The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 215 -
The sin against chastity.
I say, "If the life of a person is no flirting joke, but instead a very holy earnest, the act of creation can also be no flirtation, but also only a very sacred seriousness. Understand the reason, and you will soon within you clearly comprehend all of it.
2
The pleasant sensations of the act itself should not be the motive for the action, but alone that a human being is conceived!
3
If you grasp this, you will soon find that the pleasant sensations are only accompaniments which facilitate the begetting of man in the nature of the flesh. If you are urged on by the main reason, then go and act and you will commit no sin. But there are nevertheless some points to be properly considered.
4
This act must not happen outside the sphere of true love for one's neighbor; but a main reason for true love for one's neighbor is this: Do to your neighbors what you would have them do unto you!
5
Well, suppose you had a blossoming daughter who is a joy to your fatherly heart. You will care for nothing more than for the true happiness of your most beloved daughter. Your daughter may be mature and, therefore, capable of conception, but how would you feel if an otherwise healthy man came, driven by the urge to beget a child with a virgin, and by force begot a fruit with your daughter?
6
You see, that would fill you with a fearful rage against such an offender, and you would never again let him out of your sight without the sharpest possible chastisement!
7
And nonetheless this person would have committed no sin against decency because he was seriously urged not to sow his seed outside a good vessel, whereby a possibility of conceiving a person would be cut off. But the act is nonetheless sinful, on the other hand, because true neighborly love was grossly violated!
8
Imagine that a serious desire meets you abroad, you met a woman there on a field, and you persuaded her through money and words to give in to your desire, and the woman agreed, you would have not committed a sin against decency, nor adultery, even if the person was the proper wife of a man. But if you had thought about what great and highly dismal embarrassment and prosecutions the woman would suffer if her husband said to her: Woman, speak truly, who laid this seed in you, since I have not touched you since this or that time? You see that you have destroyed the domestic peace between the married couple; that is a crude sin against love for one's neighbor! For you should have been able to save yourself for a more decent opportunity even if your desire was serious and not mere lustful passion.
9
You can see from this that a man, at such an otherwise very correct act not contradicting true chastity, must consider all other human side circumstances, if he does not want to sin against some law.
10
But a man can commit unchastity as well with his wife as with a whore and even worse. For with a whore there is nothing left to ruin, because everything has already been ruined anyway; but a wife can become overexcited and thereby run into a passionate desire, whereby she then can become a much greater whore than a single woman.
11
Whoever lies with a single woman sins against chastity because his act only served - and had to serve - the gratification of mere lust but not the begetting of a human being, as pure reason must tell him that one does not sow wheat on the highways.
12
Beside the sin against chastity, the one who lies with a whore violates his and the whore's human nature because he thereby easily does great damage to his nature and hardens the blind whore, making her more incorrigible, which again is a sin against the neighborly love.
13
But whoever lies with a woman who has been made a whore sins in the same way twofold and fourfold if he is himself a husband, because thereby he also commits adultery.
14
As you are a pure-thinking man, I think now that this little is enough for you, all the more so since a man like you anyway knows what is befitting for a man who is decent in every respect."
15
Jurah says, "Yes, Lord and Master, now everything is clear to me, and I also know now where the many bad species of unchastity must lead! Yes, now everything is clear! In all things there is only one truth valid before God, which is founded in the eternal order - everything less, more and besides is of evil!"
16
I say, "Yes, that's how it is and how it will also eternally remain. But now the sailors that were sent out are coming back with their dead people, My servant (Raphael) must now go there and help them to lay the corpses in the correct way, otherwise their healing tomorrow will be made more difficult!"
17
Raphael quickly hurries over and establishes everywhere the best order. The sailors however only then head to their evening meal.