Gender and Sexuality
Part 3. The Purpose and Pitfalls of Sex
1 Corinthians 6:18 – 7:7
Pastor Charles Price
I am going to read from 1 Corinthians Chapter 6 and Chapter 7. Let me remind you, for those who have been here in recent weeks and inform you if you are here for the first time, that we are looking at the moment at a series seeing what the Bible has to say about gender and sexuality.
This of course is a huge issue in any day, in any generation at any time in any part of the world. But in the western world of which we are a part this has been through such change in the last few decades that it is important that we ask what does the Scripture have to say about this issue?
And we are looking each week at some different aspect of that. And I want to talk today about the purpose and the pitfalls of sex.
And I am going to read from 1 Corinthians 6:18 down to Chapter 7:7. Paul writes there,
“Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are committed outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
“Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry.
“But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.
“The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.
“The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.
“Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
“I say this as a concession, not as a command.
“I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.”
That’s as far as I am going to read.
Around 50 years ago the so-called sexual revolution began to gain a momentum. The seeds for this had been sown probably 100 years ago. There are a number of streams that run into this river of the sexual revolution that we have seen in the western world.
Earlier in this century and at the end of the last century Sigmund Freud who is the father of psychoanalysis developed his theory of personality that has had a great impact in this area, though his theories have been challenged.
Basically he stated that our behaviour is governed by a tension between two things. On the one hand there is the pleasure principle. This is the driving force of the ego, said Freud, that seeks gratification of its needs, its wants and its urges. And this includes hunger, thirst, anger and sex.
We naturally pursue these desires because they are desires that are within us, and when these needs are not met, the result, said Freud, is anxiety and tension.
But this pleasure principle is offset by what Freud called the reality principle. That is, in the realities of life, we can’t always get what we want and we often have to defer pleasure or deny ourselves pleasure because if we pursue it, the consequences are negative and greater than the pleasures.
So, for instance, you might want to eat a cream bun or you might want to eat a gallon of ice cream but the reality principle says that if I do that I am going to put on pounds and I don’t want to put on pounds. So I deny myself the desirable food or I defer it to a more appropriate context as part of a meal or something in order to not have to endure the reality principle which, Freud said, is usually associated with pain, with something undesirable.
And so we educate ourselves to become responsible by weighing up the benefits of the pleasure principle with the pains of the reality principle.
When it comes to sex and sexual relationships, whether with a particular person or randomly, the pleasure principle that appeals to us and gives us that desire is offset by the reality principle, which gives us the consequences of that.
So things like unwanted pregnancies, things like sexually transmitted diseases, in Freud’s assessment, prevent us pursuing that pleasure principle if these are possible outcomes and we don’t want them.
But if we can eliminate the risks then the pleasure principle can operate with limited negative consequences.
In 1959 the availability of the contraceptive pill reduced unwanted pregnancies as an option in sexual relationships. In 1969 in Canada the legalizing of abortion meant that if you did conceive, you could reject the fetus and get away scot free, although in actual fact it rarely is getting away scot free.
If we can make condoms available to high school students, we can reduce the risks involved and therefore we raise the pleasure principle and the possibilities.
Now this has become a basis of modern ethics. Go for pleasure, follow the desires and urges as long as you can avoid negative consequences and avoid the pain they might bring. And if you can avoid the painful realities, the reality principle, then the sky is the limit.
Hence in popular ethics there is rarely an objective criterion for what is right and wrong; there is only the balancing of the pleasure principle with the reality principle. The pleasure is over against the pains and if the pleasures win, you can endure the limited amount of pains that may be associated with it.
And therefore in modern values, for an example, sexual abstinence outside of marriage has become a limited pain, because we have made it so, that we are willing to endure (if we recognize it’s there at all) in order to enjoy the pleasure of it.
So rather than a disciplined sexuality, we have an ill-disciplined, pleasure seeking as the prize. And this in the latter part of the 19th Century, early part of the 20th Century, laid the ground for the sexual revolution that came in later decades.
Then in the 1960’s a book was published by Michael Joseph Fletcher, who was a university professor – his book was entitled “Situation Ethics” – and it’s been regarded as one of the most influential books of the 20th Century, though it may not be the best known book of the 20th Century, but its influence has been immense.
Fletcher’s basic principle is that nothing is universally right or universally wrong. Nothing is intrinsically good or intrinsically bad. Good and bad are things which happen to actions in different situations. So the same thing in one situation might be good, in another situation might be bad.
The only thing that is intrinsically good, says Fletcher, is love. Anything done in love is good. This gave a rationale for separating our behaviour from any objective criteria and measuring it only by the subjective criteria. If I am doing this as an expression of love, then it is intrinsically good.
And so sexual behaviour became divorced from any objective morality; it became attached to a subjective ethic and sexual permissivism is the logical result.
Now the starting point for a Christian, who has brought their lives under the lordship of Jesus Christ, is the authority of His Word. And there is in Scripture an objective morality that is based on the character of God essentially, and its outworking is revealed to us in different ways through the Scriptures.
