Grace and Peace Episode Season 2 Episode 5
Presbyterian Church of Easton
February 20, 2022
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 1:7)
Romans 1:24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
It is hard to believe that Paul wrote this two thousand years ago. It is true of western culture today.
When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s Christianity still had a powerful hold of our culture. But it was beginning to break apart. One by one biblical standards were discarded. The biggest break with biblical morality was in the area of sexual ethics. The Bible clearly tells us that all sexual activity must be in the context of a marriage. All sex outside of marriage is sinful. But beginning in the 1960s all this began to change. And the Confession of 1967 clearly says, the introduction of birth control, treatment for sexually transmitted disease, people living in cities, and the use of sexual imaging to sell products has led to sexual anarchy. This is what the confession says.
“The relationship between man and woman exemplifies in a basic way God’s ordering of the interpersonal life for which he created mankind. Anarchy in sexual relationships is a symptom of man’s alienation from God, his neighbor, and himself. Man’s perennial confusion about the meaning of sex has been aggravated in our day by the availability of new means for birth control and the treatment of infection, by the pressures of urbanization, by the exploitation of sexual symbols in mass communication, and by world overpopulation….” (Confession of 1967, 9.47d)
The church has a clear responsibility to teach sexual ethics and lead people who have fallen into sexual anarchy to a full life lived by bibilical principles. And to lead people to fuller lives requires compassion for those who have fallen. The Confession of 67 put it this way.
“The church comes under the judgment of God and invites rejection by man when it fails to lead men and women into the full meaning of life together, or withholds the compassion of Christ from those caught in the moral confusion of our time.” (Confession of 1967, 9.47d)
Let’s pray. Father in heaven keep us free from all sexual sin and true to our spouses. Give us compassion for those suffering from sexual anarchy today. And help us to lead people to fuller lives in Christ. In whose name we pray. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment