Counsel #3 — Purity — A Boundary Of Relational Love

Picture: Counsel #3 — PURITY — A BOUNDARY OF RELATIONAL LOVECR 106.1

Are boundaries for sexual behavior and choices oppressive constructs that result in inauthenticity? Or are morality, purity, and self-control God’s ideas? The Bible has clear answers to these questions. Sexual purity was God’s idea from the beginning and He created sex to be enjoyed within the context of marriage between a man and a woman.^{[100]https://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Jan/20/purity-principle-setting-boundaries/} As humans, we are given the right to make our own moral choices. We can either choose to live within God’s beautiful contractual covenant and receive all the subsequent blessings, or we can reject those parameters, rejecting God’s protective love in the process (1 Thessalonians 4:8).CR 106.2

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification [freeing from sin]: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God.”
1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 NKJVCR 106.3

“All who have any true sense of what is embraced in being a Christian know that the followers of Christ are under obligation as His disciples to bring all their passions, their physical powers and mental faculties into perfect subordination to His will.” Ellen White in Child Guidance, p. 445 CR 106.4

Reflect: What are some of the blessings you receive by following God’s ideal for sex?CR 106.5