Some Rules About Love-Making to Avoid Sin

Friendship, comradeship, enjoying the fellowship of the oppo­site sex is proper for girls and boys of all ages and for grown men and women whether married or not married. But love-making is another matter. I believe that these rules will be helpful:

1. Be honest and sincere. The acts of love are always improper and wicked when they are insincere. When a boy and girl kiss, and when the kiss is a lie, then it is a sin. When they act like people who are married or like those who have already pledged themselves each to the other until death, and when that is not the real feeling and intention of their hearts, then their love-making is a lie. It is insincere and wicked. The love of two good friends, or even the love of a brother and sister, does not demand liberties each with the other's body. If you are not married, then do not act as if you are married. If you do not plan to marry, then do not act as if you plan to marry. Any petting or fondling on insincere grounds is wicked and dangerous.

If you take the liberties that are intended only for married peo­ple, with one to whom you are not married, you are hypocritical and insincere, you are saying things you do not mean, you are acting things which are a lie.

The Scripture commands, "Provide things honest in the sight of all men" (Rom. 12:17),

2.   Keep the golden rule as given by our Saviour in Matthew 7:12: "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." When a boy and girl pet and arouse sex passion and so take the road that leads toward the scarlet sin, they should remember that several other people are involved and deeply concerned in what they do. That girl has a brother. Young man, are you treat­ing that Christian brother right?  Are you willing for others to treat your sister as you are treating another man's sister? That girl has a father and mother who love her dearly and they would prob­ably be deeply grieved if they knew their daughter's feet were so near the brink of adultery,   When you have daughters of your own, will you want them treated as you are treating someone else's daughter?

More important still, that girl with whom you pet expects to marry. There is somewhere a man who will become her husband. How will he feels if he learns you have taken liberties with the woman who becomes his bride? Well, how do you feel yourself about the girl you hope to many? Would you just as soon she came to vou secondhand after other men have hugged her, kissed her, fondled her body, aroused her passions and led her to the brink, or even over the brink, of the scarlet sin? Is there a single man who reads this who does not want his bride to come to him virgin pure in her thoughts and passions as well as in the actual matter of mating?   I have asked this question of hundreds of young men. I have never yet met a young man who preferred that his wife had been handled by other men, petted, fondled, em­braced, aroused by other men.  If a man wanted that kind of a wife, of course he would go to a bawdy house to find one. But men want pure wives. Men, when they come to marry, even if they themselves have not been all they ought to have been, still want their wives to he virgin in mind and heart as well as in body, virgin regarding the endearments and privileges which normally belong only to husbands and wives.

Young man. if you take liberties with a girl someone else is to marry when you would uot want others to take liberties with your own future bride, then you are not keeping the golden rule. You are cheating. You are sinning grievously against a man, even if you do not know who he is, who would have a right to call on God to punish you for your sin.

And young woman, you should keep the golden rule, too. Do not do with someone else's future husband what you would not want them to do with your future husband.

3. The third rule I suggest is this; Judge yourself by the same standards you hold up for others. Jesus said, "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" {Matt. 7:3). If the most respected Christians you know should pet as worldly and sinful young peo­ple pet, men taking liberties with- women's bodies, fondling, embracing, arousing sex desire, would you think it right? Would you think that would be right for preachers? Would it be right for your mother, with another man besides her husband? Would not you feel that that was poor Christianity if responsible Christian people, married people as well as single people, preachers as well as lay leaders, petted as some young people do? Well, Jesus said to judge yourself by the same standard with which you judge others. If it is wrong for others, it is wrong for you. If it is wrong for preachers, it is wrong for church members. If it is wrong for married people (with others not their mates), it is wrong for single people.

4.   The next rule is this:  Always be a good example to others.

God requires Christian young people to set a Christian example. First Timothy 4:12, "Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity." Young people are to be examples in purity! You are accountable for those about you. We are com­manded to provoke one another to good works (Heb. 10:24). And Romans 14:13 commands us, ". . . but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother's way." Romans 14; 15 says, "But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died." Romans 14:21 says, "It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak." If your example would lead others to do wrong, then it is a sin. Or if your act grieves the consciences of others, then the Scripture makes it clear you have sinned. Speaking of meats offered to idols, the eating of which was not necessarily wrong in itself, Paul says: "But take heed lest by any means this liberty of your's become a stumblingblock to them that are weak. For if any man see thee which hast knowledge sit at meat in the idols temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols; And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend." -1 Cor. 8:9-13.

