5 Things to Remember (and Proclaim) in the Face of the Sexual Revolution

[Below you'll find the prepared message and video of the two Sunday morning worship service of Living Water Lutheran Church for Sunday, February 12. I want to thank Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller, who I've never met, for a sermon that inspired me to use the approach to the Gospel lesson I used. He provided a good context for the message I preached. But, of course, it's God's Word--Law and Gospel--that most inspired me. I pray people will find it helpful.]





Matthew 5:21-37

The Sexual Revolution began in this country and in western Europe about sixty years ago.

It started with the idea that because sexual intimacy is a natural human desire, it needn’t be confined to those married to each other and ought to be expressed in any way a person wishes.

Open Marriage, a best-selling book published in 1972, declared that, “Sexual fidelity is the false god of closed marriage…” And, the authors wrote, “We are not recommending outside sex, but we are not saying that it should be avoided, either. The choice is entirely up to you."

Starting in the Seventies, the revolution fostered more widespread acceptance of homosexuality.

And in its current iteration, this revolution is about “gender fluidity,” in which people can choose gender or no gender. 

Now, a sermon is no place for a preacher to talk about how public policy regarding sexual mores has changed or maybe should be changed. Those are political and legal questions. Churches and pastors should address such matters only in rare and specific circumstances.

But the sexual revolution isn’t primarily a political movement.

Effectively, it’s a religion subscribed to by millions of people, many of them our neighbors and family members, many in churches.

This religion tells us that whatever one’s sexual preferences, “Love is love.”

It tells us that a kind of redemption and freedom happens when we follow whatever our sexual impulses may be.

It tells us, as a prospective groom, explaining why he was living with his fiance, told a pastor, “You wouldn’t buy a car without taking it for a test drive,” as though the people we marry are commodities that need to measure up to our standards.

This false religion also tells Christians that if we don’t agree with the ethic of the sexual revolution, we are repressed bigots and haters. (I get that one on Twitter from time to time.)

So, what can Christians do or say in the face of the sexual revolution?

The first thing we can do is remember (and proclaim) that there is nothing intrinsically bad about sexuality or sex. Sex is God’s idea. God invented it. Genesis tells us that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:26) Christian faith isn’t anti-sex any more than people who build dams to prevent floods are anti-river.

The second thing we can do is remember (and proclaim) that sexual intimacy is a gift from God for husbands and wives committed to each other for life. Faithless, abusive marriage partners may destroy their marriage covenant with partners seeking to be faithful to Christ and to their partners. But God’s intention is that sexual intimacy will exist in lifelong heterosexual marriages. “A man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh,” Genesis 2:24 tells us. Marriages including sexual intimacy were part of the creation God called “very good.” Or, as it’s put in the Hebrew in which most of the Old Testament was written, “Tov. Tov.”: “Good! Good!” (Genesis 1:31)

Thirdly, we can remember and proclaim the Sixth Commandment that Jesus cites in today’s Gospel lesson. “You shall not commit adultery.” This is God’s Law and whenever law, holy or secular, is brought up, we human beings look for loopholes. “Two consenting adults,” someone will say, “can’t be committing adultery if neither one is married.”

The English word adultery is related to the verb adulterate. It means “to corrupt, debase, or make impure by the addition of a foreign or inferior substance or element.” In God’s eyes, we adulterate the pure gift of marriage when sexual intimacy happens outside of marriage. Adulterating marriage is not what God wills for us and the condemnation for this sin is no different from God’s condemnation for any other sin.

Now, if all of this weren’t convicting enough, Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel lesson: “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28)

We violate the Sixth Commandment then, whenever we entertain lustful thoughts about others or give these thoughts a place in our imaginations, any time we see sexual intimacy as a commodity–a thing in itself–to be used outside of the marriage covenant.

Jesus then goes on to speak metaphorically about our need to get rid of any element of our lives or thinking that turns us away from God’s will in this matter. “It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” (Matthew 5:30)

Critical though we Christians must be regarding the sexual revolution however, we need to remember two additional truths from God.

The first is that none of us is guiltless when it comes to the Sixth Commandment. (And all the other commandments!).

If we say otherwise, we fall for a self-righteous delusion. The Bible teaches us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)

The Sixth Commandment, along with the other nine commandments, convict us of sin.

