3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, 5 not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God; 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 (NASB)
I was a teenager in the 1960’s. That period has often been called a time of the beginning of a great sexual revolution. I remember that time as magazines and movies becoming more and more open about nudity and sex….
At the same time I remember people from my grandparent’s generation scoffing at all that saying that none of that was any different from what was going on in what they referred to as the “Roaring 20’s.” My parent’s generation was the one that grew up in the Great Depression and then went to war during World War II. My parents were both very much Southern Baptists with a strict moral code. However, what we need to understand is human beings have practiced sexual sin since the very beginning, but for many centuries in the West, sexual sins were met with public disapproval such as that expressed by my parents and grandparents. Since at least the 1960s, however, Western culture has increasingly accepted a sexual ethic in which nearly everything goes. Sex between unmarried people, premarital cohabitation, homosexuality, and a host of other practices today enjoy widespread societal approval. However, I am convinced that if a professing Christian holds that approval then it is a marker that shows their disingenuousness.