​


Biblical Gender Identity



Site: Jayden12.com › Rock › Gender Identity › Living Together (Mobile) - Full Site

Section: Intro ⋅ Single ⋅ Marriage ⋅ Adultery ⋅ Living Together Not Married ⋅ Prostitution ⋅ Cross Dressing ⋅ Homosexuality ⋅ Animals ⋅ Incest ⋅ Self ⋅ Cycle ⋅ Polygamy ⋅ Divorce ⋅ Abortion ⋅ Adoption ⋅ Style ⋅ General ⋅ Conclusions

Disclaimers:
1. This is a mature topic only intended for people who've at least begun puberty. If you are less than 13 years old then I pray you don't have any reason to concern yourself with this yet, and you should ask a trustworthy adult before reading this. (My Family in the Bible page (here) is meant for all ages.)
2. This summary is not intended for general counseling, it is for those who want to know what the Bible says on this topic, and for those who claim the Bible is silent or says the opposite, plus a little commentary to get us started on what it means and how all this fits in a Biblical worldview.



Living Together Without Marriage
⚯



The first two words God ever said to us (humanity) are recorded in Genesis 1:28. He said "be fruitful." While this should make a lot of people happy, there are certain ways to go about this that are proven to work well, and other ways that don't. Be it an axiom or maxim, living together is synonymous with having sex without first marrying (which can technically be called fornication). A person who's never had sex is a virgin. Here are the direct references where God, in His word, warns us of His expectations of our purity.

