What is Sex?

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Genesis 2:24

Here we come to the divinely intended boundaries of sex. Simply because sex is so total, it must be fulfilled only under conditions which make a total union possible — in a word, marriage! In marriage it is intended that a woman give her husband all that she is and has, and the husband likewise. The woman gives up her old life with her parents, her home. She renounces her father's name and takes her husband's name. She leaves behind her past; in a very real sense, she begins life totally anew in a wholly different environment. Likewise, the husband gives his wife everything — his name, his life, his interests, his body — all. Their lives are intended to merge and blend until they become indistinguishable. That is what becoming one flesh means.

The Lord Jesus confirmed the importance of this when, asked to pronounce upon marriage and divorce, he said, Remember, in the beginning, God made them male and female that they might become one flesh (Matthew 19:4-5). That is the great purpose of marriage. Anything short of this is destructive. This is the whole point about sex outside of marriage. It is not mere whim that causes God to forbid extra-marital sex, as the critics of Christian views of sex maintain, but it is God's love and concern for humanity that leads him to make this prohibition.

Premarital and extra-marital sex is a way of cheating yourself of the full glory that is intended for men and women in sex. As in all the rest of life, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. One destroys the opportunity for the other. Every experience of sex outside of marriage destroys something of the totality possible within marriage: That is an inviolable law of life. This is why Paul writes to the churches and says to stay completely clear of immorality and fornication. Paul says, For, for this cause comes the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience (Ephesians 5:3-11). The wrath of God, in this context, is not a lightning bolt from heaven. Rather it is the deterioration of life, the brutalizing of humanity, the vulgarizing of life. The reason we are suffering from the terrible tempest of mental anguish today is because we have disregarded these restrictions. God has not placed them there to torment us, but to protect us. We cannot give ourselves in totality to another person except as we give everything — our name, our position, our place, our home, our heart, our life, everything! Because we cannot do that in sex outside of marriage, we treat our partners in that kind of sex as though they were simply objects for our own satisfaction. We do not see them any longer as human beings, but we treat them as things designed to give satisfaction to us. They become objects of pleasure, only. Thus we become something less than human.

May I bring my sexuality to you, Lord Jesus, and place it under your control, that in the glory of your Lordship it may take on that beauty and radiance that is thy intention for it. In Christ's name, amen.