Fletcher was right when he said it begins with love. Jesus said the whole of the law can be summed up in “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength and the second command is like unto it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”
But there is also a moral structure to all behaviour given to us in Scripture, which says what and why certain things are an expression of love and why certain things that otherwise may seem valid, are not an expression of love.
Now there is no question of course that our sexuality is a very important part of our lives. And God created it so. He made the male and female at the beginning and He designed the mechanism, He designed the means, He designed the meaning of sexual activity.
But sexuality, like most other things, has fallen into trouble. And what holds the potential for the highest good and the greatest joys can sometimes bring the deepest hurts and the most painful sadness’s.
And I have no doubt that here this morning there are many of us who has been damaged either by our own sexual activity or by sexual activity where we have been on the receiving end of abuse and use.
So I want to try and look at this clearly and compassionately. And I want to talk this morning about the purpose and the pitfalls of sex.
And I want to talk first about the purpose of sex and I want to base it on what Paul writes in these verses we read in 1 Corinthians. He is actually, in these verses, saying why singleness is good. (And we are going to talk about singleness next week.) But in that context he also talks about why marriage is good.
And he says if you are married that’s good, if you stay single, that’s good. Personally, he said, “I prefer you were like me” (he was a single man) and he tells us why. “But if you marry, that’s good too.”
And here in Verse 3 of 1 Corinthians Chapter 7 he makes this statement:
“The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.”
Now what does he mean by this phrase, “should fulfill his marital duty”? I mean marital duty sounds pretty cold, doesn’t it? You know, “this is my marital duty”.
Well there are two phrases in Scripture – well two phrases in Genesis actually – that are used to describe the sexual relationship. One I referred to last week in Genesis 4:1 where the King James correctly translates it:
“Adam knew Eve, his wife; and she conceived and bare Cain.”
Now the NIV and some other translations change this to explain what is meant by it. The NIV says, “Adam lay with his wife and she conceived and gave birth to Cain”, which is fine – that is descriptive of what actually happened.
But this word “knew” is a very important word. It’s the Hebrew word “yada” and I mentioned this last week. According to Strong’s Hebrew definitions, which I consulted, he says,
“To know in this setting means to know properly another person, to experience, to discover, to give to, to have, to take from, to be privy to, to be sure of.” All of these, he says, describe the meaning of this word “yada”, to know.
“It is a knowledge which gives the deepest kind of intimacy between two people that involves the whole person – spirit, soul, heart and body – and is expressed in that physical sexual act.”
But there is an awful lot more about Adam knowing Eve than simply the sexual act in producing a baby.
Someone sent me this quotation from Tim Keller this week.
“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known but not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense.” (You don’t have to pretend anything to anybody.) It humbles us out of our self-righteousness and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
That’s the intensity of being known. And that is the word that is used here. Adam knew his wife Eve. And that was the context for the sexual relationship.
The other phrase used is well known. Genesis 2:24:
“A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”
Now this “one flesh” of course includes the physical but it is more than the physical; it is the spiritual oneness, a vital communion of heart of which the physical union is its consummation and its expression. But the physical union without that spiritual and heartfelt union is left empty.
And so this “one flesh” description is not about two people coming together sexually, though that is an expression of it, but it is about being known, being loved, belonging, and made one.
There are two primary purposes for the sexual relationship there. For one is relationship, it is building a depth of union between two people that expresses the spiritual and heartfelt union, expressing it in a sexual way.
The other primary purpose is reproduction. Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived and gave birth to Cain.
There is a third “R”, which is the most popular one today, in all likelihood, which is not part of the intention – that is that sex is recreation. It is purely for self-indulgence. And any kind of sexuality which is purely self-indulgent is completely detached from the purpose which God created it.
Now every society sets boundaries around sexuality – every society does. And in the developmental western civilization over a number of centuries, Christianity has been the main force in setting those boundaries, and what the Scripture says about sex.
Now historically the church has not always portrayed a positive view of sexuality as Scripture in fact does. And probably with a proper concern to avoid sexual sin and avoid lustful situations, it has majored on avoiding the dangers and probably left a guilt complex about the joys of sexuality.
And some of those boundaries were unnecessarily repressive. Augustine, who was one of the great influences on the church (some would say the greatest outside of the New Testament, back in the 4th Century). And he came to Christ from a promiscuous background, so there is a reaction in his own situation to perhaps his past.
But he spoke of being born in sin (which is a phrase that David used in Psalm 51) as being born as the result of sexual intercourse. That’s what it means, he said, to be born in sin. Though he did recognize it was a necessary evil, but he said sex for any purpose other than conceiving is sin.
Jerome, who was a contemporary of Augustine in the 4th Century - he translated the Bible into Latin and his translation, The Vulgate, has been highly regarded through history and wrote many Bible commentaries - and he wrote,
“Anyone who is too passionate a lover with his own wife becomes like an adulterer.”
So they developed a rather distorted view of sex. According to Philip Yancey, during the Middle Ages and up until the Reformation and even after the Reformation for a short while, the church authorities had issued edicts forbidding sex on certain days.
It was forbidden on Thursdays because that was the day of Christ’s arrest, forbidden on Fridays because that was the day of His death, forbidden on Saturdays in honor of the Virgin Mary, forbidden on Sundays in honor of departed saints.