We sin when we put other things ahead of God; resist spending time hearing God’s Word; dishonor parents and others charged with leading us; lie, covet, or steal. When we hold grudges, let bitterness invade our relationships, or commit adultery. We can violate God’s commands in thought, word, OR deed.

So, we dare not let our critique of the sexual revolution turn into an excuse for bragging about how wonderful we are.

As Christians, we should be proclaiming God’s truth on these matters not from self-righteousness, but to remind ourselves and others of God’s love for all people.

The Bible tells us that “the wages of sin [any sin] is death.” (Romans 6:23)

But God asks in Ezekiel 18:23: “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? Rather, [He goes on to say] am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?”

This leads us to the final thing we need to remember and proclaim on this subject: The God we know in Jesus Christ has entered our world to give us a new, a better, and an eternal way of life.

Jesus says of all of us born “lost in our sin”: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)

This includes violations of the Sixth Commandment.

To the woman caught in adultery who didn’t run from acknowledging her sin, Jesus said after He chased her self-righteous accusers away, “Neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8:11)

To the woman at the Samaritan well, Jesus offered “living water”--Him and His grace and forgiveness–”welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:1-14)

The wonderful thing about the God we meet in Jesus Christ is that He doesn’t wait for us to get our acts together before He takes action to save us from our sin.

He dies on a cross to take our punishment for sin before we even knew that sin brings eternal damnation to hell.

Before we knew we were sinners in need of a Savior, Jesus said, “It is finished!”

Every one of us can and is called to repent for all our sins and to trust that when Jesus died for us, then rose again to open up eternity and new life to all who repent and believe in Him, He did it for us!

Jesus is bigger than your sin, friend.

Jesus has borne your sin.

Jesus has conquered your sin.

God justifies and makes saints of sinners who, by the power of God’s Spirit-borne Word receive Jesus’ call with gratitude: “Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15)

At the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, of which today’s Gospel lesson is a part, Jesus said, “Blessed is the poor in spirit.” (Matthew 5:3)

The “poor in spirit” are all those who, on hearing God’s Law, such as, “You shall not commit adultery,” recognize that they are far from guiltless.

It’s the poor in spirit, convicted for their sin, who are then ready to hear the Gospel–the good news–that Jesus gives forgiveness and everlasting life with God to all who turn to Him in trust and are empowered by God to believe.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, let us not be proud in either self-righteousness or in resisting God’s good will for our lives.

But let us speak God’s truth in love, including both the truth that the sexual revolution that pervades our culture is the way of sin, selfishness, condemnation, and death, AND the truth that forgiveness, joy, and new and everlasting life belong to all who daily turn from sin and follow Jesus.

No sinner will be morally perfect on this side of the resurrection of the dead Jesus gives to all who believe. But any sinner who daily entrusts their sins and their lives to Jesus will live in the joy of forgiven sin, will be given the power of God to live more in God’s grace, even in the midst of a world gone mad with sin, and will one day stand in the presence of God, our sin eternally covered in the righteousness of our sinless Savior Jesus.

That’s the message that God has called this sinner justified only by God’s grace through faith in Christ to proclaim to you today.

And this is the message it is our joy to remember (and proclaim) to all we meet. Amen

Is It Essential for Christians to Accept Jesus' Virgin Birth?

Was Mary, the mother of Jesus, a virgin when the One Christians believe is God-in-human-flesh was conceived in her womb?

Christians have always confessed that Jesus was born of a virgin.

This has nothing to do with notions of sex being unclean or beneath human dignity. It's neither of those things. After all, God created sex. Sex is part of the creation which God declared to be "very good" before humanity's descent into sin (Genesis 1:31).

The conception of Jesus in a virgin's womb is an act of new creation that anticipates the new creation of which Jesus makes all who repent for sin and entrust their lives to Him become a part: "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17)

The world has always objected that Jesus' virgin birth is impossible. My grandfather used to tell me when we weren't around the rest of the family that the Biblical teaching about Jesus' birth was a cover-up. "You know," he would say, "Joseph just got lonely out there in the desert. Things happened."

Cynics like my grandfather overlook that the creator of the universe specializes in the impossible.

Today, some of the virgin-birth skeptics reside in Christ's Church.

For example, the web site of my own denomination has a section called, "Dig Deeper," which has, since about 2009, been shorn of content. An "explanation" states:

The pages in this section have been removed while they undergo a comprehensive review to improve their usefulness as a resource for study and discussion with others.

