Christians Who Live Together Before Marriage

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments." -Jesus, John 14:15

Take Jake and Jane, two professing Christians who faithfully attend a church. They even read their Bible in their spare time, they pray, they are vocal on facebook about their faith. 

But after church on Sunday, they go back to their house, where they've lived together for 2 years and aren't married.

No one in their church says anything to them about it, and they themselves don't see a problem with it. After all, most people in our culture now have a different view of marriage than in the past. 

I have heard:

"It's just a piece of paper."

"What really matters is we love each other and are committed to one another."

"Legally I don't want to get involved in a marriage, in case we ever divorced I wouldn't want there to be financial and legal consequences."

"I will eventually get married but we want to live together and see how it works out first."

I, for the life of me, cannot even begin to wrap my mind around how a supposed follower of Christ can even say things like this. It's like some alternate universe. Or, if you're a lover of the series "Stranger Things" like me, I feel like I'm in the "upside down"; a world that is a shadow of reality but is only dark and confusing.

What if you went to the doctor and he didn't know the basics of human anatomy? Or if he wanted to operate on you without anesthesia, something so basic and fundamental to surgery? I would run away as fast as I could. This guy clearly doesn't know anything about the profession he claims to be in. Simply put, he's a fraud.

I want to post Bible verses on what marriage and sexual immorality are, but considering there are so many, it wouldn't be possible in one sitting. Open your Bible, put your finger on a random space and there's a pretty good chance it's talking about, or at least the book you're in talks about, sexual immorality.

The Bible says that one of the indicators that someone is NOT in Christ, is that they continually sexually give themselves to someone who is not their spouse, without repentance. Galatians 5:19-21 says to be sexually immoral is a work of the flesh, and that "those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." 

"But the Bible only speaks of adultery, it never says sex outside of marriage is a sin."

Again, I've heard this and I do not know for the life of me, where this comes from. 

When Jesus spoke to the Pharisees, he often addresses the fact that they ignore God's word and honor tradition. They honor their own culture before God's word. So, if we live together before we are married because "that's just what people do these days," consider this:

"For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”-Jesus, Mark 7:21–23

Jesus separates adultery and sexual immorality. If they are one in the same, why does he do that? If all that is required to be with someone sexually is that we love them, why is the woman at the well both embarrassed (and intrigued at how he would know such an intimate thing about her) when Jesus says, 

"You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband." (John 4:16-18). 

I’ve even heard that if you love someone and commit to them in your heart, it’s as good as marriage. 

If she was with a man who wasn't her husband, but all that is required to be her husband is that she love him, then why doesn't Jesus call him her husband? 

Mark 7:6–8

And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

“‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their heart is far from me;

 in vain do they worship me,

teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’

 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” 

People who 1) say they follow God but 2) prefer what their culture/tradition teaches over God's word, have "hearts that are far from God."

As far as marriage "just being a piece of paper", it's never that in the Bible. There is always a celebration and public acknowledgment of the union between two people. You and your boyfriend or girlfriend being intimate with each other in private is not a marriage. The piece of paper that the state gives, is simply the government recognizing what God has already done, namely, making the two, one.

 If you go to a courthouse to get married, and I was able to witness one of my family members get married this way, the magistrate will read out that the beginning of marriage finds roots in the scriptures and has always been a ceremony with witnesses for two people who want to unite as one. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cling to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh," Genesis 2:24. Every marriage in the Bible has witnesses and those who are aware of its consummation. There is something distinctly public about being married. 

Paul even says in 1 Corinthians 7 that if you are with someone and you can't abstain from sexual relations, it's "better to marry than burn with a passion." If it is wrong to "lust" after someone (Jesus, sermon on the mount), then how can it be good and right to carry out that lustful act with them, namely, living and sleeping together in an unmarried relationship? 

How can someone, as Paul says, be burning with passion and in sin and need to marry, if the very act of being together sexually somehow makes someone as good as married? 

Moral of the story is, I've yet to meet a single person who can defend a lifestyle of sexual immorality because they've honestly searched and studied the scriptures and come to that conclusion. It is yet another result of the lazy Christianity of our day.

None of us are perfect. And if reading this you've become convicted, please know that there is forgiveness in Christ and for those that trust in Him, He is faithful to forgive (1 John 1:9), and your sin is removed as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).

Let's obey Him, because by doing so, we love Him.