Once the young people wrote me a note with the question I still have: “Why is it that marriage is considered the pleasure and pleasure before marriage is called sin?”
The answer is simple: because God intended sexual relations for couples, and sex outside of marriage is called fornication. God designed marriage and clothed them with sacredness and beauty. When the will of God concerning the marital relationship is broken, it leads to tragic consequences.
In the Bible this sin is mentioned 122 times in warnings, reproof, and instruction. Here are some of them:
“There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel and should not be a sodomite of the sons of Israel” (Deuteronomy 23:17).
“Do not defile your daughter by making her fornication, committed to the earth, and the earth was filled with depravity” (Leviticus 19:29).
“That there was [among you] any fornicator or profane person” (Hebrews 12:16).
“Marriage at all [let it be] honorable and the bed undefiled; fornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13: 4).
“Be not deceived: neither fornicators,… nor adulterers,… nor homosexual offenders… will not inherit the Kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9, 10).
As we can see, in the Bible there are two words that define sexual sin — fornication and adultery.
Fornication is sex outside of marriage. Adultery — cheating spouse. Biblical passages confirm God’s attitude towards such manifestations of sexuality is a sin! Its effects are described in the Scriptures: “And God saw that the wickedness of man on the earth… the Earth was corrupt before the face of God, filled with violence” (Genesis 6:5, 11).
The sin of gluttony goes hand in hand with corruption and also destroys the spiritual nature of man.
In the human brain there are centers that are composed of neurons responsible for pleasure. It is the whole area of the cells upon excitation which are the endorphins — the pleasure hormones. The strongest of these centers is responsible for the pleasure derived from eating and sex. In their excitement the man is experiencing the most intense pleasure. However, they are also responsible for the survival of man. Do not eat food will die. No extension of the kind is also a kind of death for a person.
If these two centers are working under the control of God, man is healthy and vigorous, extend the rod, and builds its relationship with the family. But if these clusters of neurons are out of control, the person becomes insane and cannot control himself. For him, the most important is the satisfaction of a desire that he can’t keep. A consequence of this process is intemperance in eating and in sexual relations without control and boundaries. People sometimes think they are born that way and that it is impossible to change, but it’s not. The Lord can lead those frustrated centers to normal. However, this is only possible provided that you put yourself entirely in God’s hands, deciding to live according to His commandments.