Direct
  • Exodus 22:16-17  hub
    • Notice in the original law1 that as soon as a man had sex with a woman he was commanded to marry her. This is not to say that "two wrongs make a right" but to minimize the effects of the sin.2 Also notice that even if the girl's father thought the boy was a loser, and didn't let them marry, the boy still had to pay a fine.3 Both of these details were obviously intended to drive home the point of how significant sexual relations are, and specifically how it's only meant to be in a context of marriage.
  • Deuteronomy 22:21  hub
    • Promiscuous behavior, also sometimes called philandering, was explicitly condemned. Even worse than living together (where at least you have some false semblance of commitment) is promiscuity, or casual sex. Demonstrating licentious discretion is an aberration and invites all kinds of personal, familial, and societal problems, hence it being declared a capital crime. "Fooling around" (teasing with sexual gestures and/​or risky/​provocative touching) is still a horrible idea because it is a slippery slope to everything else on this page. Note, Moses was specifically referring to women at the time, but there was never a formal allowance for men to act this way, either.
  • Deuteronomy 22:28-29  hub
    • If you want to point out the technicality that forced rape is way different than consensual cohabitation, then keep in mind this was written a few thousand years ago. In the culture this was written, no self-respecting woman would be caught dead having sex before marriage (Judges 11:36-40, 2 Samuel 13:11-13). Because the men in that culture were very particular about marrying virgins (Leviticus 21:13, Deuteronomy 22:13-21, Judges 21:11-12) so sex before marriage meant condemnation for life that the only man who'd ever want her again would be a man seeking a prostitute (Leviticus 19:29).4
  • 1 Corinthians 7:8-9  hub
    • Living together is essentially pretending to be married (taking the benefits of marriage without the responsibility & commitment) and implicitly says "I don't trust you enough (or worse, I don't care about you enough) to marry you first." This is a mixed signal because the fact that they're having sex implies a level of intimacy that is reserved for marriage (Exodus 21:10, 1 Corinthians 7:3). We aren't supposed to do that to another human being: we aren't supposed to tell anyone "I love you" just to get in bed with them (1 Corinthians 13:4-8), nor should we get in bed just because someone says that to us.6 This would be living a lie, or as Revelation 22:15 puts it, living in "falsehood," and giving in to lust, rather than honoring our Creator. For those who reply that their parents divorced, their partner's parents divorced, all their friends divorced, and divorce is expensive, then we'll discuss that later, and consider my spinoff, Family in the Bible, here.
  • Hebrews 13:4  hub
    • Saying "marriage bed" here is as clear as it gets without using the graphic phrase "don't have sex outside of marriage." It's not an attempt to be cryptic, vague, or spiritual. Compare to when we get sick. If we worked in the same company, on the same team, and we were in a meeting together, and I'm calling into the meeting from home because I'm sick and possibly contagious, and you ask how I'm feeling. I could tell everyone on the phone "I have diarrhea," or I could say "I'm on the B.R.A.T. diet" (bananas, rice, apples, toast). The later is so much more gentle, polite, and less graphic of an answer, but they both mean exactly the same thing. That's what the author of Hebrews was doing here. He's also copying language used in Deuteronomy 22:30.
Indirect
  • Deuteronomy 21:10-14  hub
  • Psalm 119:9  hub
  • Proverbs 6:27  hub
  • Proverbs 16:2  hub
  • Song of Solomon 2:7  hub
  • Song of Solomon 8:6-7  hub
  • Jeremiah 17:9  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 6:9-10  hub
Bible Stories
  • Genesis 38:6-10
So this guy named Onan has a mean older brother who dies shortly after getting married, and his dad tells him, "have sex with your brother's widow." The presumption is by having sex with her, he'd impregnate her and allow her to have a son, because that time and place was patriarchal, and Tamar's future would be better with a son than just as a widow. (Later this was codified for the Israelites in Deuteronomy 25:5-6.) Onan likes the idea of free sex and jumps in the sack, but isn't too keen on giving his mean dead brother a legacy. So he pulls out at the last second. So he gets sex with this girl and she gets nothing (no son). This is a disgrace, he could have just said "no thanks" to his dad's offer, but effort-and-cost-free sex was just too appealing. "No big deal," thinks Onan. But as a consequence of trying to get away with consequence-free sex, God killed him. Not only that, but this abused girl went on to be the first of only four women named in the lineage of Jesus (Matthew 1:3), and Jesus came about 50 generations later (Luke 3:23-33).
  • Numbers 25:1-13
Arguably the trick here is more verse 2 than verse 1, but God knows the reason verse 2 happened was because of verse 1. This happened to the poor old Israelites, the same thing happened to rich man Solomon (1 Kings 11:1-6), to King Ahab (1 Kings 16:29-33), and it can still happen to us today. That's why God warned us many times, including Exodus 34:15-16 and Deuteronomy 6:10-15. There wasn't an explicit "command" to quote from this story, but we can see (a) God ordered some executions and (b) when an execution was done it was rewarded. This doesn't mean we should execute people on our own volition, but this principle again reminds us of the significance of sex and how we shouldn't take it lightly (as our culture has decided to). It's not like He's being the neighborhood bully when He says this. God provides us everything (Acts 17:24-31, Revelation 4:11), He just wants the credit He deserves, and He gets ticked when we give that credit to anything else (Isaiah 42:8).
  • Judges 16:4-21
Samson and Delilah were an extreme example of God being right that it's important who we give our heart to, and a tragic example of the fallout of poor planning, poor commitment, and sleeping around. Again, admittedly, this is an extreme example. But none-the-less is one example of why all this is important.
  • 1 Samuel 2:22-25
A short story and a good warning against casual sex (or perhaps sexual harassment). Eli's warning to his sons was well justified since 1 Samuel 3:11-14 came as soon as the next chapter, which was itself fulfilled in the next chapter: 1 Samuel 4:11.
  • 2 Samuel 13:1-22
At first, this story may seem really weird. I remember wondering why Amnon hated Tamar after getting what he wanted. But my conclusion is he used sex to gratify his fantasies, he found out the hard way that real life can never live up, and he blamed the messenger. As great as sex is, if we fantasize about it then it can't possibly live up to our expectations, because God gave us very creative imaginations. And this is about more than gratifying our fantasies. It's also about pleasing the other person, and in Amnon's case he found out it's just not fulfilling when it's used as a personal gratification rather than an expression of fully committed, bidirectional, exclusive, love. And remember, the primary purpose of sex is to make it fun to start a family so that we can fulfill God's command in Genesis 1:28, and then to be a reward for maintaining that family as the prophet reminded us in Malachi 2:15. Even in marriage, it's dangerous to expect sex to truly fulfill our fantasies. Also, just because supermodels are (generally speaking) strikingly more attractive than (for example) cafeteria workers, that doesn't mean that sex with a model will be better than another person. It just doesn't work that way7. At best it would be marginally better. This is supposed to be a good thing, so that we can all enjoy it, not just the genetically gifted, but that ruins our fantasies. So be warned about the expectations you put on this one singular activity. Guys, don't think that dumping this girlfriend (who's reasonably attractive) for that girl (who's more attractive) will necessarily result in more happiness. Look more than skin deep or suffer the disappointments (1 Samuel 16:7). There's a term for people who suffer depression or aggression immediately after sex. It's called post-coital tristesse.
  • Esther 2:2-18
The straightforward reading of this says Esther was exceptionally beautiful (vs 7, 9, 15, 17) and Xerxes had sex with countless hand-picked, beauty pageant winning, teenage girls before he met her (after vs 2-3, 8, & 12 there are 7 references to "harem" and 1 to "concubine" in this passage.) It's certainly possible that Xerxes was attracted to Esther because God wanted him to be, but I wonder if there was more different about Esther than just her beauty. What if she gracefully took Erwin's advice (given below) and didn't just conform to society's expectations and jump in bed with the king? What if she took a risk and tried to treat him as a human being and engage in meaningful relationship first? What if she didn't even offer to undress for him? Might this have surprised the king and contributed to his decision that she was more worthy than the countless other girls before her for the honor of being crowned queen?
  • John 4:1-42
This story is about so much more than living together before marriage, but the central character was doing it, and Jesus used this aspect of her life to speak both to her heart, and the rest of her community.

