The First Baptist Church of Granada Hills

            Let’s be honest, Christian morality has never been all that popular.  The idea that God wants us to live our lives in a certain way, in a way that may not necessarily be our way, is a bit irksome.  And that irksomeness, while present at virtually every point and in virtually every arena of human action, is most clearly felt and thus most vehemently expressed on those points to which  God says “no” to which our minds, our acquaintances, and, most important of all, our broader culture say “yes”.  Given this, it isn’t surprising that the bit of Christian morality most burdensome and thus most hateful to modern Westerners regards sex. 

            Our nation and those like it are awash in sexuality.  And thus the Bible’s attempted regulation of sex seems to be a scandalous and monstrous imposition on our own pursuit of happiness.  Biblical injunctions pertaining to adultery, fornication, marriage, re-marriage, homosexuality, and so on can seem quaintly outdated at best and bigoted and repressive at worst.  But as in all things, the Lord’s guidance is good and despite our short-sighted and largely acculturated hostility to it, it nevertheless deserves our obedience.

            Still, conscientious obedience is often easier than blind obedience. With this in mind let’s look at just one of the ways that the Bible attempts to regulate human sexuality: the prohibition of fornication, of premarital sex.

            The Bible’s view of premarital sex is fairly obvious.  Both Testaments, in Deuteronomy 22 and 1 Corinthians 7, make it very clear that sexuality can only lawfully be expressed within a marriage.  Deuteronomy, in its hard-line fashion, makes this apparent by demanding either death or forced marriage for those found to have fornicated in one fashion or another.  1 Corinthians 7 contains Paul’s widely dismissed advice to remain altogether celibate and his much more widely received permission to marry.  But Paul allows marriage precisely so as to prevent fornication within the early Christian community. The implication is that Paul felt that it was better for a Christian to lose his laser-like focus on the things of God in the hustle and bustle of married life than to sleep around; that’s quite a statement coming from a religious leader.

            But why?  Why is premarital sex so maligned in the Bible?  After all, it’s one thing to forbid something and quite another to justifiably forbid it.  The answer to this question, as is so often the case with spiritual things, is multifaceted. 

            First there are practical considerations.  Unmarried sex can (and often does) lead to single motherhood which puts an incredible burden on the young lady involved both physically and emotionally.  Additionally, with the heightened sense of significance sexuality brings to a relationship, the potential for heartbreak is all the more serious.  And, of course, there is the matter of disease.  Considering that even in the U.S. today, with all our ingenious methods for rendering promiscuous sex safer than it might otherwise be, a recent CDC study found that roughly 25% of teenage girls are currently infected with a sexually transmitted disease that could potentially seriously impact their reproductive health.  God’s laws related to sex, as with those related to other, more mundane pursuits, have a protective quality to them; they protect us from the world and, in some cases, from ourselves.

            But in addition to the practical concerns, there is a more symbolic issue as well.  1 Corinthians 6 speaks of the distasteful chain of associations that can result from premarital sex.  By becoming a Christian a person is uniting himself in a somewhat mystical fashion with Jesus.  Likewise, when a person has sex with someone else he is also, though is a far crasser way, uniting himself with his partner.  To paraphrase Paul: if Jesus is connected to you and you are connected to a bunch of sluts, then Jesus…  You get the idea.  As a result, Paul encourages his readers to treat their bodies with respect and dignity knowing that they, in a sense, are a temple of God, which is to say, that they are associated with the name of the Lord.

            Finally, there is the whole matter of what God intended sex to be.  When Jesus was approached and asked about sexual ethics He referred his petitioners to the origin of human sex—that is, the origin of humanity.  In Mark 10, Jesus quoted from Genesis 2, reminding his listeners that sexuality was intended, from the very beginning, to be expressed in a lifelong committed relationship that ultimately produced children, an act by which the couple’s “becoming one” is powerfully and literally represented.  Given that this was God’s intention all along, to seek to separate these components (sexuality, marriage, childbirth) from one another in an absolute fashion (as premarital sex necessarily does) is to act contrary to the will of God.

            Here at the First Baptist Church of Granada Hills we’ve embarked on a new series of Wednesday night studies.  Each Wednesday, Pastor Eugene Curry will address a specific question from the congregation submitted sometime in the previous week or earlier.  Some of the questions have to do with theology, some are more concerned with ethics, and some are decidedly practical.  In conjunction with the Wednesday night study, a brief summary of Pastor Curry’s answer will appear here on the church’s blog for the benefit of those unable to attend the study in person.  So, without further ado, I give you the question and answer for the first week!

Question:

            What does the Apostles Creed mean when it says that Jesus descended into hell?