Monday was a good day, so was Tuesday. Wednesdays occasionally, but it was prohibited on most Wednesdays for a series of different reasons having to do with feasts and departed saints and other things.
But in addition to that, they had to abstain for the 40 day fast period before Christmas, the 40 day fast period before Easter and the 40 day fast period before Pentecost. Now Pentecost was 50 days after Easter, so in a 90 day period, there was a 10 day gap in the middle, which fortunately contained 2 Mondays and 2 Tuesdays. And you probably took your vacation during that week.
It was also banned on feast days and days of the apostles, and it was estimated there were 44 days a year that remained available for marital sex.
I am not kidding – this is historically the case, although one historian I read says there is no evidence that many Christians took this seriously. But it was probably a useful form of contraception as well – reduce it to 44 days a year and you have probably reduced the size of the family.
But it is no wonder that Christians developed a paranoid fear of sex with this kind of restriction. Now the Scripture not only affirms its importance and its place, but Paul writes here in 1 Corinthians 7:3 (I just read this verse):
“The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.”
Then he gives an interesting reason in Verse 4:
“The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.”
By the way, outside of marriage you do not belong to each other. Marriage, beginning with a wedding day - all cultures have a wedding celebration of some kind, whether it is a one-day event, whether it is a three-day or a week-long event, they all have some celebration of the beginning of this relationship because a wedding is a surrender publicly, that is affirmed publicly, that I no longer belong to myself; I belong to my wife or I belong to my husband.
And Paul affirms that.
However, this verse could be used, and sadly has been used, as a means of abuse where one says to the other, “you belong to me; therefore I demand of you sex.”
What does it mean for a wife’s body to belong to her husband and a husband’s body to belong to his wife? Well in Ephesians 5:28 Paul says there,
“Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies” (because you belong to each other). “He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one hated his own body, but he feeds it and cares for it, just as Christ does the church – for we are members of his body.”
Paul, by the way, always brings these things back to Christ as the source of our understanding of some of these things. And he is saying there that a man loves his wife as his own body because she belongs and they are now one. And he is to treat her the way he would treat his own body in independence of her. He cares, he looks after, he says he feeds, he nourishes.
The context in which a wife’s body belongs to her husband is that he cherishes her and loves her and cares for her and looks after her. And she is safe with him and she is protected with him.
The sex drive in men and women is different. I don’t like generalizing but I will do it at this point.
A man’s sex drive is never far from the surface. The sex drive in men is like an electric light. If you flick the switch, the light goes on. And when you flick it off, it goes off.
The sex drive in women is more like an electric iron. You flick the switch and you touch the iron and it’s cold. Come on, it’s on, what’s the problem? But it gets hot if you are patient. Then you flick it off and it’s still hot.
Now women need to understand that in men, you can flick a switch in the way you dress, in gestures, even a look. That’s why men are turned on by pictures of naked ladies.
I don’t think it works quite the same way the other way.
That’s why advertisers know the power of that. Do you want to sell a sports car? Stick a semi-naked woman on the car. It doesn’t have to be there for long and the guy will start to say, “I like that car.” It has nothing to do with the car. You flick the right switch for it.
And men, we men, need to understand that in women, that women need time, they need romance, they need kindness, they need tenderness, they need romance and wooing. Because, to a woman, the sex act is not about the sex – it can be to the man. To the woman it’s about the relationship.
It’s about what you are doing out of bed in terms of your kindness and gentleness and the safety you build around your wife. And we men need to understand that the context our wives need is not to slap a verse on them that says your body belongs to me - that’s abuse - but to love and nurture and care for and protect.
That’s why there is a saying “sex begins at breakfast” with the kindness and the warmth that you show. And this belonging to each other and giving ourselves to each other cannot be identified purely as the physical sexual act but detached from the relationship; it is an expression of the relationship and is never “you give yourself to me”; it has to be “I give myself to you”.
Otherwise women feel used and there are many married women who feel used because the context is not right and the oneness has not been set - the soulish, spiritual, heartfelt intimacy of heart.
Intimacy is a word that has become associated with sex. Actually intimacy ought to be associated with the heart. That’s the real intimacy. And actually we men need it as well as women.
And then he says in Verse 5,
“Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”
What he is saying there is keep the sexual relationship in repair. Don’t deprive each other unless it is by mutual consent for some better purpose, like devoting yourself to prayer. But then he says be understanding too that if you don’t come back together Satan may tempt. And so the relationship should be kept wholesome and healthy.
Now this has been a significantly difficult area to manage and it has to be worked on in marriage. The sexual instinct is a powerful force and it must come under discipline. If it is the glue in a marriage, you cannot build anything just with glue. You are gluing together two things of substance. That’s what glue is for.
If there is no substance, the glue tears and destroys. And so the focus in a marriage in how Paul teaches about it is that we love our wives as we love our own bodies. We care, we nurture, we look after, we protect. And in that context we are able to give ourselves to each other.
Well, let me talk secondly, just for a few minutes, about the pitfalls of sex as there is an awful lot we can say here and I don’t have time to say an awful lot. But let me keep it to these verses that I read to you.
I didn’t read Verse 13 of Chapter 6, but in the second part of that verse he says,
“The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.”
