(upbeat music) - Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author and pastor John Piper. Thank you to everyone who sends in questions. We appreciate those emails. So we get to three of them a week, so we can't get to all of them. I wish we could.

But the next email that we are able to address comes to us from a listener named Mary. Hello, Pastor John. This question is a follow-up to episode number 365. Will you marry a couple already living together? How would you respond to a group of professing Christian leaders who teach or who imply that it's okay for couples to move in together and to engage in sex as long as the wedding date is set in stone?

- I would respond by recording an Ask Pastor John podcast to say how tragically wrong they are. That's how I would respond. It's not okay for couples to have sex outside the marriage covenant, engaged or not engaged, marriage date set or not. It's not okay to pretend that setting a marriage date is the same in God's eyes as making the marriage vows in the presence of God's people with the symbolic cultural sanctions of rings and vows and pronouncements and licenses.

It's mere fleshly pragmatism to treat an intention to get married as the same as being married. Let me say that again. It is mere fleshly worldly pragmatism to treat an intention to get married the same as being married. They're not the same. Sexual relations are a sacred, physical, mental, spiritual consummation of awesomely sacred vows made before God in a moment when God himself really does join two people together in a one flesh union that he does not perform at random moments during engagement.

I mean, people need to come to terms with what God has joined together. When does that happen? What God has joined together, let no man put asunder. It happens in the formation of a decisive covenant vow which is permanent for better or for worse till death do us part.

Those are not empty, meaningless words tacked on to sleeping together for six months. Let me give some biblical reasons for saying this. In Matthew 1, Mary and Joseph are betrothed. When Mary is found to be with child, Joseph has no doubt about what has happened. She's been with another man and he's gonna break off with her.

And you see what it implies. It never entered his mind that the child might be his. They weren't sleeping together. You don't sleep together when you're betrothed and you're living in God's way from the Old Testament and the New. They were chased. They were not having sex. This was part of what it meant that Joseph was a just man.

You're not a just man, young man. You're not a just man. If you cave into the worldly pragmatism of just saving money on rent and jumping in bed together, that's not a just man. That's a weak man with little biblical principle. This was the expectation of the Jewish community rooted in God's Word in the Old Testament where sexual relations was bound to marriage as the seventh commandment makes clear.

So that's the first thing is Joseph and Mary's example. Here's the second observation. 1 Corinthians 7 is crucial. In verse 2 is pivotal along with verse 36. Paul said, "Because of the temptation to sexual immorality," or you could translate it fornication, "each man should have his own wife," not betrothed partner, "and each woman her own husband." In other words, Paul's remedy for sexual desire of a couple is not betrothal, sleeping together for months before marriage.

His remedy is marriage. It's even clearer in verse 36. "If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed," literally his virgin, "if his passions are strong and it has to be, let him do as he wishes, let them marry. It is no sin." Now, this is remarkably relevant to our day.

Paul is dealing here with couples who are trying to be sexually proper and chaste without marriage. And then he recognizes that in some cases, this sexual desire makes that highly unlikely. And he concedes and says, "Go ahead, marry. Don't compromise this. Don't sleep together. Marry." It is not sin to marry.

The assumption behind the whole chapter is that sexual relations during betrothal is sin. That's the assumption of the chapter. Marriage is not engagement. The sacred entrance into the one flesh union that God has established is marriage. Sexual relations is the consummation of that marriage commitment. That's what God designed it to be.

Sex is not a relief valve for desire or a mere pleasure with a devoted lover. Sex is, and I'm gonna say this as strongly as I know how, sex is, this is the meaning, this is the definition, this is the reality of human sexual relations. Sex is, by God's design, sex is the consummation of the sacred covenant of God in marriage.

All other sex is a prostitution of God's creation. God joins a couple and he joins them in marriage. Part of that joining is the sacred vow of establishing the covenant relationship, and part of it is the subsequent consummation in sexual union. The Bible does not recognize a legitimate use of sexual relations except as an expression of the covenant of marriage, no matter how crazy our modern world has become, and almost all media and entertainment have shown.

And I would just add very briefly that marriage is a public reality. That is, a married man is to be known as a married man and a married woman is to be known as a married woman. This is true because marriage changes forever how the man relates to other women and how the woman relates to other men, and therefore it needs to be known.

And it's true because in every culture there are unavoidable legal implications of marriage. For example, parental rights, property rights, inheritances, and therefore the act of entering a marital state is a public act. That is, it needs legal and public recognition. Different cultures handle it in different ways. I'm not quibbling about how different cultures do it.

And a humble Christian couple, this is relevant for our culture, a humble Christian couple who wants to be biblical should be eager to use the cultural and legally appointed ways of solemnizing and legalizing their covenant union. The essence of this event is the promise, the vows before God to be a faithful wife and a faithful husband till death do us part.

And in view of all of this, the last thing a Christian couple will want to do is isolate sex from its beautiful covenant place and meaning at the heart of the marriage covenant. They won't want to do it. They won't want to strip it out and isolate it. They will treat every act of sexual self-control before marriage, every act of sexual self-control during their engagement as an exaltation of the preciousness and the beauty and the meaning of this act as the consummation of covenant commitment in marriage.

They will be jealous to set a beautiful example to their peers and to the children that are watching and the teenagers around them that are all watching them, knowing what they do, that sexual relations belongs in marriage. They will want to witness with their lives that God created this beautiful gift and placed it precisely where he knew it should be, the most satisfying, most fruitful, most beautiful, most God-honoring place in marriage.

Therefore, Christians do not sleep together before their wedding night. - Amen, thank you for this call for discretion, Pastor John, and thanks for listening to this podcast. We publish three times a week and you can subscribe to our audio feeds to keep up and you can search our episode archive to look back and you can even reach us by email.

With a follow-up question that a previous episode may have raised in your own mind, like this question today from Mary, you can do all of that through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well, I'm not sure what's on the docket for Wednesday, but Lord willing, we will be back. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we will see you then.

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