Marriage Lesson 7 Faith and Sex
Faith and Sex
Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
HEBREWS 13:4-5
WARNING: We have spent much time correlating the relationship between Husband and Wife with that of Christ and His Church…However, we must transition carefully from the correlation of marriage and sex to any analogus benefits derived in the spiritual realm.
Other cults and false religions promote sexual pleasures in the afterlife as THE goal to obtain; Muslims with their 70+ virgins (what about female Muslims? And what happens when he runs out of his 70?), Mormons and the eternal, perpetual sex in the 3rd heaven.
With that said… Piper states:
“It is no accident that centuries of Bible scholars construed the Song of Solomon as a story about Christ and the church. They may have been too squeamish about letting it have its natural meaning for Solomon and his bride, but they were not wrong in seeing that the ultimate meaning of marital sex is about the final delights between Christ and his church.”
“You don’t have to be an ascetic, and you don’t have to be afraid of the goodness of physical pleasure, to say that sexual intimacy and sexual climax get their final meaning from what they point to.” Pipe pg 127
“They point to ecstasies that are unattainable and inconceivable in this life. Just as the heavens are telling the glory of God’s power and beauty, so sexual climax is telling the glory of immeasurable delights that we will have with Christ in the age to come. There will be no marriage there (Matt. 22:30). But what marriage meant will be there. And the pleasures of marriage, ten-to-the-millionth power, will be there.” Piper pg 128
Sexual pleasures in marriage are good. If I were to tell you otherwise, the Bible would accuse me of spreading “teachings of demons…. (1 Tim. 4:1–3)
That celebration is not optional for the married. We are commanded to enjoy each other’s bodies.
“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” (Prov. 5:18–19). “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine” (Song 1:2).
Husband and wife are meant to pursue the pleasures God has created for this relationship.
Implications of
Heb 13:4–5 “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. Keep your life free from love of money.”
It is remarkable that the writer puts money and the marriage bed side by side. It is not a coincidence that most counselors today would put money and sexual relations near the top of their lists of trouble spots in marriage. Agreement in money matters and harmony in the marriage bed don’t come easily. Our focus is on the marriage bed. But don’t lose sight of how closely connected the two are. The pursuit of power and pleasure mingle in these two areas as in no others.
Crabbs chart again
The writer is jealous to protect the marriage bed. He wants it to be good. He does not want it to be ruined. He exhorts, “Let the marriage bed be undefiled.” He is not thinking about ceremonial defilements. We know that because he says, “God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” He is thinking about all sinful defilements. Ultimately, sin is anything that does not come from faith.
That is what Paul says in Romans 14:23: “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” So the writer is saying: Guard sexual relations in marriage by not doing anything that does not come from faith.
Faith, he says in Hebrews 11:1, is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” In other words, faith is the confidence we feel in all that God promises to be and do for us in all the tomorrows of our lives. Now, how does such faith produce sexual attitudes and acts that are not sin? In the context, the writer shows us how this works in relation to money. We can then make the application to sex.
Faith must be “trained” toward godliness with the Word, otherwise, it will be trained in ungodliness. There is no neutral ground – no place to stand that does not affect your direction and inclination and affections.
One is either TRUSTING AND OBEYING or FOOLISH AND DISOBEYING – Trained in one or the other…. 2 Pet 2.12-14
2 Pet 2.12-14
But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed,
13* suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they carouse with you,
14* having eyes full of adultery and that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children;
What is the ANTIDOTE to all Sexual Sin and the love of money????
The love of money is a desire that displeases God; it is sin.
Now the ANTIDOTE to this sinful love and all the evils that flow from it is contentment: “Be content with what you have.”
But the writer doesn’t leave us there by ourselves to somehow crank up contentment. He goes on to give a basis for contentment:
“For he [God] has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’” The basis for contentment is the promise of God’s unfailing help and fellowship.
So, the writer to the Hebrews is saying this: God has made such comforting, reassuring, hope-inspiring promises in his Word (like the one quoted here from Deuteronomy 31:6) that if we have faith in these promises, we will be content. And contentment is the antidote to the love of money and the antidote for all sexual sin.
Deut 31.6: “Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the LORD your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.”
Sin is what you feel and think and do when you are not taking God at his word and resting in his promises.
So, the command of Hebrews 13:4 can be stated like this: Let your sexual relations be free from any act or attitude that does not come from faith in God’s word. Or to put it positively: Have those attitudes and do those acts in your marital sexual relations that grow out of the contentment that comes from confidence in God’s promises.
IF I AM CONTENT IN CHRIST, WHY HAVE SEX?
Someone may ask, “If I am content through faith in God’s promises, why should I even seek sexual gratification at all?”
Answer #1: “If one can ask that question in all sincerity, then maybe you shouldn’t seek any sexual gratification. Maybe you should stay single.”
Answer #2: the contentment that God’s promises give does not mean the end of all desires, especially bodily desires.
Even Jesus, whose faith was perfect, got hungry and desired food and got tired and desired rest. Sexual appetite is in this same category. The contentment of faith does not take it away any more than it takes away hunger and weariness.
(STOP WITH THE THINKING THAT MARRIAGE IS ALL ABOUT SEX. What about the spouse who becomes disabled for whatever reason? Paralyzed or stroke…is the marriage over?)
What, then, does contentment mean in relation to ongoing sexual desire?
First, if gratification of that desire is denied through singleness, then that denial will be compensated for by an abundant portion of God’s help and fellowship through faith.
