Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.  Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honour God with your bodies.  (1 Corinthians 6:18-20)

The Greek word translated as sexual immorality is πορνεία porneia (Strong’s 4202) which is the root of the modern English word ‘pornography’.  A pornos (πόρνος Strong’s 4205) was a male temple prostitute, so the connection here is not simply sexual trespass but idolatry.

In this passage, Paul is telling the church of Corinth, that sexual sin is an intimate sin, appropriately enough for an intimate act.  He is explaining that when a man or woman has sex outside of marriage (fornication) he or she has committed an act of idolatry by gratifying their own desires through the abuse of temple of their bodies.

This distinction may go some way to explain why Christians have focused, almost often with unhealthy obsession, on sexual sin over other forms.  It may also simply be that libido is powerful driver.  What is clear, though, is this unhealthy obsession on exposing and shaming sexual sin has also been entirely counter to the Gospel – in truth, not just unhealthy but ungodly.

The first letter to the Corinthians contains much admonishment of unbefitting conduct but the inherent danger in lifting passages is that the context is missed.  After his Hellenistic salutation, he opens with thanksgiving:

I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.  For in him you have been enriched in every way – with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge – God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you.  Therefore, you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.  He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.  God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (ibid 1:4-9)

Thereafter, everything Paul says is built upon the Gospel of grace, which is undeserved forgiveness and love.  Sin, the cause of the fracture with God has been dealt with by the cross.  Sin, all sin, is the problem, which was insuperable until Jesus paid the price; nevertheless, sexual sin has often been the preoccupation disregarding other ‘sins’.

So, what did Jesus teach about sexual immorality?  The answer is very little, strange one might think, when it is such a human fixation.  He mentions sexual immorality in a list in Mark 7:20-23, as an example of ‘evil that comes from within’.  And again, he looks to the heart, this time to expose adultery:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.”   But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  (Matthew 5:27-28)

Adultery is returned to later in the chapter, upholding marriage over divorce (5:32).

Indeed, Jesus’ outstanding teaching on sexual sin came about through an alleged act of adultery:

At dawn, he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered round him, and he sat down to teach them.  The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.  In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’  They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.  When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’  Again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground.  At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.  Jesus straightened up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’

‘No one, sir,’ she said.

‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.’

(John 8:2-11)

This whole thing was to entrap Jesus not deal with a serious infringement of the Halacha.  The act of adultery may have been real enough, but the man caught in the alleged act was not brought to Jesus, only the woman; nonetheless, even if it was a set-up, by bringing the woman the accusers hoped to expose Jesus as a fraud.

The Mosaic Law states:

If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife – with the wife of his neighbour – both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death. (Leviticus 20:10)

Thus, if Jesus was not seen to uphold the law, he would be shown to be false teacher or worse, a blasphemer, who opposed Scripture, God’s Word.  On the other hand, if he condemned the woman to death, his message of grace would be overturned.  But, of course, not for the first time, Jesus turns the tables on the accusers.

From being an issue of sexual sin, Jesus makes this one of hypocrisy.  He asks by means have these men to condemn this woman, by virtue of their sinlessness and purity?

As Paul writes:

…there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.  For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  (Romans 8:1-4)

Set this great teaching of Paul’s against Jesus in the Temple standing with the accused woman.  He exposes the accusers, not the law, to be unrighteous; in fact, only he, the fully righteous man, can fulfill law – even so, he does not condemn, but save.

Currently, the preoccupation of sexual sin is with homosexuality.  There can be no greater tragedy that the witness of the gospel of love and hope has been impugned through condemnation.  What has happened that same sex attracted people are judged, censured and disrespected by ‘Christians’?

Furthermore, it may have escaped notice that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality – he did, as we have seen, highlight adultery.  Those of the church that would treat homosexuals and lesbians with anything other than love, should look to their own hearts and ask themselves have they no sexual sin to first confess, if only adultery through lustful thoughts?  Is that less serious to God because it is considered normative?  Since when did the norms of men and women matter to God?

Jesus teaches on self-righteousness and hypocrisy at length, this being the best known:

‘Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way as you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

 ‘Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.  (Matthew 7:1-5)

And who is ‘your brother’ if not your neighbour?  Who, at the command of Jesus, is to be loved ‘as yourself’ (Mark 12:31).

On receiving salvation through the cross and subsequent indwelling of the Spirit of God, there is much work to be done in rooting out sin.  Jesus is constant on this:

And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell (Mark 9:47)

This may be hyperbole, but it is a measure of the seriousness with which Jesus would wish his followers to consider their sin – for those that look commit adultery through lustful glances, for instance.  And, it should be noted, that to the woman accused of adultery, Jesus concludes by advising her ‘to leave her life of sin’.

The Bible has much to say on sin as the God-given word, anyone who ignores what it says is endangering his or her soul – but that is a personal journey which is taken with help, not least, with the loving discipleship of brothers and sisters in Christ.  There is much to be done regarding sexual sin as there is any other sin. Perhaps then, there are those among the church who should expose the sin of hypocrisy and ask forgiveness of men and women they have insulted and disregarded on account of their sexuality who are no less deserving of redemption than they are.  There is no entitlement to salvation, it is an act of grace; hence, the very least Christians can do is aspire to behave graciously by first keeping the commandments of Jesus.

Hypocrisy υποκρισία means literally to be under judgement, from hypo ‘under’ and krinein, ‘decide or judge’ while the word came to mean ‘play a part’, ‘to act’ (as in a play),  it is this literal meaning that is the most Biblical.  For all that judge, subject themselves to judgement in kind.