so I'm asking you guys. Why would pre-marital sex be one of the worst sins? Did my friend hear something wrong or misunderstand something? Where I went to school, there's no sex ed other than abstinence-only classes in middle school and a small unit on abstinence and STD's in 9th grade, then absolutely nothing else. So yeah, folks around here are rather anti-sex, but my friend isn't even a virgin but he is a Christian.

hu?

 

[aiki]

According to a friend of mine, the worst sin someone can commit without rejecting God or killing someone is pre-marital sex. I'm very confused about this. If sex is an act of love between two people*, married or unmarried that harms no one else, why is it worse than lying, cheating, stealing, coveting, or committing adultery, which DO hurt other people than the sinner?

*Just so the discussion doesn't get off-topic, let's assume that the two people are in love, are monogamous, and have had no other sexual partners and thus no STD's to spread.

I was an atheist at the time he told me this, so I was like "lolwut" because I didn't believe that pre-marital sex was inherently bad. I still don't really, so I'm asking you guys. Why would pre-marital sex be one of the worst sins? Did my friend hear something wrong or misunderstand something? Where I went to school, there's no sex ed other than abstinence-only classes in middle school and a small unit on abstinence and STD's in 9th grade, then absolutely nothing else. So yeah, folks around here are rather anti-sex, but my friend isn't even a virgin but he is a Christian.

hu?

Perhaps your friend was thinking about the following passage concerning fornication:

1 Corinthians 6:18-20
18 Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.
19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?
20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.

In the OT, having sexual relations with someone was tantamount to marriage. If one had sex with another person, one was considered to be married to that person. Over time, rituals and ceremonies developed to formalize and hallow the marriage covenant, but the idea that sex and marriage can be properly separate is not biblical.

The Bible is very clear: sexual relations are to be experienced only within the marriage relationship.

1 Corinthians 7:8-9
8 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. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

Implicit in what the apostle Paul writes here are two important points:

1. Sexual passion is to be relieved within marriage.
2. There is no other state in which sexual relations may be had. As far as Paul was concerned, if one wanted to satisfy one's sexual passion, one had to marry. Loving someone, or being free of STDs, or being sexually exclusive did not legitimize sex outside of the marriage convenant.

Selah.

 

[salida]

According to a friend of mine, the worst sin someone can commit without rejecting God or killing someone is pre-marital sex. I'm very confused about this. If sex is an act of love between two people*, married or unmarried that harms no one else, why is it worse than lying, cheating, stealing, coveting, or committing adultery, which DO hurt other people than the sinner?

*Just so the discussion doesn't get off-topic, let's assume that the two people are in love, are monogamous, and have had no other sexual partners and thus no STD's to spread.

I was an atheist at the time he told me this, so I was like "lolwut" because I didn't believe that pre-marital sex was inherently bad. I still don't really, so I'm asking you guys. Why would pre-marital sex be one of the worst sins? Did my friend hear something wrong or misunderstand something? Where I went to school, there's no sex ed other than abstinence-only classes in middle school and a small unit on abstinence and STD's in 9th grade, then absolutely nothing else. So yeah, folks around here are rather anti-sex, but my friend isn't even a virgin but he is a Christian.

Does he live his life as a christian-in otherwords, if he is having premarital sex still I have to question his christianity.

***1Co 6:18 Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.(With premarital sex and/or adultery you sin against your own body).

 

[JasperJackson]

I don't agree that it's a "worse" sin than some others. In fact, grading sins is a little bit silly as God makes it clear than any sin is bad enough to separate us from God such that we need a saviour (Jesus) to bridge that gap back to God for us.

That said, pre-marital sex can definitely be harmful. Years down the track, and one has another partner they'll inevitably be comparing them to earlier partners. And that's not fair. As a result it may adversely affect the way you treat that new partner - even subconsciously.

So on this topic I defer to "God knows what's best for me".

 

[FutureAndAHope]

All laws listed in the bible have some basis for being made, if we think hard enough there are reasons why you should not have sex unless you are married. The most important of them being the possibility of having children. If you have a child you want to know that they will grow up in a loving environment forever. Which is what marriage is forever. Here is a bible verse that describes it:

Mal 2:15-16 Has not the LORD made them one [in marriage]? ... And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. "I hate divorce," says the LORD God of Israel, "and I hate a man's covering himself with violence as well as with his garment," says the LORD Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith.

