“Kissing someone you are intersted in dating.”

February 2021 – Grace & Truth Magazine

QUESTION: How would you respond to someone who thinks that doing things such as kissing or running fingers through the hair of someone they are interested in dating, is no big deal? I suppose everyone has an opinion, but I would rather see scriptural support.

ANSWER: Your questions made me think, but I feel the Lord has given a few Scriptures to share with you. The first is 1 Timothy 5:1-2. Remember that Scripture was not written divided into chapters and verses. First Timothy is a letter from Paul to his son in the faith, Timothy. Furthermore, it is a letter the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write. These two verses are a continuation of the instruction Paul began in chapter 3:14-15, about Timothy’s personal conduct as a Christian acting responsibly as serving the Lord within the Assembly and wanting to please the Lord in his service. Reading down through chapter 4, things are very personal. Chapter 5 continues to instruct this young brother how to act in relation to different age groups in the Assembly: older men, older women, younger men and then younger women. Notice the little phrase added to this last group as a caution: “with all purity.”

There is no mention or even hint in Scripture that Timothy would have been married when Paul wrote this letter to him. So the verse is especially appropriate today for a single young man considering dating.

As human beings we have built-in drives like hunger and thirst that impel us to do something to satisfy these needs. One very strong drive is the sexual drive. It is something that God has built into us, and one of the first that He took into consideration. Genesis 2 shows us God saying, evidently on the very day he created Adam, that it is not good for a man to be alone, so He carefully built a helpmeet for Adam and brought her to him. (There’s a wonderful typical meaning in this too, but I’m staying with the natural side of this for now.) Our Creator knew this need He implanted into His human creatures, so He instituted marriage. I can just imagine Adam saying, “WOW!” when God brought this beautiful creature to him, and he recognized immediately that, unlike all the animals, she was really a part of him and that God had brought her to him.

I do not know how long there was between Genesis 2 and Genesis 3, but I don’t think Satan wasted much time before attempting to introduce sin into God’s lovely creation, which He had pronounced as very good. The sexual relationship between husband and wife, Adam and Eve, is not recorded at the end of chapter 2, before man sinned. Instead, we find it at the beginning of chapter 4 – after the fall and all that went with it in chapter 3, including being expelled from the garden of Eden. Now, after the fall they felt their sinfulness and its consequences: being expelled from Paradise together, Adam having to work for a living and Eve being told that she would have to bear children. Alone together, they became intimate and there were consequences.

You mention dating. In the good sense, dating should eventually lead to marriage. It should not immediately lead to sex, for sex outside of marriage is called fornication by God, and is sin –regardless of society’s changing standards as mankind slides downhill. Kissing, running your hands through a girl’s hair, hugging and other things cannot be done when keeping a distance. Close contact like this is a stimulus to the sex drive that God has implanted in us human beings, and this is true for both sexes. Handle with care! The instruction to Timothy was to treat younger sisters “with all purity.” This is plain enough. God does not have to be more explicit.

One other passage while on this subject is Genesis 26. In a time of famine Isaac went to Gerar in the land of the Philistines. God appeared to him and promised to bless him wonderfully. Yet Isaac fell into the same trap that his father Abraham had fallen into earlier. Isaac said that his beautiful wife Rebekah was his sister, hoping thereby to keep from getting killed. In verse 8, Abimelech the king looked out of the window and saw Isaac “showing endearment” to his wife (NKJV). Other translations say “dallying with” (JND), “sporting with” (KJV), “caressing” (NASB, NIV), “making love” (TIB). Abimelech reprimanded Isaac for lying to him. Obviously to this heathen king such conduct by Isaac showed that Rebekah was his wife – not his sister nor his date.

Even today most young men are more inclined to kiss and run their hands through the hair of a young lady they are dating than doing this to a casual friend. So, I am sure that “with all purity” is still quite appropriate in a relationship between a young man and a young lady interested in each other, especially if they are Christians.

Answered by Eugene P. Vedder, Jr.