And then in Verse 18 he says,
“Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.”
(Which means himself, but also means his wife – they have been made one, you see. He has explained that.)
That is why, by the way, sexual sin is different to other sin in its consequences because this is a sin that is against your own body.
Now what does Paul mean by sexual immorality when he uses that phrase here? There are two main definitions in the New Testament of sexual immorality in heterosexual relationships. I am going to talk on another Sunday about homosexuality.
But the two main definitions are adultery (which is extra-marital sex – that is sex outside of the marriage relationship).
And the other is the word fornication, which is pre-marital sexual relationships - that is, prior to a marriage.
Adultery of course breaks the oneness, the bond, the commitment.
This word fornication, which actually is translated by the NIV as sexual immorality, which sounds much more general, but it is a translation of the word that is translated in many other translations as fornication, has been much discussed and debated as to what it really means.
Some argue the word refers only to promiscuity but not to sex in a loving, though unmarried relationship.
But it is very hard to substantiate that argument in the light of this passage. Let me just show you Paul’s argument in Chapter 7 and the second part of Verse 1. He says,
“It is good for a man not to marry. But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.”
Now it may seem a very low level argument to say the way to avoid sexual immorality is to marry. Sex is not the only reason for marriage and if it is the primary reason, statistics tell us it doesn’t last very long.
But it is part of the equation of course. It is part of the reason why we want to marry.
And he says that if you marry you avoid sexual immorality. That is to say that when you marry, you avoid sexual activity outside of the marriage by the fact that you have gotten married. So he is arguing there about a couple in a loving relationship but he says if you need to marry, do, because of the option which he calls immorality.
Later in the chapter, Chapter 7 Verse 36, he argues this way:
“If anyone thinks he is acting improperly toward the virgin he is engage to, and if she is getting along in years and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning. They should get married.
“But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind, who is under no compulsion but has control over his own will, and who has made up his mind not to marry the virgin – this man also does the right thing.
“So then, he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does even better.”
Now here’s his argument. If they are engaged, a man engaged to a virgin woman – and he uses the phrase, “he is engaged to her”, the virgin he is engaged to – and they want a sexual relationship, he says they should get married.
Now he doesn’t say, “If you are engaged and the sexual desires are strong, then go ahead and sleep together since you are committed to each other, so it’s okay.”
He doesn’t say that. He says if the desire is that strong, get married.
In other words, premarital sexual intercourse is not the option.
The same thing is clear from Verse 2:
“Because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.”
He doesn’t say because of the temptation to immorality, get a girlfriend and stick with her, nor that a commitment to marriage (as in the case of the man who is engaged to a virgin) justifies the act of sexual intercourse before marriage.
Now he says if your desire for sexual relations with your fiancée is that strong, go ahead and get married, because marriage is the context that God designed for the sexual relationship. Because it is the context where you do not belong to yourselves anymore; you belong to each other. You are in that oneness that is recognized by society as well. But it is a oneness that brings you into that knowledge of one another and experience of one another where the sexual relationship is not only necessary but important.
This highlights the value of sex in marriage and prohibits sexual relationships outside of marriage.
Not there seems to be currently an assumption among many Christians that premarital sex is permitted, it’s okay, especially if you are going to be married and you are planning to be. Or at least it is not as sinful as it used to be. But we cannot conclude this from reading the writings of Paul.
In my preparation for this message I read an article by a counselor in the United States. His name is Elmer Magnussen and his article is called “The Eroding Effect of Premarital Sex”. In part of that article he says this:
“Every couple coming to me for counselling who have had premarital sexual relations have had post marital sexual adjustment problems.
“Because of this, whenever I see a couple (whether they are Christian or non-Christian) for premarital counselling, I require one major commitment from them in order for us to be effective in accomplishing some goals.
“I ask them to agree to refrain from sexual intercourse until their wedding night. If they do not consent to my request, I inform them there is no way we can prepare them realistically for marriage.
“I have never had a couple refuse to make this commitment after hearing my reasons for it.”
And in this article he gives some of the reasons why pre-marital sexual relationships have what he calls an eroding effect on the marriage itself.
Now I have had this article put up on our website because I would encourage those of you who will find this helpful to go there and read it. It’s only about four pages long. It is not extensive, but it is practical, it is borne out of experience.
And it gives us not just the scare tactics where you might become pregnant or you might contract some disease, which is usually the strongest reasons for giving for avoiding sex outside of marriage. But he gives other good, clear psychological and biblical reasons why sex before marriage has its negative effects on the sexual relationship after marriage.
So I recommend that if this is an area of interest to you that you read that. We will keep that on the website at least for this next week. It is on the front page – there is a link on the front page, so it’s easy to find.
However, as I close let me give the last word to Philip Yancey who I have quoted earlier. And Philip Yancey has written a book called “Rumours of Another World”, and I want to quote part of it. He said,
“I once heard an actor being interviewed on late night television.
“‘Tell me,’ said David Letterman, ‘you are a sex symbol who plays all sorts of exciting roles with gorgeous women. How does that compare to your real life off-screen?’
