[Nate]

Is marriage "worth the wait"? That answers your first question.

If marriage is not valuable to you, have all the premarital sex you want.

[BillSPrestonEsq]

Originally Posted by Nate

Is marriage "worth the wait"? That answers your first question.

If marriage is not valuable to you, have all the premarital sex you want.

Not quite all their is to it Nate. Is the will of God important to you? That alone is an even bigger issue.

That and one thing about this thread bugs me. Everyone here could have waited. (1 Cor 10:13) No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

A few verses earlier, in verse 8 it states...

8We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died.

God really cares about this one. Chapter 6 states:

18Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. 19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

If you are a Christian, you should care what God thinks of you. If you actually love God, you will keep his commandments. In essence, sinning is showing the actual hatred in our hearts of God. We show that we do not love him when we sin, for if we loved him, we would keep his commandments.

[Nate]

Originally Posted by BillSPrestonEsq

Not quite all their is to it Nate. Is the will of God important to you? That alone is an even bigger issue.

Sure.

As evidenced by the fact that God has such an interest in our sex lives, the will of God is intricately woven into the institution of human marriage. The eschatological metaphor of Christ as the Bridegroom isn't an accident, nor is the creative narrative of "male and female He created them." Marriage is His will.

As early as the second chapter of the Bible, we see the reason that God created Man with binary sexes: "This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife and the two shall become one flesh."

There are so many subtleties there. Woman doesn't exist only to complement Man; she exists to complete him! She was taken out of [taken away from?] him. A man does not merely cleave unto his wife; he first leaves "his father and his mother", perpetuating the cycle of monogamous binary sexual relationships.

I think the Church misunderstands Paul when he says that he wished all were as he were. We see marriage as an option, an addendum, a possibility, a circumstance, a happening, a ceremony, a choice. It is all these things, and more. It is the social contract that forms the fiber of our society. It is the divinely intended underlying design for human relationships.

When marriage becomes a convenient option rather than a social virtue [it is not good that man should be alone!], it is easier to divorce [yikes pun] the sexual aspect of marriage from the special aspect that sets it apart as the highest of human relationships. Sex is a responsibility of marriage, not just a privilege.

From an evolutionary standpoint [I am obviously not an evolutionist, but I find that creationism and evolution actually arrive at very similar endpoints, despite popular belief], monogamous marriage is a virtue because it assures the stability of the home, making it more likely that your replicated genes [i.e. children] will have the support they need [2 parents] to survive.

From a moral / creationary standpoint, marriage is the intended means for the human species to fulfill God's earliest command toward creation: Be fruitful and multiply [Gen 1:22]. Sex outside of marriage, either for the secularist or the Christian, breaks the support structure intended for child-bearing and companionship.

I doubt that we really disagree.