ChristianityToday
What is chastity? One way of putting it is that chastity is doing sex in the body of Christ—doing sex in a way that befits the body of Christ, and that keeps you grounded, and bounded, in the community.
Sex is, in Paul's image, a joining of your body to someone else's. In baptism, you have become Christ's body, and it is Christ's body that must give you permission to join his body to another body. In the Christian grammar, we have no right to sex. The place where the church confers that privilege on you is the wedding; weddings grant us license to have sex with one person. Chastity, in other words, is a fact of gospel life. In the New Testament, sex beyond the boundaries of marriage—the boundaries of communally granted sanction of sex—is simply off limits. To have sex outside those bounds is to commit an offense against the body. Abstinence before marriage, and fidelity within marriage; any other kind of sex is embodied apostasy.
Chastity, then, is a basic rule of the community, but it is not a mere rule. It is also a discipline. (more)