“The actor reminded Letterman that he had been happily married for twenty years. And then he said this, ‘Here’s the difference in a nutshell: in the movies life is mostly about sex and occasionally about children. Married life is mostly about children and occasionally about sex.’”
And Yancey goes on to say,
“Sex is such a powerful force that a young person may have trouble understanding how anything else could ever eclipse it. Most married people, like the actor, will tell you that sex within marriage is neither as easy nor as important as they had imagined it would be before marriage.
“It expresses intimacy, yes. It provides pleasure, but much of marriage consists of making day-to-day decisions, managing the complexities of careers and schedules, rearing children, negotiating differences, juggling finances and all the other effort involved in keeping a home running.
“Marriage strips away the illusions about sex pounded into us daily by the entertainment media. Few of us live with over-sexed supermodels. We live instead with ordinary people, men and women who get bad breath, body odors and unruly hair, who menstruate and experience occasional impotence, who have bad moods and embarrass us in public, who pay more attention to our children’s needs than to our own. We live with people who require compassion, tolerance, understanding and an endless supply of forgiveness and so do our partners.
“Such is the ironic power of sex. It lures us into a relationship that offers to teach us what we need far more – sacrificial love.”
I suggest to you that’s the key. It’s almost God’s little trick. He has given us this sexual desire as something that is strong and attractive to lure us into a place that demands that we give unconditional love, patience and generosity.
Yes it gives us this wonderful experience of love and closeness and togetherness but it produces helpless babies who need our time, our energy, our money, our patience and wisdom, our care.
My daughter and son-in-law would normally be here – they are not here this morning because they are awaiting the birth of their first baby who is two days overdue. And they are about to make a huge discovery that the beautiful attraction of the magnetic power of love and sexual desire that brings people together in marriage, after the next day or two, when this beautiful little baby girl is born (and I know she will be beautiful because she has her grandmother’s genes in her – the worst thing about this, by the way, is I am going to be married to a grandmother in a few days’ time).
And this beautiful little baby is going to need their unrelenting love and patience and money and time and energy and discipline (we can’t go there because we have got a baby at home.) And it is going to last for at least 20 years.
And do you know something? That is what it is all about. The power of love and sex is to bring us to the place where it brings out of us the best thing it possibly could: selflessness and unconditional love where you live your lives in the interest of somebody else.
But it is not God’s trick; it’s actually what it’s about. And if we don’t know that, sex will become a broken play thing. And not only will the sex itself be broken, but it will break us in the process.
And God would save us from that by saying, “I have given you the mechanism, I have given you the means, but I have also given you the structure as two of you become one in every possible sense.”
And that is a life-long pursuit, a life-long journey and it doesn’t happen easily, it doesn’t happen quickly and you learn through your pain, and we learn through our mistakes and we learn the same things again. But that is the biggest prize of all.
Let’s pray together.
Lord, we thank You that You have not only created us but You have provided the context for which the creations that we are might find fulfillment and purpose. Forgive us that we have elevated sex to such an unrealistic and high place that can only but disappoint us in the course of time.
And we thank You too for the fulfillment that Your Word speaks about in living singly as well as in marriage. I pray for those of us here this morning who need to confess to You our failings, our sins, knowing that You forgive. But knowing too there is a time for healing and restoration, which we ask that You will bring into our lives that we might be the whole people You created us to be, that those of us who are married here this morning, that we might enjoy that oneness on every level that You want us to enjoy it, that we care and love and belong to, and give to and protect and nurture each other. Make this our desire and make this real for us. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
Part 3. The Purpose and Pitfalls of Sex
1 Corinthians 6:18 – 7:7
Pastor Charles Price
I am going to read from 1 Corinthians Chapter 6 and Chapter 7. Let me remind you, for those who have been here in recent weeks and inform you if you are here for the first time, that we are looking at the moment at a series seeing what the Bible has to say about gender and sexuality.
This of course is a huge issue in any day, in any generation at any time in any part of the world. But in the western world of which we are a part this has been through such change in the last few decades that it is important that we ask what does the Scripture have to say about this issue?
And we are looking each week at some different aspect of that. And I want to talk today about the purpose and the pitfalls of sex.
And I am going to read from 1 Corinthians 6:18 down to Chapter 7:7. Paul writes there,
“Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are committed outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
“Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry.
“But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.
“The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.
“The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.
“Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
“I say this as a concession, not as a command.
“I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.”
That’s as far as I am going to read.
Around 50 years ago the so-called sexual revolution began to gain a momentum. The seeds for this had been sown probably 100 years ago. There are a number of streams that run into this river of the sexual revolution that we have seen in the western world.
Earlier in this century and at the end of the last century Sigmund Freud who is the father of psychoanalysis developed his theory of personality that has had a great impact in this area, though his theories have been challenged.
Basically he stated that our behaviour is governed by a tension between two things. On the one hand there is the pleasure principle. This is the driving force of the ego, said Freud, that seeks gratification of its needs, its wants and its urges. And this includes hunger, thirst, anger and sex.
We naturally pursue these desires because they are desires that are within us, and when these needs are not met, the result, said Freud, is anxiety and tension.
