WATCH: Sadie Robertson Huff Discusses Purity—And How the Church Got It Wrong

Sadie Robertson Huff Identifies Terrible Messages from the Church

The Rose

Sadie told of a well-intending pastor who used a rose as an analogy for one’s virginity. During a talk, this pastor held up a rose, praising its beauty and purity. As he spoke, he passed the rose to those in the audience, and they took petals off the rose and bent the rose. By the time the rose came back to the pastor, it didn’t look quite the same. He asked, “Who would want this damaged rose now?”

“The pastor was just so rude about it,” Sadie admonished. It was as if once someone loses his or her virginity, the person becomes worthless. “If you’ve had sex outside of marriage, you’re damaged. You’re no good.”

Thankfully, in a viral video, pastor and author Matt Chandler successfully turned this analogy on its side. With tears in his eyes, Matt said, “Jesus would want this rose.”

Sadie apologized to her viewers. “I just want to say like if you’re if you believed that analogy, I am so genuinely sorry. The power of the cross can redeem all things, can make all things new. So, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done or how far you’ve gone. It doesn’t matter who you’ve slept with or what your hidden sins are. When you bring that to the cross, when you come under the blood of Christ, when you confess that, repent from that, turn, the old is gone the new has come.”

Sinning Against Future Spouse

Sadie knows quite a few couples—where one person has has had sex before and the other hasn’t. This can be a difficult situation for both parties.

“A message in the church is, ‘You’re doing that to your future spouse.’ But that’s not right. It’s a harmful message of the church. That’s between you and the Lord,” Sadie corrected.

Sex Is Bad

When the only message from the church is that sex is bad or simply to not have sex, this approach can have lasting consequences, Korie and Sadie warned.

Korie shared that she sees “people coming into a relationship where they’ve been so uptight about sex, because they’ve been so scared of sex. It was taught as something bad or something dirty in some ways. And so they come into a marriage, and they don’t even know how to be free—to receive it or enjoy sex.”

“The biblical view of sex is good. You’re naked and felt no shame. Yeah, it’s meant to be in marriage. But, there is repentance, there’s change, and there is a covering of whatever of your past has been by the blood of Jesus,” Korie reflected.

Sadie closed the podcast episode by affirming that walking with Christ is a journey—not something that’s one-and-done.

“It’s continuously taking God at his word—continuously receiving the gift that God has for us and receiving the goodness and the originality that he meant,” she affirmed. “I hope that this helps you guys understand a little bit more fully what God designed for sex and marriage. And I hope that it, you know, helps you get on a path to desire God’s will for your life.”