In Phil 4:11–13 Paul said, “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. . .. I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
If Paul could learn to be content in hunger, then we can learn to be content if God chooses not to give us sexual gratification.
Second, the other thing contentment means in relation to ongoing sexual desire is this: If gratification is not denied us but is offered to us in marriage, we will seek it and enjoy it only in ways that reflect our faith.
To put it another way, while the contentment of faith does not put an end to our hunger, weariness, or sexual appetite, it does transform the way we go about satisfying those desires.
Faith doesn’t stop us from eating, but it stops gluttony; it doesn’t stop sleep, but it keeps us from being a sluggard. It doesn’t stop sexual appetite but . . . But what?
WHAT WE ARE DOING IS NOT DIRTY!
When the ear of faith hears the word from Timothy:
1 Tim 4:4-5 “Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer”—when the ear of faith hears that, it believes. And so faith honors the body and its appetites as God’s good gifts.
Faith will not allow a married couple to lie in bed and say to themselves, “What we are doing is dirty; it’s what they do in the pornographic movies.”
Don’t forget, “We were here first.” The act of sex was first instituted in a marriage that was untainted by sin. It was edification, not fornication, and pure indeed.
Instead, faith says, “God created this act, and it is good, and it is for ‘those who believe and know the truth’” (1 Tim. 4:3).
THE SCAR OF FORGIVEN SIN WILL NOT DESTROY
Faith increases the joy of sexual relations in marriage because it frees us from the guilt of the past.
This includes those who are married but must look back on an act of fornication, or adultery, or incest, or a homosexual fling, or years of habitual masturbation, or preoccupation with pornography, or promiscuous petting, or divorce.
Galatians 5.1
It was for FREEDOM, that Christ set you FREE!
NOTE: A previous life of homosexuality is not cured by loving a person of the opposite sex…it is cured by loving JESUS!
And what God says is this: If it genuinely lies within you, by the grace of God, to throw yourself on the mercy of God for forgiveness, then he will free you from the guilt of the past. He will make a new, clean sexual life possible in marriage.
We are not naive. Even though the guilt of our sin can be washed away, some of the scars remain. I can imagine a couple, for example, just before their engagement sitting together in a park. He turns to her and says, “There is something that I have to say. Two years ago, I had sex with another girl. I was away from the Lord; she was the only one. I’ve wept over it many times. I believe God has forgiven me, and I hope you can.”
In the weeks that follow, not without tears, she forgives him, and they marry. And on their first honeymoon night, they lie together, and as he looks at her, the tears well up in her eyes, and he says, “What’s the matter?”
And she says,
“I just can’t help but think of that other girl, that she lay right here where I am.” And years later, when the novelty of his wife’s body has worn off, he finds himself inadvertently drifting back in his imagination to the illicit thrill of that first relationship.
That’s one example of what it means to have scars.
Living together before marriage…
…there will always be opportunity and occasion for one spouse to wonder about the other spouse – when separated, what is he/she doing now? Why haven’t I heard from him? He should have been home by now. What is he doing on his phone?
“He did it with me before we were married, what is stopping him now with someone else?”
And all of us have similar scars of one kind or another. All of us have committed sins that, though forgiven, make our present life more problematic than if we hadn’t committed them.
BUT…TAKE HEART.
God only has scarred people with whom to save and through whom to work, some more than others, but nevertheless, all are scarred. There are no “Pre-Fall Adam and Eve’s” on this earth.
But let’s not get the impression that Christ is powerless against such scars. He may not remove all the problems that these scars cause us, but he has promised to work even in all these problems for our good if we love him and are called according to his purpose (Rom. 8:28).
Faith uses sex against Satan…
Additionally, we can say that faith and sexual relations in marriage uses sex against Satan.
Consider 1 Cor 7:3–5:
“Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband.
The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.”
Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Do we guard ourselves from Satan with the shield of faith or the shield of sex?
The answer for married people is that faith makes use of sexual intercourse as a means of grace. For the people God leads into marriage, sexual relations are a God-ordained means of overcoming temptation to sin (the sin of adultery, the sin of sexual fantasizing, the sin of pornography). Faith humbly accepts such gifts and offers thanks.
1 Cor 7.3-5 is about GIVING what is your spouses, not TAKING from your spouses.
Regard one another as more important than yourselves.
Philip 2:3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself;
“Husband, give her the rights that belong to her! Wife, give him the rights that belong to him!”
It’s all about GIVING, NOT TAKING.
In summary, the aim has been to show the impact of faith on three aspects of sexual relations in marriage.
First, faith believes God when he says that sexual relations in marriage are good and clean and should be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
Second, faith increases the joy of sexual relations in marriage because it frees us from the guilt of the past. Faith believes the promise that Christ died for all our sins, that in him we might have guilt-free, Christ-exalting sexual relations in marriage.
Third, faith wields the weapon of sexual intercourse against Satan. A married couple gives a severe blow to the head of that ancient serpent when they aim to give as much sexual satisfaction to each other as possible. Is it not a mark of amazing grace that on top of all the pleasure that the sexual side of marriage brings, it also proves to be a fearsome weapon against our ancient foe?
Perhaps, later I will include a Lesson of Sexual Purity as time permits. It will be a counter to such a hideously sex-saturated culture and confusion in which we live. Some help may currently be found in a post in this blog on Same-sex attraction is not just Same-sex attraction.
Comments
Post a Comment