Dating Thoughts for Christian Couples

When Christians Date

Touching, Petting, Making Out, Getting Physical: How far is too far?

Suppose you are unmarried and have a hot romance. I’ll assume your friend is Christian, because, as explained in Dating a Non-Christian, God views sex with a non-Christian in a disturbingly different light to the way we tend to.

Regardless of your Christian friend’s past, the Almighty Lord sees him or her as the purest virgin, and he feels as fiercely protective of his or her purity as the most devoted father would feel toward a young and cherished daughter. And Father God never lets his darling out of his sight. You never see the Father, but he sees you. You may forget he is there. He never forgets. It would be a grave mistake to misinterpret the fact that the Almighty’s anger is seldom displayed instantly. As the Eternal, all-seeing Judge, he holds all the aces. It seems that for almost a year King David thought he had got away with his sin. Only after Bathsheba’s baby was born did he first learn of God’s judgment. Years later, he was still suffering the consequences (2 Samuel 11:26 – 12:14).

There’s a sense in which intentionally or unintentionally tempting someone to be morally loose with you, is spiritually worse than rape, because it is an attempt to defile someone in the deepest possible way. Rape produces an innocent victim. Seduction corrupts far deeper because it reduces a person to a willing partner in sin. It is better to die than to tempt someone, warned Jesus.

Matthew 18:6-7 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him that a huge millstone should be hung around his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea.

Woe to the world because of occasions of stumbling! For it must be that the occasions come, but woe to that person through whom the occasion comes!

Jesus’ teaching on divorce shows the seriousness with which God views a relationship in which two become one flesh. A bond is forged so binding that it should never be broken. And yet the alarming truth is that Scripture applies the principle of two becoming one, to even the most casual of sexual encounters.

1 Corinthians 6:15-18 . . . Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! Or don’t you know that he who is joined to a prostitute is one body? For, “The two”, he says, “will become one flesh.” . . . Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin that a man does is outside the body,” but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.

Matthew 19:5-6 . . . ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall join to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh?’ So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, don’t let man tear apart.

[I believe this last statement means “what God declares or regards as being joined together . . .” – not necessarily a union that took place in holy submission to his will. Verse 5 suggests that God's plan was for sex to occur only after the deliberate and public act of leaving one's parental authority for the purpose of joining oneself to other.]

There is another sobering consideration stemming from Scripture’s declaration that in the act of prostitution, two become one flesh. One might guess that with less effective contraceptives in ancient times, prostitution might have been more likely to involve acts that stop short of coitus (full heterosexual relations). Scripture does not specify exactly how far one need go physically for God to regard two as one.

And let’s not forget that deliberately having sex with someone in your fantasies is a serious offense, even though it is the ultimate in ensuring that no one gets hurt.

From the ten Commandments . . .

Exodus 20:17 . . . You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife . . .

Matthew 5:27-29 You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery;’ but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it away from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members should perish, than for your whole body to be cast into Gehenna.

In actual fact, God would be hurt and so would you. Moreover, anyone you sin with in your thoughts has, in reality, been sinned against as surely as someone who is unaware that he or she has been swindled. (And if the object of your fantasy were married, you would have also sinned against the marriage partner.)

Sinning in one’s thought life is a most serious matter that must be understood correctly, lest the Enemy distort the truth to cause unnecessary condemnation and further temptation.

Morally, there is a huge difference between sin and mere temptation (even the holy Son of God was severely tempted) but Satan loves to muddy the difference. He tempts by putting evil thoughts in your mind. One of his ugliest tricks is to then make you feel guilty about his own failed attempts to tempt you! If sinful thoughts keep coming and you keep fighting them, God commends you for the fight and regards you as victorious. The thoughts are originating not from you, but Satan. It's enjoying wrong thoughts – deliberately entertaining them – that is wrong.

If Satan succeeded in actually getting you to sin in your mind he would then try the lie that you have blown it so much that you might as well sin physically. However, no matter how much mental sin corrupts the fantasizer, it leaves the other person pure. To sin with someone else doubles the evil because it corrupts the other person as well.

The Old Testament, taught the apostle Paul, is written to warn we who live under the New Covenant.

The Value of the Old Testament Today

Romans 15:4 For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that through patience and through encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

In the passage printed below, Paul reminds us of the Old Testament record of the Holy Lord on various occasions slaying thousands of Israelites for their sin. He then concludes:

1 Corinthians 10:11 Now all these things happened to them by way of example, and they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come.

