Hello Jon.

I usually avoid personal notes of this like because I have found that they tend to run the risk of someone taking comments in them in a far more personal way than I Typically intend them. Or worse yet as a personal insult. However, I think I can trust you to not do so.

The reason I'm writing this at all is because you made an an offhand remark at our last meeting suggesting that you specifically wanted me to cover the Bible passages referring to adultery, and the adultrist brought for Jesus to condemn in light of my Homosexuality study. So that is the study I'm did here for you.

I do have to admit that when I started the Homosexuality study I left out the adultery verses from my study. This was because Adultery is not defined as simply having sex outside of marriage. It's defined as having sex with a married person.

I know of no verses in the Bible that explicitly prohibit sexual relations between two unmarried people. In fact Leviticus, which is the strictest book, gives an extensive list of nearly every situation in which sex is wrong. With married people, with animals, family members, etc... nothing is said, however, about having sex with an unmarried person who is not in our family.

Further still, of the kings David and Saul had hundreds of wives and hundreds of unmarried concubines (women kept in the house for the purpose of having sex). King David was the one whom God called a man "after his own heart", and likewise God let Saul build his temple after stopping David from the same honor/task.

(Saul had thousands of concubines where as David only had hundreds)

None of these were treated as sins by Scripture till David had sex with another man's wife (2 Samuel 11:1-5) The Bible clearly states THAT was the sin of adultery.

Now, I want you to understand that I am not saying that what we've come to call "casual sex" in this day and age should be treated as Godly. I'm saying that by making scripture about sex is utterly missing the whole point of the Bible in the first place.

This past weekend you quoted a lot from Galatians. I find this ironic because in Galatians time and again Paul argues that we are not slaves to the law. Gal 3: 18-22

"What is the point, then, of the law, the attached addendum? It was a thoughtful addition to the original covenant promises made to Abraham. The purpose of the law was to keep a sinful people in the way of salvation until Christ (the descendant) came, inheriting the promises and distributing them to us. Obviously this law was not a firsthand encounter with God. It was arranged by angelic messengers through a middleman, Moses. But if there is a middleman as there was at Sinai, then the people are not dealing directly with God, are they? But the original promise is the direct blessing of God, received by faith.

If such is the case, is the law, then, an anti-promise, a negation of God's will for us? Not at all. Its purpose was to make obvious to everyone that we are, in ourselves, out of right relationship with God, and therefore to show us the futility of devising some religious system for getting by our own efforts what we can only get by waiting in faith for God to complete his promise. For if any kind of rule-keeping had power to create life in us, we would certainly have gotten it by this time."

Most of the gentiles in the first century did not marry at all. Not in the biblical sense anyway. Were they chastised by the Jews? Well the logical conclusion from Galatians is yes they were. But Paul turned around and chastised Peter for that at Antioch as he was doing to the Galatians church right then.(Gal 11:11-14)

My point is most Americans and English did not marry in the modern sense till after the 1900's either. Most marriages were "common-law marriages." Would you criticize Thomas Jefferson for his relationship with Sally Hemmings? they did live as husband and wife as far as we know. (And no sometimes they had no ceremony at all.)

There were reasons for the Jewish marriage laws and customs. Just look at the unusual way in which Jesus was born and you will see what that reason is.

But above all Christ himself made it clear that they were discussing how Christian spouses were supposed to treat each other. (Mathew 5: 27-32) Jesus made it clear that successful Marriages were the responsibility of the Marriage partners. Not the law (5:31)

My point is that those who teach that Christians are to hold to an exhaustive list of written laws miss the whole point of the gospels in the first place. This is the primary reason so many in ministry like to stress the very last thing Jesus said to the adultress "Sin no more." but skip the fact that there was a whole story with a theme before those three words.

No where in the New Testament does it say that Christ came to bring a new set of laws to replace the old. If he had then Christ's crucifixion, where He took on the sins of all humanity, would be totally meaningless.

Worse still, most people who are against Christianity cite this as the primary reason why religion is in their mind evil. In which they are right. This does a lot of damage to Christianity because it's cutting us off from the true message of the new testament, and being able to pass on that message to those who would benifit most from it.