Presbyterian pastor Ligon Duncan was flipping channels on his TV one day and came upon the very conservative Roman Catholic television channel “The Eternal Word Network.” That’s the network that has shows by super-Catholics like Mother Angelica. For this show there was a priest doing a lecture to Catholic students at a large university in the Midwest.
He was addressing the issue of sexual purity, and he was talking about a young Catholic couple who came to him on one occasion. They were cohabiting together and they were engaging in immoral sexual relations. And they said to him, “Father, surely there couldn’t be anything wrong with something so beautiful as this. Our love for one another overflows into our physical relations with one another.”
And he said to them, as he told the audience, “Of course there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your fornication – if you’re a pagan.” It was a very powerful apologetic. He said in effect, “That’s how pagans act, that’s not how Christians act.”
That’s precisely what God is saying in the Bible passages on sexual conduct. Sexual purity is an issue that He’s concerned about. He wants spouses to be able to trust one another implicitly.
It’s a spiritual issue. It’s not just a private, personal issue. It’s an issue that affects all the people of God. God cares about our relationships, he cares about our purity.