5. Sex Is Good (The Christian Perspective on Sex)

Before we get started, I want everyone to take a few minutes and meet someone new. Greet each other and tell them you are glad that they are here tonight. Make sure to ask people their names.
[Allow a few minutes for this. ]

Now, write down the name of everyone with whom you shook hands or patted on the shoulder. Just keep those lists. We’ll come back to them in a little while.

The way some Christians talk about sex, one wonders how Christians ever have children. Ever since Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, the puritans of the New England colonies have been the public representatives of Christianity’s views on sex.
Let’s take a few minutes and write down some of the negative views on sex that Christians have held or taught. You guys holler them out, and I’ll write them down. [I’ll let them give as many as possible, and then I’ll add the rest from my list.]
Sex is a necessary evil.
Sex is dirty or bad.
Sex is only for procreation.
If a person gets pleasure out of sex, s/he is bad.
The “Virgin” Mary (supposedly never had sex even after Jesus was born because that would “defile” her).
Jesus was supposedly born by supernatural C-section, so that he would not have to pass through Mary’s sexual organs, and so that all the parts of virginity would still be in place for Mary.
God hates homosexuals.
We should be ashamed of our bodies and our sexuality.
The woman’s duty is to submit to her husband whenever he wants it.
No contraceptives; any “unnatural” birth control measures are wrong.

[Put a big red “X” over the board.] I am delighted to tell you that this is not the Christian perspective on sex. To understand the Christian perspective on sex, we need to understand what the ideal picture looks like.
First, we need to look at the very beginning when humans were first created. Genesis, the first book of the Bible, tells the story of creation. The passage I’m going to read is a collection of pieces of the Genesis 1 and 2 that are most relevant for our topic.
And the LORD God formed a man’s body from the dust of the ground and breathed into it the breath of life. And the man became a living person. … And the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion who will help him.” … So the LORD God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep. He took one of Adam’s ribs and closed up the place from which he had taken it. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib and brought her to Adam. “At last!” Adam exclaimed. “She is part of my own flesh and bone! She will be called ‘woman’ because she was taken out of a man.” This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. Now although Adam and his wife were both naked, neither of them felt any shame (Gen. 2:7, 18, 21-25).
So God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them. God blessed them and told them, “Multiply and fill the earth…” Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was excellent in every way (Gen. 1:27-28a, 31).

We can gather several important conclusions from the story of our creation. First of all, God created us as sexual beings. (To which I say, “Thanks be to God.”) God created us as male and female, in his image. I guess there was just too much of God to represent his likeness in one homogeneous sex.
God made us. He shaped and designed our bodies. He designed our sexual organs to fit together perfectly. God was not surprised when the first humans had sex! He wasn’t like, “Oh my goodness, what will they think of next?” He intended it all along. They were both naked without shame. He told them to go forth and multiply, and he said that everything he had made was excellent in every way.
Second, we are more than sexual beings. (To which I say, “Thanks be to God.”) God created Adam before Eve. Adam was still a human being before Eve was made. He needed a helper, but he was a complete person. The essence of who he was did not change when Eve came along. That means that our identity, our worth, and our sense of meaning as people is not limited to our sexuality. We can be whole people whether or not we have a satisfying sex life.
Third, as Paula Reinhart put it, “God designed sex to be a powerful bonding force, one meant to help ‘glue’ a man and a woman together for a lifetime.”1 Through sex, two become one in a physical, emotional, and spiritual sense. “Casual sex can’t do that. … Imagine what it would be like to repeatedly tear off and reattach your arm. [Imagine the scarring.] … It is the same when you repeatedly tear off and reattach your various sexual partners.”2 God’s design is for us to be joined to one person for life.
This next passage I want us to look at is from the Song of Songs. This book is a collection of erotic love poems that are traditionally attributed to King Solomon. We have worked up a little video to present this Scripture in a more contemporary way. All of the letters that he reads are paraphrases of Scripture. Let’s watch. [Play clip: “Solomon – The Ultimate Lady’s Man”]

One time when I was at a junior high camp, our counselor, a man in his sixties, asked if anyone wanted to read a passage of the Bible for our group devotions. I was as ornery then as I am now, and I started reading this passage. I don’t think a group of junior high boys have ever been more interested in the Scripture reading than they were that night. They were all on the edges of their beds, jabbing each other and giggling.
The old man made me stop when it got to the part about climbing the tree and taking hold of the fruit. I said, “What?! It’s in the Bible.” That was the end of devotions for that night. Afterward, several of the guys came to me and said, “Hey where was that passage again.”
Perhaps those junior high boys had more theological wisdom than they realized. God and the Bible don’t shy away from sex or the beautiful pleasure that it involves. This passage of scripture was included in the Bible because it is important to affirm that sex within marriage is supposed to be beautiful, passionate, and deeply satisfying. Physical passion and eroticism are God given and approved by God, but they have an appropriate place for expression: marriage.

