What Did Jesus Actually Say About Fornication?

Part one

In the summer of 1987 — during my internship year of  Seminary — I spent a week at Lutherdale Bible Camp with thirty junior-high young people.  It was, to say the very least, an education. The theme for the week was a combination Baptism and the theology of grace.

I began the first day with two questions.  The first thing I asked them to tell me was: Something they liked about themselves. Then after we had gone completely around the circle; I asked: What would you like to change about yourself? 

As you might guess it was a lot easier for them to answer the second question.  We humans often find it easier to talk about what we don’t particularly like about ourselves.  

In reality, we actually don’t care much about speaking out loud about ourselves at all.  Especially if you are 13 or 14.

There was one girl that could not, or would not, respond to the first request for information. Not wanting to embarrass her, I pointed to a sign on the wall behind her and said: “I know something good about you.” And point to the sign that read: “Jesus loves me this I know.”  

I can’t remember the conversation after that.  But it was a great lead-in to the subject of Baptism and the gift of the Spirit we all receive at the font.  

The next day, after some discussion about the gifts of Baptism, we talked a lot to about grace.  

God’s activity in their live that offers acceptance, love and forgiveness.

That same girl, who couldn’t find anything to like about herself, raised her hand.  Then she lowered her hand, as if to change her mind.  So I prompted her.  “What” I asked, “what did you want to know?”  She look at me and said:  “Will my sister go to hell?”

That took me back.  “Why would your sister go to hell?” I asked.

“Because she is going to have a baby and she is not married.  How does God’s grace work then?”  

Her sister was in high school.

My thoughts  went into a tail spin. Now I was the one not willing to speak too soon. First I said something like: “God loves your sister, just like He loves you and me.”  

Then I quickly began to ask the kids sorts of questions about their thoughts on the subject.

At the end of that session I, immediately, went to the Camp Director and said:  “Okay I need all your exegesis resources you have.”  

He didn’t have much, being a summer camp, but he gave me what he had.   

Now remember, I was raised in the forties, fifties. And The theology of the time was not all that gracious — nor liberal.  We grew up believing that having sex outside of marriage was probably the worse of the worse things.  

By the end of that week I had learned a lot about what the Bible actually did not  say about the term fornication.  

All kind of commentators, Biblical scholars and others have created a huge one-overly-focused-playground concerning this one word.   And their thinking wasn’t all that gracious nor forgiving.    

That young lady’s sister was a victim of such harsh exegesis.  

I went away from that week, of eighth grade confirmation  camp , sure that all the parents were going to rise up in protest of my teaching.  

I was most grateful to be wrong. 

I will end this morning by just saying that the simple definition of fornication: “sex outside of marriage.”   Is so inadequately interpreted by the English language. 

Jesus would say to that one line definition :  “But I say to you……”

To be continued.