The Full Scripture

1 Corinthians 10:1-10 Now I would not have you ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. However with most of them, God was not well pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Don’t be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” Let us not commit sexual immorality, as some of them committed, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell. Let us not test Christ, as some of them tested, and perished by the serpents. Don’t grumble, as some of them also grumbled, and perished by the destroyer.

One of the concepts the Old Testament tries hard to impart is that to violate something holy is to call down the fearsome wrath of God. Your friend’s body is holy. It is the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit. The word chosen to convey this truth in the original text (1 Corinthians 6:19) is often used to specify the inner, holier part of the temple, rather than the temple as a whole. In fact, it is appropriate to think in terms of the holiest thing in ancient Israel, the ark of the Covenant, since your friend’s body is the very object in which the Holy One has taken up residence. We are not discussing ritualistic or theoretical holiness: the Holy Spirit of almighty God literally resides within the bodies of Christians. Most of us have totally missed the implications. Better to play with a nuclear reactor than tamper with something made holy by the actual presence of the King of the universe. You need to treat your friend’s body with almost the caution with which Old Testament saints had to treat the ark. Seventy used the ark to satisfy their curiosity. They were struck dead. Later, another touched it in an inappropriate way. He died.

Be careful how you touch that which is holy

1 Samuel 6:19-20 He struck of the men of Beth Shemesh, because they had looked into the Lord’s ark, he struck fifty thousand seventy of the men. Then the people mourned, because the Lord had struck the people with a great slaughter. The men of Beth Shemesh said, “Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? . . .”

2 Samuel 6:6-7 When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached for God’s ark, and took hold of it; for the cattle stumbled. The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah; and God struck him there for his error; and he died there by God’s ark.

When God struck Uzzah dead for touching the ark, Scripture says ‘David was afraid of the Lord that day’ (2 Samuel 6:9). Such fear is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7). If few of us have this fear of sinning against God, it is not because we live in the age of grace, but because we barely know the God of the New Testament; the God who in Acts struck Ananias and Sapphira dead, killed Herod for his pride, and blinded Elymas for opposing Paul; the God of the Corinthian believers who were afflicted, or even killed, for the flippant way they treated holy communion; the God into whose hands, warns Hebrews, it’s a fearful thing to fall; the God whom Jesus said is the one Person in the universe to fear because he alone can destroy body and soul in hell.

The Fear of the Lord

Acts 5:9-11 But Peter asked her, “How is it that you have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.” She fell down immediately at his feet, and died. The young men came in and found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her by her husband. Great fear came on the whole assembly, and on all who heard these things.

Acts 12:23 Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him, because he didn’t give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died.

Acts 13:11 Now, behold, the hand of the Lord is on you, and you will be blind, not seeing the sun for a season!” Immediately a mist and darkness fell on him. He went around seeking someone to lead him by the hand.

1 Corinthians 11:29-31 For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy way eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he doesn’t discern the Lord’s body. For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep. For if we discerned ourselves, we wouldn’t be judged.

Hebrews 10:31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Matthew 10:28 Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.

The Judge of all the earth is our Father. Do we see the implications of this in the same light as Scripture does? Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, says 1 Peter 1:17, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.

Scripture tells us to “flee fornication” (1 Corinthians 6:18, KJV) and “Flee also youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:22, KJV). Paul, an old man at the time of writing to Timothy, was referring to lusts that were “youthful” relative to his old age. “Flee” is definitely the meaning of the Greek and it is in the continuous tense, meaning to keep on fleeing. The divine directive as to how to protect ourselves from the danger of sexual temptation is to run from it as one would flee a bomb that could explode at any second. To flee is to desperately try to put as big a distance as possible between yourself and what you are fleeing. How does our behavior compare? How likely are we to receive divine protection if we ignore God’s directive and choose the exact opposite by trying to edge as close as we dare to the danger?

We have looked briefly at sexual sin, but it applies to all sin. The point is that we rarely view any sin with the seriousness that God does. It is said a pirate killed a man. He was so horrified by his sin that it ruined his sleep for days. Yet he kept killing. He reached the point where he could murder someone and sleep like a baby, using the corpse as a pillow. We, too, having been surrounded by sin all our lives, have a conscience that in many areas has become disturbingly dull, and we must fight Satan’s attempt to keep us that way.

Related Pages

How Far Is Too Far?

Dating a Non-Christian