Cohabitación is Fornication

U.S. divorce rates are dropping. Good news?

Hardly.

     Some have lauded the fact that the divorce rate in America has been dropping for over a decade. The ugly truth behind that statistic is that, rather than marrying, couples are simply living together. Since the 1960s, the number of cohabiting couples has increased 1,200 percent.

      The story behind that statistic is simple: Fewer American couples are getting married in the first place. In fact, the number of unmarried couples living together has increased 1,200 percent (to more than 5 million) since 1960. Today, more than half of all people getting married for the first time live with their sex partners first. An even higher percentage of divorced people who remarry cohabit first.

     And watch this trend escalate: A growing number of cohabiting couples have no plans for marriage. Many Americans (high school seniors included) now view marriage as a non-essential to child rearing and union bliss.

     The research comes from the report “The State of Our Unions” by the National Marriage Project at New Jersey’s state university.

     “In the modern world,” wrote the report’s authors, “people are reluctant to make strong commitments if they don’t have to; it’s easier to hang loose. The problem is that society ends up with adult intimate relationships that are much more fragile.” Evidence indicates that those who cohabit are more likely to break up once they get married than those who don’t cohabit first.

    The effect on the children that emerge from these unions is disastrous. These children “are highly dependent for their development and success in life on the family in which they are born and raised, and a convincing mass of scientific evidence now exists pointing to the fact that not growing up in an intact nuclear family is one of the most deleterious events that can befall a child” (ibid.).

    Forty percent of all children will probably spend some time in a cohabiting household, and those who grow up in that environment are all more likely to face serious problems in life than their peers in nuclear households.

    The report attributes the root cause of family breakdown to something “beyond politics and economics and even national culture …. Basic to this trend is the growth of a modern form of individualism, the single-minded pursuit of personal autonomy and self-interest, which takes place at the expense of established ...[biblical] institutions such as marriage” (emphasis ours). Marriage, in order to work, must be selfless.

from an internet blog called The Trumpet

July 28, 2005 

    Cohabitation is a euphemism for living in sin or in fornication. Yet one more sign of the selfishness and sinfulness that sweeps over the earth in the last days, as 2 Timothy 3:1-5 warns. Today older people cohabit in widowhood. Some church members live in sin, and even some children of missionaries. These certainly cannot claim ignorance of God's Word. The Bible speaks of marriage, husband and wife, not of lovers or partners. They say, "we're not hurting anyone, so what does it matter?" It matters because it offends God, it is unrighteousness, and they are hurting themselves and others to whom they give an example of unrighteousness.  They say, "It's my life and I'll do what I want." God says our lives are a gift from Him, and we should live to know Him and do His will, not our own.  They say, "I'm lonely and need someone."  So their solution is a sinful relationship of cohabitation and fornication. What happened to praying, waiting on and accepting the guidance of the Lord? Do they want the Lord to provide, or are they willing to take the provision of the world, the flesh and the devil?

    In 1 John 2:29 the apostle John states, "Ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him."  1 John 3:10  "In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God." This raises doubts about the reality of the profession of faith of any so-called Christian who cohabits. And the apostle Paul states clearly in 1 Corinthians 5:11 "But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat." Churches and families need to take a stand on God's Word and obey it, not their emotions.