The next passage I want to look at is from Proverbs, which is a book about how to live a wise and satisfying life.
Drink water from your own well – share your love only with your wife. Why spill the water of your springs in public, having sex with just anyone? You should reserve it for yourselves. Don’t share it with strangers. Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. She is a loving doe, a graceful deer. Let her breasts satisfy you always. May you always be captivated by her love (Prov. 5:15-19).

Well, we get to read some of my favorite passages of Scripture tonight. Here again, we have the affirmation that sex is good and intended for pleasure. But the writer makes an additional point. The bond between a husband and wife is like a flowing fountain that refreshes deeply. It is their own private fountain for their own enjoyment.
Having sex with other people is like poking a hole in our well and letting its water flow out into the street. Having sex outside the bounds of marriage depletes the joy that is available through beautiful matrimonial sexuality, but protecting the marriage relationship and enjoying it fully makes the fountain flow even more. In modern terms, having sex outside of marriage is like cashing in a CD early; you loose the interest, and you have to pay a penalty.
I can give personal testimony to the deep joy that comes to a married couple that has saved themselves. Sarah and I both went farther than we should have before we started dating each other, but when we married, we were both virgins. Knowing that, when we make love, we are doing something neither of us has ever done with anyone else is intensely satisfying and uniting.
Christianity joyously affirms that sex is a beautifully sacred part of marriage and is intended for pleasure, procreation, and the deepening of the marital union. In his article, “What’s Good about Sex,” J. Budziszewski points out that “Christianity espouses a higher view of sex than any other religion. That’s why it also has the strictest rules about it. Anything so important has to be handled carefully.”3

OK, now that we understand what the Biblical perspective on sex is, let’s take an honest look at the current state of sex in America. I suppose you could call this next portion of the talk a “State of the Sexual Union Address.”
Frankly, America is obsessed with sex. Sex seems to be in every sitcom, every movie, every song. A case in point is a popular song by the Bloodhound Gang, “You and me, baby, ain’t nothin’ but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.”
Sex sells. “Americans spend more on pornography in one year than the annual sales of the Coca-Cola corporation.”4 Actually sex sells everything from cars to couches, toothpaste to tennis shoes. We are inundated with sexual images, sexual innuendoes, and sexual language at every turn.
One factor that keeps this fixation on sex going is our myopic focus on pleasure. We have already disconnected intimacy from commitment, and now we are disconnecting sex from intimacy. We tend to see sex solely as a means for pleasure.
To many people these changes seem like great progress. However, we are caught in what is called the “hedonistic paradox.”5 Hedonism is the philosophy that the meaning of life is the pursuit of pleasure. The problem is that some things in life can’t be captured by looking for them.
If you seek happiness, it will evade you. Happiness must come to you. Happiness is a byproduct of living life the right way. In a similar way, if a person devotes his life to pursuing pleasure, he eventually wears himself out on pleasure so that nothing is pleasurable anymore.
This focus on pleasure necessarily leads to selfishness and to people using and abusing one another. 1 out of 3 girls and 1 out of 7 boys have been sexually abused by the age of 18.6 Beyond that, most of us have either used or been used in a sexual way. I regret to inform you that I have both used and been used. I wish neither were true, but they are.
On a more positive note, sociological studies have found that people who keep sex within marriage are happier and more satisfied sexually. The Social Organization of Sexuality, a book published by the University of Chicago, reports that “compared to all sexually active people, faithfully married couples experience the most physical pleasure and emotional satisfaction with their sex lives.”7 The Journal of Family Issues reports that people who lived together before they got married are likely to have greater marital instability and lower marital satisfaction.8 Another study reports that the earlier a young woman began having sex, the more likely she was to be dissatisfied with sex later in life.9 Living God’s way just works better.
OK, our last part of the State of the Sexual Union Address is a little game. I want you to number off from one to three. Everybody needs to have a number. [Give time for the audience to get a number.] According to statistics from the Center for Disease Control, currently about 30% of Americans have an incurable sexually transmitted disease, and that percentage is on the rise.10 Everyone who is a 3, please stand up. Congratulations, you represent the 30% of the American population that has an STD.
Now, get out your lists of the people with whom you shook hands or greeted with your hands in some way. For the sake of an illustration, we are going to let greeting with hands represent sexual relations. If any of these people are on your list, please stand up. Congratulations, there is a high probability that you, too, have contracted an STD, but you probably won’t know it for a long time. You can sit back down.
“Safe sex” is a myth. Condoms are helpful against some STD’s like HIV but are woefully ineffective against the most highly contagious STD’s like Human Papillomavirus (which can involve genital warts and can cause cancer) and chancroid (which involves genital ulcers). The problem is that a condom simply doesn’t cover the infected and contagious body parts.11
This could be the single greatest argument for living by Christian standards for sexual behavior. The only sure way to avoid the trap of STD’s is to keep yourself only for your spouse and for your spouse to do the same. Otherwise, you are rolling dice stacked against you. Living God’s way just works better.
So here is the State of the Sexual Union in a nutshell. Our society’s obsession with sex pushes us to be selfish and to seek immediate gratification in an unhealthy way. The best and most satisfying sex is within marriage, and sex outside of marriage is becoming increasingly dangerous.