The verse above states two things why God wants marriage for the sake of the offspring (children) and it states what God hates. He hates divorce, and he hates the reasons why it can validly occur such as violence. So God hates unfaithfulness. Rather he loves, loving relationships, ones without violence.

 

[AlexBP]

According to a friend of mine, the worst sin someone can commit without rejecting God or killing someone is pre-marital sex. I'm very confused about this. If sex is an act of love between two people*, married or unmarried that harms no one else, why is it worse than lying, cheating, stealing, coveting, or committing adultery, which DO hurt other people than the sinner?

*Just so the discussion doesn't get off-topic, let's assume that the two people are in love, are monogamous, and have had no other sexual partners and thus no STD's to spread.

As others have said, there's no scriptural basis for declaring premarital sex to be the worst sin, but it certainly is a sin. The reasons for this are many, but the most obvious is the risk of unwanted pregnancy and out-of-wedlock birth. Numerous studies have shown that children raised without a proper, two-parent household do worse in school, have more health problems, and are more likely to commit crimes than those raised by their mother and father together. It is logical that raising children is a very difficult task and two people working in tandem will do better at it than one person alone.

As I said, though, that's only one reason of many. More generally, what I would say is that restricting sex to within marriage works to make a better, happier society. I was raised in a very liberal and permissive environment and the impression I was given while growing up was that all those rules about sex were holdovers from ancient times, but now that we had birth control and abortion and inappropriate contentography we could ignore the rules and do whatever we wanted. When I reached college I started to learn that this wasn't actually true. I could see that there was a lot of sexist, piggish behavior from some of the male students, and it tended to make everyone else--women and men--unhappy. But when I thought about it, I realized that this bad behavior flowed from the exact sort of thinking that I had been brought up with.

From what you wrote, it seems you agree that monogamy is a desirable goal. I agree, of course. However, I think we could agree that lustful desires come naturally to almost everybody, so in the 'natural state' there aren't going to be many lifelong, monogamous relationships. Christian society and family life is largely designed to encourage and assist families in remaining intact. Once you remove the societal belief that sex should be within marriage, it's unlikely that monogamy will stand on its own outside marriage.

 

[Sketcher]

According to a friend of mine, the worst sin someone can commit without rejecting God or killing someone is pre-marital sex. I'm very confused about this. If sex is an act of love between two people*, married or unmarried that harms no one else, why is it worse than lying, cheating, stealing, coveting, or committing adultery, which DO hurt other people than the sinner?

*Just so the discussion doesn't get off-topic, let's assume that the two people are in love, are monogamous, and have had no other sexual partners and thus no STD's to spread.

I was an atheist at the time he told me this, so I was like "lolwut" because I didn't believe that pre-marital sex was inherently bad. I still don't really, so I'm asking you guys. Why would pre-marital sex be one of the worst sins? Did my friend hear something wrong or misunderstand something? Where I went to school, there's no sex ed other than abstinence-only classes in middle school and a small unit on abstinence and STD's in 9th grade, then absolutely nothing else. So yeah, folks around here are rather anti-sex, but my friend isn't even a virgin but he is a Christian.

hu?

Worst? No. Bad? Yes. It's got some pretty far reaching consequences, and it's both common and pleasurable, so that is what explains the emphasis against it. While I think the world would be a much better place if everybody reserved sex for the commitment of marriage as God intended*, I don't think that we should treat fornication as something worse than everything else.

* This isn't meant as a dig on children who were conceived out of wedlock. They're just as good as children who were conceived within wedlock. But everything else the same, I'd rather they all have healthy, stable families with a good mom and a good dad. Saving sex for marriage helps the chances of that considerably.

 

[98cwitr]

According to a friend of mine, the worst sin someone can commit without rejecting God or killing someone is pre-marital sex. I'm very confused about this. If sex is an act of love between two people*, married or unmarried that harms no one else, why is it worse than lying, cheating, stealing, coveting, or committing adultery, which DO hurt other people than the sinner?

*Just so the discussion doesn't get off-topic, let's assume that the two people are in love, are monogamous, and have had no other sexual partners and thus no STD's to spread.