But it's difficult not to suspect that this long period of review was precipitated by the outrage that some Lutherans felt when the official denominational web site equivocated on a basic teaching of Christian faith. Someone has restored the pages and in the section on the virgin birth, here's some of what we read:

When we confess in the Apostles’ Creed that Jesus was "conceived by the power of the Holy Spirt and born of the virgin Mary ...," and in the Nicene Creed that Jesus is "the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father ..." we are not making a gynecological assertion. We are saying that God entered into Christ and, in him, is fully revealed to humankind. This is God’s graceful act of reconciliation with creation and humankind’s redemption.

What ELCA Lutherans believe in common is that Jesus was

• born "by the power of the Holy Spirit"
• declared God’s "beloved son"
• sent to the world to redeem God’s creation

and that born of a woman, he

• died at the hands of death’s powers

• overcame and defeated death

• reigns as Lord over all — together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever

By omitting any firm assertion of what has been deemed a central teaching about Jesus for two-thousand years, the web site apparently sought to make the scandalous message about Jesus being born of a virgin more acceptable to cynics whose numbers have increased since the days when my grandfather whispered his "truth" to me knowingly.

Whoever wrote this piece is not alone in my denominational family. And they're not being challenged by bishops charged with ensuring that the Gospel is proclaimed in purity either. For example, in 2006, one ELCA pastor wrote in the pages of The Lutheran, our denomination's official publication:

One way to understand virginity is to think of it as a spiritual possibility, rather than as a physical condition: there is a place in each of us that the pride, power and wealth of the empire cannot touch. It’s that place, call it soul as Mary did, or spirit or heart, that remains “virgin”—untouchable and pure. And it’s from this place that God speaks to us and calls us to new possibilities.

It’s this “virginity” that enables Mary to say, “Here I am” and so face off against all the powers that said she was nobody, the lowest of the low—a young, peasant woman, expendable and of no account. It’s from this “virginity’ that she dares sing the words of the hymn of praise we know and love as the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55)

How's that for sleight of hand?

According to this view, Jesus was conceived in a "virgin" place in Mary like the virgin places that reside in each of us. This isn't Biblical thinking. It's Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson-style thinking. It ignores the reality that we are born in sin, utterly turned in on ourselves and selfish.

Mary's declaration of "let it be unto me" to the angel Gabriel's announcement that she would give birth to Jesus is not the statement of a good person with an innocent side to her nature. It was the declaration of faith of a person who, like Abraham before her and like centuries of believers in Jesus since, was a sinner empowered to believe the promise of God. That simple belief, not any virtue she may have possessed, not some virgin place in her soul, is what God counted as righteous. It's how we are counted right with God to this day.

If there is any virgin element to our souls, we wouldn't need a sinless Savior to bear our sins on the cross to make those who repent and believe in Christ one with God. Human beings conceived in the usual way are born in sin (Psalm 51:5). A Jesus born of human parents by the usual means, of parents who bear original sin, could not be the pure and sinless Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.

For the sake of His mission of dying and rising for sinful humanity, a Jesus born into the human race had to be born of a virgin.

Beyond that, does anyone really believe that when Matthew and Luke wrote their narratives of Jesus' birth they thought that as they wrote the word virgin, they had in mind a place in Mary that was "untouchable and pure." It would have violated their understanding of human nature.

Indulge me a bit and take a few moments to read and consider the two passages in the Gospel that overtly assert Jesus' virgin birth.

Matthew 1:18-25

¹⁸Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. ²⁰But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” ²²All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ²³“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” ²⁴When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, ²⁵but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.  

Some skeptics look at this passage and point to verse 23 as proof that Mary was not necessarily a virgin, one who had not engaged in sexual intercourse. The skeptics are right in pointing out that, in citing passages from Isaiah, Matthew doesn't quote from the original Hebrew Scripture, but from a Greek translation dating back to the second-century BC, the Septuagint. The Old Testament passages Matthew cites, Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6, in the original Hebrew don't use the term usually used for virgin, but a more generic term that means young woman (which can also mean virgin).

If that's all that this passage told us about Mary's virginity, skeptics would have a good case. But, notice several other things:

1. Verse 18 says that Mary "was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit." This isn't definitive, of course, but it certainly strongly implies that the child is not necessarily conceived by the normal means.

