Now here's a topic even the attractional churchgoers don't mind getting "missional" about.
Our good God has created us sexual beings with sexual drives. Sex is not a result of the fall and sexual desire existed before Adam and Eve sinned, so there's nothing dirty or evil or wrong about sex. But the fall has warped our desires, and our sin tempts our sexuality toward all manner of perversion.
Historically and culturally our world has looked at sex in one of three ways: we can idolize it, we can marginalize it, or we can sanctify it. The culture of the kingdom of the world urges us to make an idol of sex. The culture of Christianity has traditionally urged us to deny sexuality, to marginalize it as a necessary evil. But sex is a gift from God, and it is meant to be a profound expression of covenant intimacy between husbands and wives. The testimony of Scripture is that sex not only can be performed, it should be enjoyed to God's glory.
To have sex to the glory of God, then, we should remember that:
1. Sex is For Marriage There is no other allowable means for sexual acts in Scripture than between a man and a woman who are joined together in covenant marriage. God set this up with Adam and Eve and he reiterates it throughout the covenant narrative of Scripture into the New Testament. Both the Levitical Law in the OT and the epistolary exhortations in the NT reinforce to us that sex of any and all kinds outside of marriage is a sin, which is a falling short of the glory of God. Only in the covenant of one-flesh marriage is nakedness shameless.
2. Sex is For Fruitfulness When God first gave Adam and Eve the great gift of sex, he instructed them to "be fruitful and multiply." This is the initial way that God commends sex to us as not being for ourselves, but for the good of others, first for our spouse and then for our children and the generations after. In Malachi 2, the prophet confirms this plan, saying that God unites married couples in the unity of sexual expression because God wants godly offspring. God's plan for the world, according to Habakkuk, is to cover everything with the knowledge of his glory, and one great way to do that is for worshipers of God to make more and more worshipers of God.
Of course this instruction has been cause for legalism and heartache for some married couples. What this commendation doesn't mean is "Have as many kids as possible" or "Sex is only for making babies." To limit sex to this fine point is to tie a millstone around infertile couples or even couples where spouses have rival sex drives or where one spouse may suffer from sexual dysfunction stemming from medical issues or even past abuse.
There are more ways to be fruitful with marital sex than just having babies (although procreation is the chief way to be sexually fruitful). Couples who are sexually faithful bear spiritual fruit for other couples who need godly role models. Couples who are sexually faithful experience and radiate a joy and an affection that makes their children feel safe and secure. Couples who are sexually faithful demonstrate obedience to Jesus, which is a fantastic way to glorify God and testify to his goodness. Couples who are sexually faithful strengthen their churches. Couples where each spouse's sexual needs are being fulfilled are not as tempted to satisfy their sexual desires in sinful ways that bring shame to the household of faith and bear spiritual death, not fruit.
The key point is that sex is not given to us to be used selfishly or legalistically or to be an end of itself. It is given to us so that we may serve our spouse with our body and so we may bring glory to God and that God's glory would bear fruit.
3. Sex is For Intimacy The picture of marital sexuality is "one flesh," both physically in the act of sexual intercourse and emotionally and spiritually in the expression of service and submission to each other. This ties into fruitfulness quite a bit, but the key to intimacy is understanding that God did not design relationships to be run legalistically. Concern and preoccupation with one's own needs being met, be they sexual or not, is being a relational Pharisee. That is treating others as dispensers of our own needs; it's being a user of people, rather than a servant of them.
Marital sex, on the other hand, is about ministering to the needs and pleasures of our spouse, physically expressing to them submissive service with our own bodies (as per 1 Corinthians 7:3-5). Serving each other sexually builds each other up, edifies each other, satisfies each other, protects each other from temptation, and fulfills the romantic longing of love for each other.
When a wife sexually ministers to her husband, he feels respected and comforted and empowered to better love her. When a husband sexually ministers to his wife, she feels cherished and safe and exhilarated. This marital intimacy is a wonderful picture of reconciliation, which is the goal of God for relationships. Sexual intimacy selflessly shared in the covenant of marriage, then, is a living picture of glorying in the gospel. It is a living picture of the "ministry of reconciliation" the Apostle Paul talks about.
4. Sex is For Pleasure This is the one the Church has tried to deny for a long time. But the refutation was right under their noses, right in their very own Bibles! The Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs) is an entire biblical book dedicated to the joys of marital sexual intimacy. Early church fathers (and some current ones!), in their disgust, tried to say the book was an allegory about Jesus and his Bride, but frankly, when I read it, that seems a lot more disgusting than what it actually appears to be about.
Sex is supposed to feel good. It didn't suddenly feel good after the fall of mankind. God made sex enjoyable and gave us the means to enjoy it on purpose. And that purpose is . . . so we would enjoy it!
In Proverbs 5:18-19 the young man is instructed thusly:
Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.
This is not symbolic. It is not a metaphor. The young man is being told to find joy in his wife, and even told to enjoy her breasts. "Breasts" in the original Hebrew and in its poetic sense here means breasts.
Now, it's important to note that there's no qualifications here. The young man is not told to enjoy his wife breasts if they are big or perky or tanned, and it doesn't say he shouldn't enjoy them if they are little or droopy or wrinkled. It says "at all times." So the exhortation is two-fold: enjoy your wife's body, but enjoy it always. No trading in your wife. No shaming her changing body. No lusting after someone else's breasts. No, instead, be drunk with love for your wife always. This tells us that marriage is meant to be permanent, and therefore if you aren't happy with your spouse, change your mind. Your spouse becomes your standard of beauty, and if that is what you resolve your mind to do, you will be delighted at all times. This puts the impetus on us to love selflessly, not on our spouse to perform to our satisfaction.
There are plenty in the Church today who still find this suspect. Older ladies are handing down the "wisdom" to young married women to just bear it, to put up with sex as something for the husband. This is evil. And it does not glorify God.
If God designed sex to feel good and designed sex for marriage, how would it glorify him if we had sex begrudgingly or willfully not enjoying it? If it is a gift to us, isn't it disrespectful to seek to avoid it? Not to mention disobedient, as Paul tells married couples not to deprive each other.
Sex is a great gift from our great God, and he wants us to enjoy it. When we do enjoy it, in the ways Scripture tells us to, we make God happy.
Jared Wilson is the pastor and co-founder of Element, a missional Christian community in
Nashville, Tennessee, and an award-winning writer whose articles, essays, and
short stories have appeared in numerous publications.
Jared's first book, The Unvarnished Jesus, releases Fall 2009 from Kregel.
A graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, he lives outside
Nashville with his wife and two daughters.
Encounter Jared's passion for the ongoing reformation of the evangelical church
almost daily at www.gospeldrivenchurch.com.
» left by Anonymous (13 hours 2 minutes ago.) New Comment!
So what is explained here, is that by having sex as married couple, we actually give God glory or we can worship God by having sex?please i need help here.
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