A few years ago I was talking on one occasion to someone who would claim to be a Christian. The topic of conversation was our former prime minister, Boris Johnson.
As many will know, the official residence of the British prime minister is 10 Downing Street. Apparently Mr Johnson was the first prime minister to live there with a woman he was not married to. In fact, at the time he started doing this he was still legally married to someone else.
In my conversation, I commented on how bad it was for Mr Johnson to do this. Clearly disagreeing with me, the person I was talking to replied, ‘Times change.’ As he went on to explain, he thought that my moral values were old fashioned and out of date. In his view, there is not a lot wrong today with a person having a sexual relationship with someone they are not married to, even when they are still legally married to another person.
God doesn’t revise His moral values
It is certainly true that relatively few people in the UK today would say that sex should only take place within marriage. And it is true too that fashions in moral values come and go.
However, the crucial thing we need to understand is that God doesn’t change. Just because most people today say that something is OK, that in no way has to mean that it really is. Nor should we think that God alters His requirements to fit in with people’s ideas on moral issues.
The Bible makes it clear that only a small proportion of people will be eternally saved (Matt 7:13-14).
Scripture also contains striking examples of where only a tiny number of people avoid God’s judgment.
One example is Noah and his family. We are told that moral values in Noah’s day were very poor (Gen 6:11-12). So what happened? Did God lower His standards to accommodate this? Not at all. Instead, He carried out His judgment by drowning all but eight people (Gen 7:11-23; 2 Pet 2:5).
Or take the example of Sodom and Gomorrah. God didn’t adjust His values to accommodate the evil of those who lived there. Instead, He destroyed these towns, while making sure to rescue Lot (Gen 19:1-29; 2 Pet 2:6-7).
To think that today God is somehow revising His moral requirements to take account of the views of Western society is a big mistake. In reality, all that is happening in sexual and some other matters is that people commit more sins than they used to.
What the Bible says about sexual sin
In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 the apostle Paul says to the Christians in Corinth:
‘9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.’ (ESV)
Paul says here, among other things, that those who are sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God in this passage refers to final, eternal salvation. And according to the Bible, sexual relations should only happen within marriage (Gen 2:24; 1 Cor 7:9; Heb 13:4).
In other words, one of the things Paul is saying in this passage is that those who unrepentantly have sex outside marriage are on track for hell.
Of course, we are not saved by doing good deeds or by avoiding committing sins. Paul doesn’t mean that those who avoid sexual immorality, and the other sins he mentions, will thereby earn their salvation. Instead, we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ.
However, crucially, according to Scripture, where there is genuine, saving faith, it is always accompanied by good deeds. As James 2:26 says:
‘For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.’ (ESV)
One sign of those who have saving faith is that they fight hard to live in a good way.
So if someone unrepentantly has sexual relations with a person they are not married to, that is a sign that they don’t really have saving faith. And if they don’t have saving faith, they are not on track for final salvation.
We mustn’t be deceived
The Bible describes Satan as a snake who deceives the whole world (Rev 12:9). One of his big lies at the present time in Western countries is that various sins are not really sins at all. Another of his lies is that when the moral values of society change, we can expect God to accommodate Himself to that by altering His demands.
As Christians we mustn’t allow ourselves to be deceived about these things. And we must stand firm regardless of how many other people do so.
In biblical times and throughout church history God’s people have often had to swim against the tide of popular opinion in various ways. Christians have frequently had to stand up for what is right even though they have been a tiny minority. When we need to do the same, let us not fail the Lord.
See also:
There Will Be No Hiding in the Crowd on the Day of Judgment
Salvation Is Not by Doing Good but Only Those Who Do Good Will Be Saved