Worldview

If we want to talk about economic exceptions, then granted maybe there are a few examples where it may be temporarily justifiable to live together. But most people use this as an excuse rather than a last resort. We should also be clear this exception only applies to so few people they could be measured in PPM (people per million) not percent of the population. And most importantly, sex by any definition should never be entertained outside of marriage. (This includes one night stands, date nights, fornication, fooling around, etc.) When you cohabitate, it's like you're single pretending to be married, but not really either. You're not really experiencing what it's like to live either way (single or married) and forfeiting (robing yourself of) the benefits of both. I sincerely hope all marriages last a lifetime, no matter how they start off, because that is the way God created it (Matthew 19:4-6, Mark 10:6-9). But regardless of what we want to believe, the practice of indefinite cohabitating is no less dangerous than playing with fire (Proverbs 6:27).

Before the invention of factories (which made horrendous use of child labor and resulted in laws that children go to school long enough they had a chance to avoid being stuck in one), people were expected to be mature when they went through puberty. It was common to be married at 13 or 14. This is a major reason why the Bible talks so much about and against adultery and almost nothing specifically about living together. If every girl in your high school were married by their sophomore year then it would be really easy to understand why there would be so many warnings against adultery. It's historically really weird that women would wait until 20, 30, or later to get married. God described a difference between the generations in Leviticus 27:1-8, Exodus 30:13-14, and Paul made a comment in 1 Corinthians 13:11.

Here's a great quote from Erwin McManus, pastor of a couple thousand twenty- and thirty-somethings in Los Angeles. This was part of his 2007 sermon series titled 'Romance Unwrapped':
"The way you can circumvent the process is you can start having sex. Because having sex gives you the false perception that you've now moved to intimacy. It gives the woman a sense of intimacy and it gives the guy a way out of intimacy. But... once you start having sex before marriage the level of intimacy, true intimacy that you have, is pretty much as far as you're going to go no matter how long you're together and even if you marry. Because you basically have stunted the relationship at that level of intimacy. And so what's going on here is that a lot of you are pretending to move toward real relationship by having sex. And when people ask me who could you marry, I tell them marry the person you can talk to all night without ever needing to have sex to have intimacy."
Girls, you need to protect yourself from men. Men are very visual and since they are largely self-obsessed, they are very superficial.8 Men see women, they want women, God preprogrammed them to want sex with women (otherwise the human species would have died off long ago), and you need to be sure he won't discard you after he gets you pregnant. Because acceptance of responsibility (including and especially the acceptance of family responsibility) comes with maturity, but puberty is only an agent of biological maturity, not mental. So don't give him a chance to enjoy your body until he's publicly professed in front of his friends and family (and yours) to take care of you and only you until one of you dies.

Boys, don't get undressed with a girl just because she offers.9 As rare as it may seem, it's more common than you might think for some women to want to use men and trap them with sex (Proverbs 23:27-28). It's hard to predict what she wants (money, a social slave, or to use you as a pawn with someone else) but it's surely not good. Even though countless Hollywood TV shows and movies make it look exciting, rewarding, and exhilarating, it's not, at least, not for more than a little while, then it becomes the opposite (Proverbs 5:3-5, 14:12).

