As someone said earlier - the real issue here is trying to play word games to get around what the Bible says.
Back to the OP - if you don't want to believe that the word fornicate includes pre-marital sex- then that's your choice - but it doesn't mean it isn't true. It wouldn't matter if you convince everyone on this board that it isn't true, and it doesn't matter if you can find 1 or 100 churches that would say it isn't true - God meant what He meant. Your argument isn't with those on the board who do not agree with you and it isn't with the conservative church, it is with God.
We all, as sinful humans, like to come up with nice little words to describe our sins because the words the Bible uses come in those annoying statements telling us just how wrong we are. We all do it. My personal favorite - I spent most of my life referring to myself as "strong-willed", until God showed me that was "stubborn" - and then He led be to all those passages about being stubborn and willful and opened my eyes to where and why it really is a sin. We even come up with nice little words to describe other people's sins because we don't want to have to face up to the truth of what is going on around us.
We say "premarital sex" instead of "fornicate". We say "extramarital sex" instead of "adultery". We say "sexual fetish" instead of "perversion". We say "goal oriented" instead of "greedy". We say "overeat" instead of "gluttony".
The list is endless. Changing what we call it doesn't change what it is. When we play word games - we are only fooling ourselves.
- November 5th, 2009, 11:46 am