The original sexual revolution began at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-3) when the Holy Spirit started a movement of restoring men and women to an exclusive sexual union of marriage. This is one man married to one woman in a sacred physical and spiritual connection which brings maturity in love and grows families. This marriage, intended from creation, reflects the mutual and self-giving love which is reflected in the Trinity, where God said:

²⁶“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…  ²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them… (Genesis 1:26-27)

This brought a complete overturning of the sexual morality of the first century world, as we will soon see. The epicenter of this revolution is described in Jesus’ teaching on the sacredness of marriage. This would be used by the Holy Spirit to radically expand liberation and freedom in the world on a whole new level, especially for women and children. Perhaps few developments would prove to be more important in the ongoing movement of God’s Story of Grace.

In this article we will look at the moral condition of the Roman world when it came to sexual practices, and how the ethic of Jesus would bring a transforming liberation to millions through the ongoing impact of the Holy Spirit increasing a mutual and self-giving love in the world

Sexual Inequity In the Roman Empire

Marriage Inequity

Sexual relations were a major source of inequity between men and women. In the pagan world in which Christianity developed, girls were commonly married off at very young ages to much older men. In some cases girls were married before puberty. This was, of course, without their consent. Many famous Roman women had been child brides:

• Octavia, daughter of Emperor Claudius, married at eleven.
• Nero’s mother Agrippina married at twelve.
• Quintilian, the famed rhetorician must have married a twelve-year-old girl who bore him a son at the age of thirteen.
• The historian Tacitus married a thirteen-year-old.

Plutarch (AD 46–120) reported that Romans “gave their girls in marriage when they were twelve years old, or even younger.” The historian Dio Cassius (AD 155–229) agreed: “Girls are considered to have reached marriageable age on completion of their twelfth year.” This was considered normal, and the practice had very few objectors.

One reason Roman men married young girls was because there was a shortage of women. This was caused by high levels of infanticide (killing of infants) of girls, often times by abandoning them to nature. Even in large families more than one daughter was hardly ever reared. According to historian Rodney Stark, “a study based on inscriptions was able to reconstruct six hundred families and found that of these, only six had raised more than one daughter.” This meant there always was a considerable surplus of marriageable men. The best estimate is that there were 131 males per 100 females in Rome. The surplus was even higher in other areas of the Roman Empire. Because of this acute shortage, it was common for women to marry again and again, not only following the death of a husband, but also after a divorce. In fact, state policy penalized women under fifty who did not remarry, so second and third marriages became common, especially since most women married men far older than themselves. For example, Cicero’s daughter, Tullia, was not untypical. She married at 16 ,widowed at 22, remarried at 23, divorced at 28; married again at 29, divorced at 33. She died soon after childbirth at 34. Another woman was said to have married eight times within five years.

Class Inequity

In the ancient world sexual agency was solely in the hands of powerful men. Sexual offenses, including rape, could carry a death penalty. Prostitutes, however, were not given this legal protection and the rape of a slave would only be considered a crime if it was deemed to cause property damage against the slave’s owner. Women who married weren’t expected to attain any pleasure or enjoyment, they simply wedded in order to abide by the legal code and procreate. Moreover, the subservient wife was expected to turn a blind eye to her husband’s sexual infidelity. Males were allowed to sleep around as much as they liked so long as their mistress was unmarried.

Tom Holland has summarized the prevailing outlook:

Sex was nothing if not an exercise of power. As captured cities were to the swords of the legions, so the bodies of those used sexually were to the Roman man. To be penetrated, male or female, was to be branded as inferior: to be marked as womanish, barbarian, servile … In Rome, men no more hesitated to use slaves and prostitutes to relieve themselves of their sexual needs than they did to use the side of a road as a toilet.

Divorce and Remarriage

The teaching of Jesus on the sacredness of marriage and sexuality stood in the sharpest contrast from the picture just painted. In distinction from the rampant adultery and divorce of pagan society¹, Jesus words came as a devastating rebuke:

And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery. (Matthew 19:9).

The early church was unswerving in its commitment to the standard set by Jesus. This standard of Jesus caused the early Christians to reject the double standard that gave men sexual license. In consequence, Paul taught the equality of union between a husband and a wife:

² But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. ³ The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. ⁴ The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. (1 Corinthians 7:2-4)

No one in the culture of the day would have struggled with the first part of v.4:

The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband.