Answer:

            The Bible both contains the record of God’s revelation to mankind and is, in a somewhat more subtle sense, revelation itself.  As such it stands as the central and ultimate document for establishing orthodox theology.  It is the thing of which all other Christian literature—all creeds, catechisms, liturgies, hymns, slogans, and so on—must be considered derivative.  But just because these lesser guiding lights are indeed unoriginal does not mean that they are therefore unhelpful.  Instead, insofar as these derivative documents faithfully present the content of the Bible they can be of immense value.

            Let’s be honest: what the Bible possesses in matters of authority it lacks in terms of brevity. While the words of Scripture are second to none in their definitiveness, there are really a lot of words of Scripture.  As such, summaries of the faith can be helpful, allowing Christians to memorize an outline of the Bible’s teachings. 

            One particular outline of the faith has been around for a very long time, having been written in the first few centuries of the Christian era: it’s called the Apostles Creed.  With just a handful of short phrases the Apostles Creed covers the essential doctrines of Christianity through both its content and its overall structure. And as a result of its brevity and comprehensiveness the Creed has found wide use among almost every branch of the Christian Church in the Western world.

            But for all of the Apostles Creed’s popularity there is one element of it that sometimes causes concern.  I am speaking, of course, of the line which states that Jesus, immediately after the Crucifixion, “descended into hell.”  The objections raised against this line generally fall into two familiar categories: confusion over its precise meaning and skepticism regarding its Biblical support.  Of course, these are related issues and it would seem that by addressing the later concern the former will benefit as well.

            Perhaps the Bible passage that most directly supports the idea of Jesus descending to hell occurs in I Peter 3:18-20:  “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.”  Peter tells us that after Christ died, he traveled in some spiritual capacity to spirits “in prison” in order to proclaim his victory over sin.  Of course, this raises the question of the identity of these spirits.  And this question can only really be answered with a bit of reading in parts of the Bible far older than Peter’s letters.

            Genesis 6 briefly refers to a series of events quite foreign to our own experience.  As it states, “Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.  Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.’  The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”  Considering that the expression “sons of God” is used elsewhere in the Old Testament to refer exclusively to some sort of angelic beings (Job 1:6, 38:4-7, and probably Deut. 32:8), as strange as it seems to us and regardless of how we choose to handle it, Genesis 6 states that at some point angelic beings somehow reproduced with humans.

            The Epistle of Jude picks up this theme and states (in verses 6 and 7) that “angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He [God] has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.”  Jude draws a connection between certain fallen angels and the men of Sodom and Gomorrah, declaring that both groups are under God’s judgment for the same violation: gross immorality and going after strange flesh—that is, pursuing inappropriate sexual partners.

            2 Peter contains a related passage that states, “…God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes…”  Now it’s important to note that Peter’s second letter bears many similarities to Jude both in terms of its content and overall structure.  Whatever the explanation for this may be, it’s almost certain that when 2 Peter refers to sinful angels and then, immediately afterward, refers to Sodom, the angels in view are the same group that Jude mentioned who “went after strange flesh”.  Also, Peter’s close association of these angels with the Flood makes their identification with the so-called “sons of God” of Genesis 6 unavoidable.  It would seem then that whatever specifically happened in the primordial past of our world, certain angelic beings have been imprisoned by God in some capacity (Peter uses the word “hell”) awaiting the final judgment. (cf. Isaiah 24:21-22)

            Considering that 1 Peter and 2 Peter are obviously related, when 1 Peter 3 refers to “spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah”, these would seem to be the same entities which 2 Peter 2 (and Jude) reveal to be angels in hell awaiting judgment for their Antediluvian sins.  As such, Christ’s descent into hell should be seen as something triumphant and not something tragic.  Far from a prisoner going to His cell, Jesus goes to hell as a Governor might travel to a state prison to triumphantly inform a group of despicable death-row inmates that their last appeal has been denied, their sentences will not be commuted, and that they are all now doomed.

(All Scripture citations are from the New American Standard Bible.)

Last Sunday was a joint service in which the English-speaking side of the congregation and the Spanish-speaking side of the congregation worshipped the Lord together.  Pastor Rodolfo Lagos delievered the sermon and everyone seemed to have a good time.

“When God Messes Up Your Plans” [ Listen || Download ]

Morning English Service- “To Live is Christ” (Acts 21:7-14)
[ Listen || Download || Notes & Review Questions ]

Spanish Service- “Dios ¿Por Qué Estas Lejos?” (Salmo 42)
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Evening English Service- “Unpleasant Blessings” (Romans 5:1-5)
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