I was an atheist at the time he told me this, so I was like "lolwut" because I didn't believe that pre-marital sex was inherently bad. I still don't really, so I'm asking you guys. Why would pre-marital sex be one of the worst sins? Did my friend hear something wrong or misunderstand something? Where I went to school, there's no sex ed other than abstinence-only classes in middle school and a small unit on abstinence and STD's in 9th grade, then absolutely nothing else. So yeah, folks around here are rather anti-sex, but my friend isn't even a virgin but he is a Christian.

hu?

The worst sin is to blasphemy the Holy Spirit (basically to call God a liar) because this sin is unforgivable. All other sins are forgivable with repentance which comes via faith.

Premarital sex is by definition carnality. There is no such thing as a carnal Christian.

 

[bling]

I think your friend is on a guilt trip and it has become the worst sin for him. People get hurt from having sex the wrong way and it is never OK in their own minds.
You talk about “love” and sexual love is love, but it is not Godly type Love. Godly type Love is totally unselfish, sacrificial, beneficial for all, unconditional, and can be offered up to God as worship. What we are really looking for is to be Loved unconditionally, but that takes control, thought, commitment, and the result of God Loving us.

 

[Harry3142]

The one sin that Jesus Christ himself warned us was a 'death-dealer' was the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit:

"He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come." (The Gospel of St. Matthew 12:30-32,NIV)

Every other sin, irregardless of what that sin may be, is equally sinful in God's eyes. Only blasphemy against the Holy Spirt is identified as 'sin to the max'. Which leaves us with two questions, namely, why? and What? Why is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit especially sinful, and what exactly constitutes blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?

Personally, I believe that it's due to the strong probability that when we refer to the Holy Spirit, we are not referring to some force that emanates from a 'big guy' on a throne as if it were a laser beam. Rather, we are actually referring to the very essence of God himself. The words 'Son' and 'Father' are titles, not people. The same person can be a son, a father, a brother, an uncle, a cousin, or a myriad other things, while still being only one person.

But whenever the Spirit is referred to, it is very specific. There we are no longer encountering a title, but instead an actual Being. In John 4:24 Jesus himself identified God as being a Spirit. I don't think his stating that God is Spirit, and his stating that we are to 'walk softly' when referring to the Holy Spirit, is coincidental. So we are strictly ordered to deal respectfully with the subject of the Holy Spirit.

And what is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? It is not doubt, though some would attempt to convince you otherwise. Doubt is doubt, honestly recognized and honestly expressed. God will help you deal with that, without anger and without chastisement.

Blasphemy falls within these borders:

Jesus himself had just performed a healing. It was obviously a genuine happening, but rather than give God the credit due him, there were those who claimed that Jesus was actually healing people and casting out demons on the orders of Beelzebub, the prince of demons.

There are many that get up to preach the word while honestly depending on the Holy Spirit to give them a hand. But there are others who invoke his name in a blatant attempt to intimidate and overpower any and all who are unwilling to accept them as their spiritual leaders. They claim to be uttering the message of the Holy Spirit, but they do it out of a selfish desire for more-and-more power for themselves. Examples of this are, "If you truly love Jesus, you'll ..."; "To disobey me is to disobey God himself"; "The Spirit has sent me to tell you ..."; "The Spirit speaks through me, so you must obey what I tell you to do". To say any of these statements, or others akin to them, while knowing at the time of their utterance that they are being used as a manipulative device rather than their being an honest communique from God, is blasphemy.

We do have a code of conduct, which can be found in Galatians 5:16-26. There St. Paul stated clearly how we are supposed to behave. But the man who wrote that passage also wrote this one:

We know the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And I do what I do not want to do. I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself that do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being, I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 7:14-25a,NIV)

Do your best, but don't expect perfection. Instead, trust God to see you through, in the same way as a child trusts its parent to help and guide it, even when the child doesn't know exactly where the parent is taking the child.

 

[a_ntv]

According to a friend of mine, the worst sin someone can commit without rejecting God or killing someone is pre-marital sex.

