Christian Sex
[This is an excerpt from a Bible study booklet I am
currently writing about "The Eyes of Your Heart."]
Christians, just like many others in our culture, can be confused about gender and sexuality. Cover-ups of sexual infidelity and sexual abuse, especially by conservative Christian churches and organizations, are at root really a failure to honor God’s very good foundation for sex.
Sex is intimate and thus properly very personal and private. But every one of us is the result of it, and from Genesis through Revelation the Bible speaks openly and plainly about it.
My purpose for these remarks is not to embarrass anyone but rather to urge us to fill our hearts with the truth that the proper foundation for sex is God’s design for it to be great. All that we’ve picked up from our parents, family and friends, church, school, and culture may not be true!
Whether we have been abused or the abuser, whether we have indulged in pornography a thousand times or only once, whether we are highly “experienced” or still largely “pure and innocent,” the starting point for all of us is God’s good design for sex. Once love for his truth about sex fills our hearts, we can see clearly how horribly sin ruins it.
Insatiable hunger for sexual connection reveals our basic heart need for God alone, and his desire for intimacy with us. This is an aspect of the “profound mystery” Paul explains in Ephesians 5, and one of the reasons there will no longer need to be human sexual relations after the resurrection (according to Jesus in Matthew 22:30 //Mark 12:25 //Luke 20:35-36). Augustine, who may have greatly misunderstood the relationship of sex to sin, got this statement absolutely right: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
When my eyes wander, it is a reminder that my heart needs to have eyes only for my Lord.
Christians, just like many others in our culture, can be confused about gender and sexuality. Cover-ups of sexual infidelity and sexual abuse, especially by conservative Christian churches and organizations, are at root really a failure to honor God’s very good foundation for sex.
Sex is intimate and thus properly very personal and private. But every one of us is the result of it, and from Genesis through Revelation the Bible speaks openly and plainly about it.
My purpose for these remarks is not to embarrass anyone but rather to urge us to fill our hearts with the truth that the proper foundation for sex is God’s design for it to be great. All that we’ve picked up from our parents, family and friends, church, school, and culture may not be true!
Whether we have been abused or the abuser, whether we have indulged in pornography a thousand times or only once, whether we are highly “experienced” or still largely “pure and innocent,” the starting point for all of us is God’s good design for sex. Once love for his truth about sex fills our hearts, we can see clearly how horribly sin ruins it.
Insatiable hunger for sexual connection reveals our basic heart need for God alone, and his desire for intimacy with us. This is an aspect of the “profound mystery” Paul explains in Ephesians 5, and one of the reasons there will no longer need to be human sexual relations after the resurrection (according to Jesus in Matthew 22:30 //Mark 12:25 //Luke 20:35-36). Augustine, who may have greatly misunderstood the relationship of sex to sin, got this statement absolutely right: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
When my eyes wander, it is a reminder that my heart needs to have eyes only for my Lord.
posted by Daniel Leslie Peterson | 6:36 AM
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