Hollywood, especially the TV side, seems to think it's doing the world a favor by having fictional characters tackle the question "how do you know when you're ready [to voluntarily give up your virginity]?" These fictional characters get their answer from atheist writers, who conveniently have godlike power to control both the psychological reaction to the advice (make everyone who hears it accept it as profound wisdom) and the long term consequences (or lack thereof) of that advice. Their answer goes something like this: "when you're ready." That's it, it's all they often have. Biblically this is ridiculous, since everyone who's either started puberty or been exposed to enough carnal knowledge believes (or wants to believe) they are ready. We prefer to believe we can handle anything. But sex has a lot of non-intuitive baggage that God gave it to drive us to the behavior of leaving it reserved for marriage. The Biblical response to how do you know when you're ready is "only when you're married, and then only to your spouse." The Biblical response will lead to more physical and emotional wholeness and health, while the atheist response will lead to more brokenness (both broken individual relationships and broken families). Maybe you can accept what comes out of Hollywood as entertainment, but live your life first by God's word, recorded in the Bible.

Living Together Footnotes
  1. FYI, this chapter (Exodus 22) comes only two chapters after the 10 commandments were given (Exodus 20:1-17). (return)
  2. Requiring a man to marry the woman he seduced was an ancient form of "social security" safety net. Because no one else was going to marry the non-virgin, and therefore no one else was ever going to take care of her. So he was required to by law. From the opposite perspective, the reason women were singled out as having to be virgins but not men, was probably because such a requirement would disable a man from taking multiple wives, which in olden days would've condemned large numbers of women to sure death. By modern standards the double standard is hypocritical at best, but try not to be critical, things were different a few millennia ago. (return)
  3. The fine was about $250 in today's market value. Americans are used to this side of the Scientific Revolution where everyone makes more than a dollar a day. If you made less than a dollar a day then this fine would be somewhere between half a year's and two year's income. Most people would need to take out a mortgage to afford that kind of fine, and remember that people who couldn't pay fines in those days could sell themselves as slaves to the one they owe. This was not cheap, and not to be taken lightly. (return)
  4. Remember, even Joseph, the descendant of King David, who was unknowingly soon to be the earthly father figure of the King of Kings, decided to dump his fiancé the moment he found out she was pregnant (Matthew 1:18-25). It took an angel to intervene and assure him his girlfriend hadn't cheated on him. (return)
  5. [removed]
  6. What does "love" mean? Here's another great quote from Erwin McManus, this time from his 2006 series on Life's Toughest Questions:
    "I am amazed at how we've just given up on love. We've just flat replaced love with sex... Now I know that we just came out of a generation where everyone pretty much blew their marriage. And so we just give up on the reality of love in the context of commitment, and so it's easier just to live together, to never actually break the commitment because you never actually make the commitment. But what's happening is you're confusing what love is all about. In the scriptures there are at least three different layers of love. There's this phileo (friendship) love, there's this agape (God unconditional) love, and then there's this eros (erotic) love. And what's happened is we've lost the ability to make genuine loving friendships and so we're very lonely people. We're disconnected from God so we don't even know the essence of agape love, and so all we're left with is erotic love and we go 'well now this is love.' And so the easiest thing to do is to have endless one night stands or to just start having sex because at least that way you feel like you're experiencing intimacy." (return)
  7. At least, not in real life. When you're being a voyeur, as Hollywood enjoys making us, that's when genetics & shape make a substantial difference. (return)
  8. Causality, correlation, or coincidence? Men are primarily attracted to the outer beauty of a woman, and her reproductive organ is inside her body. Women are primarily attracted to the inner character of a man, while his reproductive organ is outside his body. (Any remotely mature man is also concerned with his woman's character, too.) (return)
  9. Have you ever wondered why some cultures have a double standard for men and women on the issue of sex on first dates? The reason is it's easy for a woman, all she has to do is walk into a bar and say 'ok', so the label 'easy' is accurate, so she is scorned. But it is much more difficult for a man, so if he succeeds then he might be praised by irreligious people for his persuasion skill. And because it's a fairly universal expectation around the world that the men are supposed to do the pursuing and women do the choosing. That means men are supposed to put forth more effort and women are supposed to be more discerning. If a man is allowed to put forth little-to-no effort and the woman trusts discernment to chance, that's a recipe for disaster. (Contrast the beauty and strength of relationship and character, the recipe for success, if both the man and woman are discerning.) This is also related to why women change their last names at the wedding, not men. Because men do the pursuing, having the woman change her last name is an indication to all the other men in the world that she has made her choice and is no longer available. (This name alignment also helps with family unity & identification.) (return)




Last Modified: Friday, March 01, 2024