Audio Transcript
Today’s question is from an outsider, Sarah. Sarah is not a Christian. She says she may never become a Christian either. But she has Christian friends, and they encouraged her to send this question in to Ask Pastor John: Why do Christians make such a big deal out of sex? Why all the prohibitions about something so natural and personal?
Here’s what Sarah, a student at Texas A&M in College Station, Texas, wrote: “Pastor John, thank you for considering this question from me, a college student who didn’t grow up as a Christian, and someone not really convinced that I will become a Christian either. But here I am, surrounded by Christians at school, and I even have a few good Christian friends. I’ve asked them this and they suggested that I ask you this, too. Here it goes. I often wonder why Christians get so hung up on sex and what constitutes what is forbidden or wrong, which is many if not most sex acts, as far as I can tell, certainly anything and everything outside monogamous heterosexual marriage. From the outside it looks like a lot of unnecessary prohibitions around something so physical, natural, instinctive, and personal. Can you explain why sex is such a big deal for Christians?”
Sarah, you are probably more right than you know. Christians do make a big deal out of sexual behavior — probably a bigger deal than you realize. So, your question is a good one. Why is sex such a big deal for Christians? Why do Christians preserve the act of sexual intercourse for monogamous heterosexual marriage? Let me try to answer this first with a personal question for you, Sarah, and then a longer explanation from the Bible.
Sarah, wouldn’t you say that deep inside your female personhood is a desire not to be sexually used by a man simply for his physical gratification? Don’t you sense that giving your most intimate self to a man would be most beautiful and most satisfying if that man cared deeply about you as a person and not just as a vagina? In other words, don’t you already have, as it were, written on your heart, the framework of healthy sexuality — namely, being treasured as a person in a committed relationship?
Now, if that’s true, if I’m not putting words in your mouth, then the answer to your question is that Christians have been given by God, in the Bible, a full-blown theology that accounts for those very feelings you already have (at least in nugget form, in seed form).
So, let me turn to the Bible and sketch out the teaching of the Bible that explains why sexuality is such a big deal for Christians.
Marriage as a Parable
Let’s start with the creation. In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, it says, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). So, male and female, with all of our profound differences that go way beyond anatomy and hormones, was God’s idea for our good. Then, in the second chapter of the Bible, God introduces marriage like this: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). So, one man, one woman, holding fast to each other in such an intimate union that it can be called “one flesh.”
Now, what God will reveal later (and was not clear at the beginning) was that God created marriage this way as a kind of parable for God’s own relationship to his people, the people who trust him. We see this picture in Ezekiel. The prophet Ezekiel in the Old Testament wrote that God says to his chosen people, Israel, “When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine” (Ezekiel 16:8).
“God is not against the body; he’s for the body. He created sexual desire.”
So, the significance of sexuality, expressed in a covenant relationship between a man and a woman, is catapulted higher than we can imagine, because it is designed to represent God and his people in covenant union with each other that will last forever. That’s huge. That’s the ultimate purpose of sexuality, which nobody would know without God’s revelation of these things in his word.
Jesus Our Bridegroom
When Jesus now comes into the world as the very embodiment of God, he presents himself as the bridegroom of the people of God. God is going to flesh out, as it were, this parable of his marriage relationship with his people. Now it’s going to be Christ and the church — the Christian church — who represent male and female in marriage. So, when people ask Jesus why his disciples are not fasting, he says, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast” (Matthew 9:15).
Then, in Ephesians 5, the apostle Paul gives the fullest description of marriage as a parable of the relationship between Christ and his church. He writes,
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:25–27)
So, you can see what a huge significance the Bible is giving to the meaning of sexuality as male and female, and why the consummation of that relationship belongs in a lifelong covenant relationship: It represents Christ and the church, and we don’t want to represent Christ as unfaithful to his covenant people. Christ doesn’t sleep around. He has one people; he’s faithful. So, the church shouldn’t sleep around either. That’s what human sexuality represents.
Temple of the Spirit
It makes sense when we come to 1 Corinthians 6:13–15 and hear this strong, amazing language that Paul uses to guide the sexual behavior of the Christians in Corinth. He says, “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power” (1 Corinthians 6:13–14). That’s amazing. It’s an amazing statement that the body is for the Lord and the Lord is for the body. God is not against the body; he’s for the body. He created sexual desire, and he means for it to be channeled in its most powerful and beautiful expressions in marriage. Paul goes on in verse 15, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!”
Sarah, if you become a Christian — and I pray you do, and your friends are praying you do — it means that you will be profoundly united to Jesus Christ. He will be your righteousness and your treasure and your hope, and your body will be profoundly part of him, a representation of his body. How then will you use it?
And here’s one more quote to answer that question, from the apostle Paul near the end of 1 Corinthians 6:18–20: “Flee from sexual immorality. . . . Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” Christians believe that when Christ died, he paid the penalty for our sin so that we could have eternal joy with him. He bought us, so to speak, with his blood. We belong to him, body and soul. Therefore, our bodies exist for his glory.
No Arbitrary Rules
I hope this gives you a glimpse, Sarah, of the massive and beautiful theological foundation of human sexuality that Christians believe. We don’t have a few arbitrary dos and don’ts. We have a beautiful picture of the love of God embracing an undeserving people, providing them with everlasting happiness in a kind of marriage relationship with Jesus Christ, along with all the exquisite joy that represents. And in the meantime, what we do with our bodies ought to represent that precious reality, and I am sure your Christian friends there at Texas A&M would love for you to join them in that joy.