But this pleasure principle is offset by what Freud called the reality principle. That is, in the realities of life, we can’t always get what we want and we often have to defer pleasure or deny ourselves pleasure because if we pursue it, the consequences are negative and greater than the pleasures.
So, for instance, you might want to eat a cream bun or you might want to eat a gallon of ice cream but the reality principle says that if I do that I am going to put on pounds and I don’t want to put on pounds. So I deny myself the desirable food or I defer it to a more appropriate context as part of a meal or something in order to not have to endure the reality principle which, Freud said, is usually associated with pain, with something undesirable.
And so we educate ourselves to become responsible by weighing up the benefits of the pleasure principle with the pains of the reality principle.
When it comes to sex and sexual relationships, whether with a particular person or randomly, the pleasure principle that appeals to us and gives us that desire is offset by the reality principle, which gives us the consequences of that.
So things like unwanted pregnancies, things like sexually transmitted diseases, in Freud’s assessment, prevent us pursuing that pleasure principle if these are possible outcomes and we don’t want them.
But if we can eliminate the risks then the pleasure principle can operate with limited negative consequences.
In 1959 the availability of the contraceptive pill reduced unwanted pregnancies as an option in sexual relationships. In 1969 in Canada the legalizing of abortion meant that if you did conceive, you could reject the fetus and get away scot free, although in actual fact it rarely is getting away scot free.
If we can make condoms available to high school students, we can reduce the risks involved and therefore we raise the pleasure principle and the possibilities.
Now this has become a basis of modern ethics. Go for pleasure, follow the desires and urges as long as you can avoid negative consequences and avoid the pain they might bring. And if you can avoid the painful realities, the reality principle, then the sky is the limit.
Hence in popular ethics there is rarely an objective criterion for what is right and wrong; there is only the balancing of the pleasure principle with the reality principle. The pleasure is over against the pains and if the pleasures win, you can endure the limited amount of pains that may be associated with it.
And therefore in modern values, for an example, sexual abstinence outside of marriage has become a limited pain, because we have made it so, that we are willing to endure (if we recognize it’s there at all) in order to enjoy the pleasure of it.
So rather than a disciplined sexuality, we have an ill-disciplined, pleasure seeking as the prize. And this in the latter part of the 19th Century, early part of the 20th Century, laid the ground for the sexual revolution that came in later decades.
Then in the 1960’s a book was published by Michael Joseph Fletcher, who was a university professor – his book was entitled “Situation Ethics” – and it’s been regarded as one of the most influential books of the 20th Century, though it may not be the best known book of the 20th Century, but its influence has been immense.
Fletcher’s basic principle is that nothing is universally right or universally wrong. Nothing is intrinsically good or intrinsically bad. Good and bad are things which happen to actions in different situations. So the same thing in one situation might be good, in another situation might be bad.
The only thing that is intrinsically good, says Fletcher, is love. Anything done in love is good. This gave a rationale for separating our behaviour from any objective criteria and measuring it only by the subjective criteria. If I am doing this as an expression of love, then it is intrinsically good.
And so sexual behaviour became divorced from any objective morality; it became attached to a subjective ethic and sexual permissivism is the logical result.
Now the starting point for a Christian, who has brought their lives under the lordship of Jesus Christ, is the authority of His Word. And there is in Scripture an objective morality that is based on the character of God essentially, and its outworking is revealed to us in different ways through the Scriptures.
Fletcher was right when he said it begins with love. Jesus said the whole of the law can be summed up in “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength and the second command is like unto it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”
But there is also a moral structure to all behaviour given to us in Scripture, which says what and why certain things are an expression of love and why certain things that otherwise may seem valid, are not an expression of love.
Now there is no question of course that our sexuality is a very important part of our lives. And God created it so. He made the male and female at the beginning and He designed the mechanism, He designed the means, He designed the meaning of sexual activity.
But sexuality, like most other things, has fallen into trouble. And what holds the potential for the highest good and the greatest joys can sometimes bring the deepest hurts and the most painful sadness’s.
And I have no doubt that here this morning there are many of us who has been damaged either by our own sexual activity or by sexual activity where we have been on the receiving end of abuse and use.
So I want to try and look at this clearly and compassionately. And I want to talk this morning about the purpose and the pitfalls of sex.
And I want to talk first about the purpose of sex and I want to base it on what Paul writes in these verses we read in 1 Corinthians. He is actually, in these verses, saying why singleness is good. (And we are going to talk about singleness next week.) But in that context he also talks about why marriage is good.
And he says if you are married that’s good, if you stay single, that’s good. Personally, he said, “I prefer you were like me” (he was a single man) and he tells us why. “But if you marry, that’s good too.”
And here in Verse 3 of 1 Corinthians Chapter 7 he makes this statement:
“The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.”
Now what does he mean by this phrase, “should fulfill his marital duty”? I mean marital duty sounds pretty cold, doesn’t it? You know, “this is my marital duty”.
Well there are two phrases in Scripture – well two phrases in Genesis actually – that are used to describe the sexual relationship. One I referred to last week in Genesis 4:1 where the King James correctly translates it:
“Adam knew Eve, his wife; and she conceived and bare Cain.”