Almost all of us have fallen short of God’s design for our sexuality. I know I have. However, God does not abandon us because we have sinned and especially not because someone has wronged us. He is with us, and he wants to draw us back to his heart and toward his original plan for us. Let’s look at some of the steps to recovering God’s design in our lives.
1.Acknowledge that we are designed for desire. We do not need to feel guilty for being sexual people. God made us this way. God ingrained sexual desire into our hearts.
2.Recognize that our greatest desire is for God. Our desire for sex is only a small part of our overall desire. By God’s design, our deepest desire is for a loving relationship with him. No amount or quality of sex can satisfy that desire. Only an intimate relationship with God can fill our hearts. The problem is not having strong desires. The problem is settling for the lesser satisfaction of those desires rather than doing the work that it sometimes takes to find deep satisfaction in God.12
3.Receive God’s grace and forgiveness. Sexual sin leaves scars that take time to heal. However, God’s grace can clean us spiritually in an instant. After King David slept with another man’s wife and then had that man killed, David prayed with faith, “Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow” (Ps. 51:7). God wipes our slate clean. He blots out our sin and gives us the chance to start again. We may still have scars and memories, but God is strong and his grace is robust. He is able to forgive completely and to bring us very nearly to his original purposes for us.
4.Passionately commit yourself to living by God’s design. Romans 12:1-2 says, “ I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice – the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.” Commit yourself to God. You will need God’s help to follow through with your commitment. But stick with him and his plan for you, and you will be amazed how he blesses you.
5.Be part of an accountability group. This world is too full of sexual temptation for any of us to face this battle alone. Find another Christian whom you trust. Be completely honest with each other about your struggles, your temptations, your successes, and your failures.
I have been meeting with Joseph Willey in accountability groups of some form about five years now. We have shed the masks and have been honest to the core with each other. Time and time again, our accountability with each other rescues us from giving in to sexual temptation. For women accountability is important. For men accountability is almost a matter of spiritual life and death.

By way of conclusion, I want you to imagine what the world would be like if every person on earth only had sex with his or her spouse. Don’t say, “Boring.”
Almost no children would be born out of wedlock.
Teen pregnancy would nearly disappear.
Much fewer broken marriages and divorces would occur.
STD’s would virtually disappear.
If the statistics are correct, sex and marriage would be more satisfying for everyone concerned.
Ultimately, we would have more mature and more satisfied adults, who led more stable families with healthier children.
On the issue of sex, God’s way is clearly the best way. God’s way is the best for us as individuals, for our families, and for society as a whole. God’s way just works better.

John tells a story that we all need to hear today (John 8:1-11). One day Jesus was teaching, and a crowd of people was gathered around him. Suddenly, there was a disturbance at the back of the crowd. Some of the religious leaders shoved their way through the crowd dragging a half-naked women behind them.
They tossed her into a huddled heap the dirt in front of Jesus, and threw down the gauntlet. They demanded, “This woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to kill her by stoning. What do you say?”
Now this was a trap. They figured one of two things would happen. Either Jesus would say let her go and, thereby, say that the standards of the Bible don’t matter, or Jesus would let them stone her and prove that he is not really as merciful as he acted.
What did Jesus do? He bent down and scribbled in the dirt with his finger. Maybe he was thinking. Maybe he was making them sweat.
The religious leaders were not used to being ignored, and they didn’t take it well. They demanded an answer.
So Jesus stood up and said, “All right, stone her. But let those who have never sinned throw the first stones!” Then, he went back to his etch-a-sketch in the dirt.
As the accusers thought about this, they quietly slipped out, one by one. Finally, only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Where did everybody go? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
With tears in her eyes, and just a little bit of hope in her voice, she said, “No, Lord.”
Then, in one of the most beautiful blendings of grace and accountability, Jesus tenderly says, “I don’t condemn you either. Go on home, and don’t sin any more.”
There will be no stones thrown today, or any other time around here. None of us is in a position to condemn someone else. We have all been in the middle of that circle in one way or another. We all need Jesus to say, “I don’t condemn you.” But just as much, we all need to hear Jesus say, “Don’t sin any more. Go and live a healthy life.”

Journaling:
1.Do you think God’s way really does work better?
2.Is the idea of making a new start and leaving behind whatever happened in the past appealing to you?
3.What do you think it would take for you to live like this?