The worse sins are the sins against the Holy Spirit (Mk. 3:29; Mt. 12:32; Lk. 12:10), which for us Catholic are:
(1) Despair,

(2) Presumption of God's mercy,
(3) Impugning the known truth,
(4) Envy the spiritual good of another,
(5) Obstinacy in sin (being determined to go on living in sin)
(6) Final impenitence (not repenting even at the hour of death)

 

[solarwave]

Strangely this thread is convincing me that sex before marriage isn't bad.

Some have said there are reasons for sex before marriage being wrong..... mostly so that children are brought up in a loving family. But the Bible was written before modern contraception, so is this rule in fact thrown out like alot of specific Bible rules (eg: treat slaves well, women to be silent in church, stoning everyone).

To answer the question many Christians are obsessed with sex and legalism. Probably because they can't do what they want to do and so want to force it on others so they can't have the fun they can't. Subconsciously of course though.

Is there any reason not to have sex before marriage other than for the sake of the children?

 

[Key]

*Just so the discussion doesn't get off-topic, let's assume that the two people are in love, are monogamous, and have had no other sexual partners and thus no STD's to spread."

Why don't they just get married then?

Just for the issue, a man should not have sex with a woman he is not willing to marry, because then they are just using each other for sexual pleasure,

In that situation, to use someone for personal gain is the same as swindling them out of something, in this case, a man would swindle sex from a woman in exchange for a perhaps a "Lie" that he cares about her when he really does not.

If they both treat sex like a passing thing and are just using each other for self gratification, then I suppose it would be acceptable.

But again that would be contingent on the individual, some people do not want to be a with a mate that would constantly be comparing their performance to the capacity of previous lovers, and that holds both ways.

Women do not like to be compared to previous girlfriends, men do not like to be conspired to previous boyfriends.

That is just the way it is.

However, is it the Worst Sin?

Again, that would be in the eyes of the individual.

Hope this helped

God Bless

 

[AlexBP]

Is there any reason not to have sex before marriage other than for the sake of the children?

I've already tried to address this in my post on the first page. Attitudes and expectations regarding sex are a big part of culture and are intertwined with everything else. When we, as a society, decided to permit premarital sex, we set in motion changes to our society that went beyond merely the act itself. We created a culture in which many people push their sexual behavior out in public, raunchiness took over in the media and beyond, and people who don't feel like participating in it all get insulted and marginalized. By all accounts, there are a lot of people who are unhappy with the culture we have today.

Further, before relying on birth control to solve the child-rearing issue, we should remember two things. First, birth control can fail. The liberal media blasted Pope Benedict last year when he pointed out how often condoms fail to stop unwanted pregnancies and STDs, but his statements were entirely true. Second, even when it works, birth control still depends on people using it properly. It's easy for a young couple (or even an old couple) to forget it in the heat of the moment and end up with an unwanted pregnancy.

 

[ephraimanesti]

According to a friend of mine, the worst sin someone can commit without rejecting God or killing someone is pre-marital sex.

MY DEAR SISTER,

i'm afraid you friend is being a little silly. Perhaps pre-marital sex might be the most common sin, but it is far from the "worst." If fact, God does not rank sin that way--there are no "good" sins or especially "bad" sins--all sin is just SIN in God's eyes and an abomination in His sight.

However, the one unforgivable sin--which might qualify it as the "worst"--is the sin of believing that one is free of sin and thus has no need to repent and no need of a Savior.

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

 

[solarwave]

I've already tried to address this in my post on the first page. Attitudes and expectations regarding sex are a big part of culture and are intertwined with everything else. When we, as a society, decided to permit premarital sex, we set in motion changes to our society that went beyond merely the act itself. We created a culture in which many people push their sexual behavior out in public, raunchiness took over in the media and beyond, and people who don't feel like participating in it all get insulted and marginalized. By all accounts, there are a lot of people who are unhappy with the culture we have today.

Further, before relying on birth control to solve the child-rearing issue, we should remember two things. First, birth control can fail. The liberal media blasted Pope Benedict last year when he pointed out how often condoms fail to stop unwanted pregnancies and STDs, but his statements were entirely true. Second, even when it works, birth control still depends on people using it properly. It's easy for a young couple (or even an old couple) to forget it in the heat of the moment and end up with an unwanted pregnancy.

Still birth control is fairly reliable isn't it. We don't say driving a car is wrong because people sometimes crash.