Now the NIV and some other translations change this to explain what is meant by it. The NIV says, “Adam lay with his wife and she conceived and gave birth to Cain”, which is fine – that is descriptive of what actually happened.
But this word “knew” is a very important word. It’s the Hebrew word “yada” and I mentioned this last week. According to Strong’s Hebrew definitions, which I consulted, he says,
“To know in this setting means to know properly another person, to experience, to discover, to give to, to have, to take from, to be privy to, to be sure of.” All of these, he says, describe the meaning of this word “yada”, to know.
“It is a knowledge which gives the deepest kind of intimacy between two people that involves the whole person – spirit, soul, heart and body – and is expressed in that physical sexual act.”
But there is an awful lot more about Adam knowing Eve than simply the sexual act in producing a baby.
Someone sent me this quotation from Tim Keller this week.
“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known but not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense.” (You don’t have to pretend anything to anybody.) It humbles us out of our self-righteousness and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
That’s the intensity of being known. And that is the word that is used here. Adam knew his wife Eve. And that was the context for the sexual relationship.
The other phrase used is well known. Genesis 2:24:
“A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”
Now this “one flesh” of course includes the physical but it is more than the physical; it is the spiritual oneness, a vital communion of heart of which the physical union is its consummation and its expression. But the physical union without that spiritual and heartfelt union is left empty.
And so this “one flesh” description is not about two people coming together sexually, though that is an expression of it, but it is about being known, being loved, belonging, and made one.
There are two primary purposes for the sexual relationship there. For one is relationship, it is building a depth of union between two people that expresses the spiritual and heartfelt union, expressing it in a sexual way.
The other primary purpose is reproduction. Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived and gave birth to Cain.
There is a third “R”, which is the most popular one today, in all likelihood, which is not part of the intention – that is that sex is recreation. It is purely for self-indulgence. And any kind of sexuality which is purely self-indulgent is completely detached from the purpose which God created it.
Now every society sets boundaries around sexuality – every society does. And in the developmental western civilization over a number of centuries, Christianity has been the main force in setting those boundaries, and what the Scripture says about sex.
Now historically the church has not always portrayed a positive view of sexuality as Scripture in fact does. And probably with a proper concern to avoid sexual sin and avoid lustful situations, it has majored on avoiding the dangers and probably left a guilt complex about the joys of sexuality.
And some of those boundaries were unnecessarily repressive. Augustine, who was one of the great influences on the church (some would say the greatest outside of the New Testament, back in the 4th Century). And he came to Christ from a promiscuous background, so there is a reaction in his own situation to perhaps his past.
But he spoke of being born in sin (which is a phrase that David used in Psalm 51) as being born as the result of sexual intercourse. That’s what it means, he said, to be born in sin. Though he did recognize it was a necessary evil, but he said sex for any purpose other than conceiving is sin.
Jerome, who was a contemporary of Augustine in the 4th Century - he translated the Bible into Latin and his translation, The Vulgate, has been highly regarded through history and wrote many Bible commentaries - and he wrote,
“Anyone who is too passionate a lover with his own wife becomes like an adulterer.”
So they developed a rather distorted view of sex. According to Philip Yancey, during the Middle Ages and up until the Reformation and even after the Reformation for a short while, the church authorities had issued edicts forbidding sex on certain days.
It was forbidden on Thursdays because that was the day of Christ’s arrest, forbidden on Fridays because that was the day of His death, forbidden on Saturdays in honor of the Virgin Mary, forbidden on Sundays in honor of departed saints.
Monday was a good day, so was Tuesday. Wednesdays occasionally, but it was prohibited on most Wednesdays for a series of different reasons having to do with feasts and departed saints and other things.
But in addition to that, they had to abstain for the 40 day fast period before Christmas, the 40 day fast period before Easter and the 40 day fast period before Pentecost. Now Pentecost was 50 days after Easter, so in a 90 day period, there was a 10 day gap in the middle, which fortunately contained 2 Mondays and 2 Tuesdays. And you probably took your vacation during that week.
It was also banned on feast days and days of the apostles, and it was estimated there were 44 days a year that remained available for marital sex.
I am not kidding – this is historically the case, although one historian I read says there is no evidence that many Christians took this seriously. But it was probably a useful form of contraception as well – reduce it to 44 days a year and you have probably reduced the size of the family.
But it is no wonder that Christians developed a paranoid fear of sex with this kind of restriction. Now the Scripture not only affirms its importance and its place, but Paul writes here in 1 Corinthians 7:3 (I just read this verse):
“The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.”
Then he gives an interesting reason in Verse 4:
“The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.”
By the way, outside of marriage you do not belong to each other. Marriage, beginning with a wedding day - all cultures have a wedding celebration of some kind, whether it is a one-day event, whether it is a three-day or a week-long event, they all have some celebration of the beginning of this relationship because a wedding is a surrender publicly, that is affirmed publicly, that I no longer belong to myself; I belong to my wife or I belong to my husband.
And Paul affirms that.
However, this verse could be used, and sadly has been used, as a means of abuse where one says to the other, “you belong to me; therefore I demand of you sex.”