The second declaration was completely new and shocking to those not sufficiently adapted to the new faith.

In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.

With this new ethic, Rodney Stark makes this interesting assessment:

In fact, devout Christian married couples may have had sex more often than did the average pagan couple, because brides were more mature when they married and because husbands were less likely to take up with other women. 

Focused Look at Matthew 19

The chapter begins with the Pharisees coming to test Jesus on divorce and remarriage.

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” (Matthew 19:3)

Jesus responds:

⁴ “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ ⁵ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? ⁶ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

When Jesus references the beginning, he is taking his hearers back to the Bible’s first chapters of Genesis when God created the original man and woman:

²² Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

²³ The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones
    and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
    for she was taken out of man.”

²⁴ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Here, the phrase one flesh is descriptive of the union of bodies sexually which ties together the life-long marriage. From God’s eyes, sex is marital and marriage is sexual. But Jesus adds a sacred dimension with the phrase: what God has joined together. So, our human partnerships are not merely human; they are orchestrated by God. This means that before God there is no casual sex, and there is no easy divorce. With this stricter standard, Jesus’ questioners press him by appealing to the law of Moses:

⁷ “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” ⁸ Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. ⁹ I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 19:7-9)

According to Jesus, not everything in the Old Testament represents the original intention of the Creator. Some Old Testament legislation was a concession to human stubbornness—because your hearts were hard. Jesus’ intention is the restoration of the original pattern as taught in Genesis. Since marriage is for life, divorce is allowed only for exceptions. This means that the Savior is taking all of the sexual energy between men and women and focusing it in on one sacred union. Only in this union does sex become life-giving, bringing the married couple into mature oneness and creating children. This would have major implications in the way men were to treat their wives:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. (Ephesians 5:25)

The ethic of Christianity was a radical overturning of the power dynamic men had over women. Men are now to be servants of their wives. Glenn Scrivener descriptively writes: “Into this world came the Christian revolution, where sex is painted on the canvas of divine romance and where two equals unite in a sacred and unbreakable bond.”

The Changes It Brought to Society

Over time the ethic of Jesus brought incredible improvements to society. Here are three:

The lives of girls and women improved. Unsurprisingly the Jesus movement captured the heart of large numbers of women who had been disregarded or abused. In the 2nd century, Celsus (a critic of Christianity) wrote disparagingly that Christians “are able to convince only the foolish, dishonorable, and stupid, only slaves, women, and little children.” This sneering remark was a boast for the early church. They were honored to give a voice to the voiceless. There was a considerable improvement in the quality of life for many women. A pioneering study based on Roman funerary inscriptions demonstrated that 20 percent of the pagan women were twelve or younger when they married. Four percent were only ten. In contrast, only 7 percent of Christians were under thirteen. Half of pagan women were married before age fifteen, compared with 20 percent of Christians—and nearly half of Christian women (48 percent) had not married until they were eighteen or older. As the power of the Spirit transformed hearts with the ethic of Jesus, most Christian girls married when they were physically and emotionally mature. Most had a say in whom they married which made for more secure marriages.

The Christian population increased. The average fertility of pagan women was so low as to have resulted in a declining population, thus necessitating the admission of “barbarians” as settlers of empty estates in the empire and especially to fill the army. In contrast, the growing Christian communities did not have their sex ratios distorted by female infanticide.

Pedophilia became outlawed. In the ancient world sex with boys and girls was celebrated by writers like Juvenal, Petronius, Horace, Strato, Lucian, and Philostratus. The word they used was pederasty: love of children. Christians were uniformly disgusted by the practice. What the classical world called love, Christians called abuse. In the reign of the Christian emperor Justinian (527–565), pederasty was outlawed and could be prosecuted well after the abuse took place. Here the church influenced the state to legislate against the sexualization of children.

Conclusion

As God’s Spirit empowered men and women to live in the marriage ethic of Jesus, humanity continued to advance in God’s Story of Grace to reflect the mutual and self-giving love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

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1. A survey of marriage contracts, conducted by Semitic scholar Markham J. Geller, going all the way back to ancient Babylon found that they always contained a divorce clause specifying payments and divisions of property with the cause of divorce needing to be nothing more than a husband’s whim.