We’ve gone from scandalous secrecy to open acceptance. The temptation for the Christian is to redefine sexual purity according to the shifting standards of morality. What does it mean to be pure: Monogamy? Not engaging in a physical sexual act? Thankfully, God’s Word is our authority on sexual purity, our unchanging roadmap to joy and fulfillment.

Every generation is marked by sin. From forced sterilizations to internment camps to sentencing disparities for drug convictions—every day is exceedingly evil.

One of the prevailing iniquities of our time is the increasing tolerance of pornography. Men used to hide their smut in the trunk of their cars or keep it buried deep under a workbench in their garage. Today, visiting a strip club is a viable conclusion to an evening business meeting, erotic novels become bestsellers and eventual blockbusters, porn actors are celebrities, lingerie fashion shows are nationally televised, and nudity in cable dramas is the norm.

We’ve gone from scandalous secrecy to open acceptance.

The temptation for the Christian is to redefine sexual purity according to the shifting standards of morality. What does it mean to be pure: Monogamy? Not engaging in a physical sexual act? Thankfully, God’s Word is our authority on sexual purity, our unchanging roadmap to joy and fulfillment.

Consider 1 Thessalonians 4:1–7:

Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.

The apostle Paul expected the church to remember his earlier teachings on Christian living and to be growing “more and more” in purity.

This instruction to purity might seem obvious. But in a promiscuous society like Thessalonica—one like our very own—it requires counter-cultural living. So these believers needed the exhortation not to go with the current, but to live and please God.

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