Invitation from John Piper

[Return to the 2004 National Conference Archive.]

Dear Friends,

Sex is good because God made human bodies with sexual drives. Amazingly the Bible says that Christ is “for the body,” not against the body. It says this in the very place where it warns against sexual sin. “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Corinthians 6:13). For many, this is astonishing: “The Lord is for the body.” So let the note be struck at the outset: Jesus Christ is pro-body, not contra-body. He paid with his life to have our bodies for himself: “You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20).

The Bible has a way of shocking us. If Americans could still blush, we might blush at the words, “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” (Proverbs 5:18-19). This is the kind of command that could change one’s attitude about God’s authority!

But, of course, sin has a way of trashing God’s gifts. So we can’t just celebrate sex for what God made it to be; we have to fight what sin turned it into. We will do both at this conference: celebrate and struggle.

Believe it or not, there is a connection between last year’s Desiring God National Conference on Jonathan Edwards and this one on “Sex and the Supremacy of Christ.” Edwards knew as well as we do that people pursue pleasure—all people. They simply pursue it in different places. He also knew that sex is one of the most powerful pleasures in the world.

So when he preached to save people from the suicide of sexual sin, he fought fire with fire. He knew that the powerful promise of sexual pleasure must be defeated by the power of a superior promise. The pursuit of pleasure in God must take up arms against the promise of supreme pleasure in sex. It isn’t supreme.

Edwards argued that it is essential that sin be defeated by the promise of superior pleasure in God. Will-power will not suffice. Even when it “succeeds,” will-power religion gets glory for the will, not God. It produces legalists, not lovers. Edwards saw the powerlessness of this approach and said:

We come with double forces against the wicked, to persuade them to a godly life . . . The common argument is the profitableness of religion, but alas, the wicked man is not in pursuit of profit; ’tis pleasure he seeks. Now, then, we will fight with them with their own weapons.

One aim of this conference is to unpack Edwards’ wisdom. Our aim is to use biblical truth to help free the church from her cultural and sexual captivity, while affirming the God-given goodness of sexuality.

Saturated with prayer and corporate worship, the six plenary sessions and four seminars aim to strangle sexual sin and strengthen the bonds of holy joy. That is not the main aim. We aim, in this way, to magnify the infinite worth of Christ. What does it profit to conquer sexual temptation without a superior satisfaction in Jesus? That would just exchange immoral idols for moral idols. The end of both is destruction. Penitent prostitutes go into heaven before proud prudes (Matthew 21:31).

In other words, there will be lots of gospel in this conference. Lots of forgiveness. Lots of Christ! I look forward to worshipping with you. May Jesus move in power for the sake of happy purity and holy pleasure. The Lord is for the body!

For the glory of Christ,

John Piper