If your example causes others to do that which grieves their consciences, to them it is a sin, and God holds you guilty for the harm you have done your brother.

I have letters many times from people who were led into petting bv others, though it offended their consciences and though those who followed others into sin thereby lost the assurance of the Lord's presence and the joy of His power. Is your example good or bad when you pet? If you are honest with yourself in answer­ing that question, you will save years of smiting conscience and a sense of defilement to others who might be led astray by following your example.

5. The Christian's body should be kept sacredly for God who dwells within.

The Christian young person has a special reason to be careful about misuse of bodily passions. His body is the temple of the Holy Spirit of God who dwells within. First Corinthians 6:13-20 warns us, "The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord" (verse 13), that "your bodies are the members of Christ" (verse 15), that sex sins are special sins against the body as no other sins are (verse 18). Then we are given the plain command, "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's" (vss. 19,20).

But even unconverted young people, and older ones, must remember that they are not brute beasts, to live like animals, revelling in sex passion promiscuously without lawful and holy bonds, without sacred fidelity to a God-given mate. For we are made in the image of God. Christ had a human body like ours. How wicked to debase ourselves and defile our bodies with unholy lust, deliberately inflaming sex passion like whoremongers and harlots when we were made in the image of God.

Again in I Corinthians 10:31 we are commanded, "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Does petting, arousing sex passion, honor God in your body?

6. Do nothing that would hinder your prayer life, your spiritual happiness, your joy in the Lord. In Ephesians there is a long passage beginning with verse 17 of the fourth chapter and con­tinuing through verse 20 in the fifth chapter which has to do with the Christian's joy and power. After naming many sins, Ephesians 4:30 tells us, "And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye arc sealed unto the day of redemption." Then follows a list of other sins, and Ephesians 5:3 says, "But fornication, and all uncleanness. or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints." And verse 5 says, "For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." Then Ephesians 5:11, 12 tell us, "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret." The shameful things that young people do in the dark, "the unfruitful works of darkness" related to fornication, grieve the Holy Spirit, and Christians are commanded to have nothing to do with them. Then in Ephesians 5:18 we are com­manded, "But be filled with the Spirit."

It will make a difference when you pray. For Timothy, a Chris­tian young man, was commanded, "Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart" (II Tim. 2:22). Can you "call on the Lord out of a pure heart" if you do not "flee . . . youthful lusts"? And Timothy was commanded to intreat the younger women "as sisters, with all purity." That certainly shows that he could not please God by fondling them, kissing them, embracing them till both he and they were sexually aroused and their minds defiled with desire.

Marriage is holy, and there is no blame, no defilement, no sin in the love-life of husband and wife who reverently remember that they belong to each other arid to God. But how the Holy Spirit must be grieved when His temples, our bodies, are defiled by necking and petting! No Christian can maintain his spiritual prosperity who so sins against his body and against others and against God.

A young woman wrote to me telling how she bad lost the joy of the Lord and felt guilty and defiled after she had been a party to petting. Many others have told me, in substance, the same thing. To give way to the excitement of physical lust in petting grieves the Holy Spirit

Tell me, is it as easy to pray after your passions have been inflamed and your conscience defiled by necking and petting? Oh, young people, above all things, I beg you to strive to keep a good conscience before God and not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God who lives within your body!

7.   Do nothing that would hinder your Christian testimony! If others knew all you do, could you win them to Christ?  Would they believe in your sincerity?  And if you should try to win to Christ those with whom you pet and arouse desires that are dangerous and evil, would you have power from Heaven to help yon?  Oh, if one soul should go to Hell because you had ruined your testimony, because you had acted in a way unbecoming a Christian, how terrible that would be! Paul said, "For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more".(I Cor. 9:19). Anything to win souls! And again he says, "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some" (I Cor. 9:22). By all means in the world Paul sought to save some.  In the same chapter he continues,

And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly: so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when 1 have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." - I Cor. 9:25-27,

Paul says that others who take part in athletic competition are temperate in all things so they can win in the Olympic games and earn the crown of laurel leaves. And should not a Christian be temperate, carefully keeping his body in subjection, so he may win the soul winner's crown, when they that turn many to righteous­ness shall shine as the stars forever, according to Daniel 12:3? So Paul, after preaching to so many, watches lest he should be laid on the shelf, useless to God for soul winning, because he does not control his bodily passions and desires!