2. Verse 19 tells us that Joseph knew that he Mary's fiance, at least was not the father of the child. Mary, from what both Matthew and Luke tell us, seems to assert that she has not had sexual relations. Anyone who has read the Bible from cover to cover knows that its authors are not inclined to sugarcoat the moral shortcomings of believers: Abraham and Sarah had such failures of belief that they resorted to having Abraham make love to Sarah's slave in order to conceive a child they thought God was tardy in sending; David murdered and committed adultery; Solomon faithlessly worshiped foreign deities; Moses whined to God about his responsibilities; Saul/Paul persecuted the Church. If Mary's pregnancy was the result of fornication, that is, sexual intimacy outside of marriage, the Bible would tell us. After all, the Bible is not a book of Christian heroes; it's a witness of God's actions to save sinful humanity from sin, death, and the devil.

3. Verse 25 seems to underscore Mary's sexual purity, saying that Joseph had "no marital relations" with Mary until after Jesus was born.

4. Finally, Matthew's use of the Septuagint's rendering of the Isaiah passages indicate that, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it was his understanding that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived in her womb.

Luke 1:26-38

²⁶In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, ²⁷to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” ²⁹But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³²He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” ³⁴Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” ³⁵The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. ³⁶And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. ³⁷For nothing will be impossible with God.” ³⁸Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. 

The "sixth month" of verse 26 refers, of course, to Mary's kinswoman Elizabeth, who, thought to be barren, was now pregnant with John the Baptist. So, what does this passage say to those who are skeptic about Jesus' virgin birth?

1. In the original Greek in which Luke (and all the New Testament writers) wrote, verse 34 has a better translation than that of the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) above. Let me give you the literal Greek first:

1:34   είπε [said] δε [And] Μαριάμ [Mary] προς [to]  τον [the]  άγγελον [angel], πως [How] έσται τούτο [will this be], επεί [since] άνδρα [a husband] ου γινώσκω ¹I know not [or, not I know].

A more literal translation of the passage then, might read:

But [or and] Mary said to the angel, "How will this be since do not know a husband?"

From Old Testament times to know another person was to know them intimately, sexually. Mary was mystified as to how she could possibly be pregnant since had not known anyone sexually. She understands that babies aren't usually born of virgins. Here, Mary asserts her virginity without using the term translated variously as maiden and virgin, the Greek term parthenos. 

2. In verse 35, the angel says that Mary will conceive when the Holy Spirit "overshadows" her. Episkiazo, the term translated as overshadow can also mean cover. When, earlier in Luke 1, the angel visits Zechariah to say that his wife Elizabeth will bear a son, there is no indication that the conception will happen in any other than the ordinary way: Zechariah will have sexual relations with his wife and God will cause the conception of John by that usual means. The child to be born of Mary though, will not, apparently, possess the genes of either Mary or Joseph. The Spirit will overshadow Mary and be conceived in her womb.

3.  In verse 38, Mary accepts the word of the angel on faith in God. She does this in spite of the scandal likely to attend her pregnancy. The angel offers the pregnancy of Elizabeth as proof that God can accomplish the impossible, even conceiving the Savior of the world in the womb of a virgin.

Is the teaching about Jesus birth of a virgin an essential element of Christian belief? 

Apparently so. When the early Church set out to express the basics of Christian faith in both the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, it held that essential to faith in Jesus is acceptance that He was born of a virgin. The Church has held to this belief for 2000 years because it has believed it to be the revealed truth of God.

But its importance has nothing to do with the virtue of Mary. Jesus Christ could have chosen to enter our world and bring new life to those who repent and believe in Him by any means He chose. But if Jesus were to be born of a woman, it was essential for our salvation that while He must share our humanity, He must not share our common human inheritance of sin, our inborn alienation from God. (Hebrews 2:14-17, 4:15)

For us to receive salvation. Jesus had to be, in Paul's phrase, "the second Adam," the new human being, as sinless as Adam and Eve when God first created them, the only human being Who could take the death sentence we deserve and yet remain worthy of being raised from the dead so that sin, death, and the devil would be conquered for all who "loved [Jesus'] appearing," repented for sin, and believed in the only name given by which we can be saved, the Name of Jesus. (2 Corinthians 15, 2 Timothy 4:8, John 1:12-13, Acts 4:12).