Sexual Sins as the Path to Hell

Posted on July 4, 2025 by Father Joe

Our Lord employs Hebraic hyperbole in Matthew 5:27-30. Jesus would not have us literally cut off a hand or pluck out an eye. But he wants to emphasize the gravity of sin. The subject is adultery or more to the point, sexual sin. He says, “It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna.” I must admit that as a confessor I have weighed more heavily the sins of malice than those of human weakness. But we must be careful of common rationalizations. Many even make comedy about the easy availability of pornography, infidelity and hormonal boys who cannot control themselves. Christ warns us that a human weakness due to concupiscence can quickly become something deadly. This warning goes against the current of a society that either excuses sexual sin or normalizes it. Indeed, ours is an erotic age where much of the moral dissent against the Church has to do with human sexuality. Those in same-sex intimate relationships want their bonds publicly recognized. Those in irregular unions (divorced and remarried) want their adultery dismissed for the good of their children and to preserve fellowship with other churchgoers. This is not new but is a return to the Mosaic decree that was permitted because of the hardness of hearts. Jesus dismissed it as illegitimate and pronounced it as the sin of adultery. It was not what God intended in Genesis. Just as in the primordial garden, do we listen to God or to the serpent? Many today would share sexual congress without the benefit of marriage. They give away what belongs to a covenant of grace. Sexual sins are mortal sins. If we die with such sins on the soul, then we go to hell. No amount of ministerial accompaniment will change this trajectory unless we preach the truth, counsel repentance, and finally urge amendment of life. The message of the Gospel is not that we accept others no matter what. No, the message is changeless, “Repent and believe!”

God would not have us maim or castrate ourselves; rather, he would have us cut out sinful desires and behavior. Sin begins in the heart. We all need spiritual heart surgery. We need to learn how to properly love. Does an addict to pornography care one bit about the girls he sees in images and videos? He fails to appreciate that this is virtual prostitution and that he has reduced people to commodities or meat. He has devalued them. A man who takes a woman to his bed without marrying her, both corrupts himself and steals the precious gift of purity from the one he takes to himself. Neither of them will be able to give to a spouse the chaste gift of self. We are our bodies, and they will crave a nuptial unity that is missing. The promiscuous are robbers to the ones they will one day call “spouse.” The divorced and remarried, lacking an annulment, can only feign their union. They give to one what is pledged to another. They too are thieves, even when it seems benevolent. They stand as a contradiction to the Gospel. Jesus is the groom, and the Church is his bride. Every couple in the sacrament of marriage is called to witness something of this fidelity, until death do they part. The matter of same-sex unions is even more problematical. The Church is not opposed to brotherly and sisterly love; but human sexual expression is reserved to men and women in marriage. Anything else is a disorientation. All these relationships might be defended as LOVE but in truth they signify a failure to love. True love would not risk one’s salvation and eternal life. True love would never chance damning the beloved. Such sins are false love, literally loving each other into hell.