What does it mean for a wife’s body to belong to her husband and a husband’s body to belong to his wife? Well in Ephesians 5:28 Paul says there,
“Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies” (because you belong to each other). “He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one hated his own body, but he feeds it and cares for it, just as Christ does the church – for we are members of his body.”
Paul, by the way, always brings these things back to Christ as the source of our understanding of some of these things. And he is saying there that a man loves his wife as his own body because she belongs and they are now one. And he is to treat her the way he would treat his own body in independence of her. He cares, he looks after, he says he feeds, he nourishes.
The context in which a wife’s body belongs to her husband is that he cherishes her and loves her and cares for her and looks after her. And she is safe with him and she is protected with him.
The sex drive in men and women is different. I don’t like generalizing but I will do it at this point.
A man’s sex drive is never far from the surface. The sex drive in men is like an electric light. If you flick the switch, the light goes on. And when you flick it off, it goes off.
The sex drive in women is more like an electric iron. You flick the switch and you touch the iron and it’s cold. Come on, it’s on, what’s the problem? But it gets hot if you are patient. Then you flick it off and it’s still hot.
Now women need to understand that in men, you can flick a switch in the way you dress, in gestures, even a look. That’s why men are turned on by pictures of naked ladies.
I don’t think it works quite the same way the other way.
That’s why advertisers know the power of that. Do you want to sell a sports car? Stick a semi-naked woman on the car. It doesn’t have to be there for long and the guy will start to say, “I like that car.” It has nothing to do with the car. You flick the right switch for it.
And men, we men, need to understand that in women, that women need time, they need romance, they need kindness, they need tenderness, they need romance and wooing. Because, to a woman, the sex act is not about the sex – it can be to the man. To the woman it’s about the relationship.
It’s about what you are doing out of bed in terms of your kindness and gentleness and the safety you build around your wife. And we men need to understand that the context our wives need is not to slap a verse on them that says your body belongs to me - that’s abuse - but to love and nurture and care for and protect.
That’s why there is a saying “sex begins at breakfast” with the kindness and the warmth that you show. And this belonging to each other and giving ourselves to each other cannot be identified purely as the physical sexual act but detached from the relationship; it is an expression of the relationship and is never “you give yourself to me”; it has to be “I give myself to you”.
Otherwise women feel used and there are many married women who feel used because the context is not right and the oneness has not been set - the soulish, spiritual, heartfelt intimacy of heart.
Intimacy is a word that has become associated with sex. Actually intimacy ought to be associated with the heart. That’s the real intimacy. And actually we men need it as well as women.
And then he says in Verse 5,
“Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”
What he is saying there is keep the sexual relationship in repair. Don’t deprive each other unless it is by mutual consent for some better purpose, like devoting yourself to prayer. But then he says be understanding too that if you don’t come back together Satan may tempt. And so the relationship should be kept wholesome and healthy.
Now this has been a significantly difficult area to manage and it has to be worked on in marriage. The sexual instinct is a powerful force and it must come under discipline. If it is the glue in a marriage, you cannot build anything just with glue. You are gluing together two things of substance. That’s what glue is for.
If there is no substance, the glue tears and destroys. And so the focus in a marriage in how Paul teaches about it is that we love our wives as we love our own bodies. We care, we nurture, we look after, we protect. And in that context we are able to give ourselves to each other.
Well, let me talk secondly, just for a few minutes, about the pitfalls of sex as there is an awful lot we can say here and I don’t have time to say an awful lot. But let me keep it to these verses that I read to you.
I didn’t read Verse 13 of Chapter 6, but in the second part of that verse he says,
“The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.”
And then in Verse 18 he says,
“Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.”
(Which means himself, but also means his wife – they have been made one, you see. He has explained that.)
That is why, by the way, sexual sin is different to other sin in its consequences because this is a sin that is against your own body.
Now what does Paul mean by sexual immorality when he uses that phrase here? There are two main definitions in the New Testament of sexual immorality in heterosexual relationships. I am going to talk on another Sunday about homosexuality.
But the two main definitions are adultery (which is extra-marital sex – that is sex outside of the marriage relationship).
And the other is the word fornication, which is pre-marital sexual relationships - that is, prior to a marriage.
Adultery of course breaks the oneness, the bond, the commitment.
This word fornication, which actually is translated by the NIV as sexual immorality, which sounds much more general, but it is a translation of the word that is translated in many other translations as fornication, has been much discussed and debated as to what it really means.
Some argue the word refers only to promiscuity but not to sex in a loving, though unmarried relationship.
But it is very hard to substantiate that argument in the light of this passage. Let me just show you Paul’s argument in Chapter 7 and the second part of Verse 1. He says,
“It is good for a man not to marry. But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.”
Now it may seem a very low level argument to say the way to avoid sexual immorality is to marry. Sex is not the only reason for marriage and if it is the primary reason, statistics tell us it doesn’t last very long.
But it is part of the equation of course. It is part of the reason why we want to marry.
And he says that if you marry you avoid sexual immorality. That is to say that when you marry, you avoid sexual activity outside of the marriage by the fact that you have gotten married. So he is arguing there about a couple in a loving relationship but he says if you need to marry, do, because of the option which he calls immorality.
Later in the chapter, Chapter 7 Verse 36, he argues this way:
“If anyone thinks he is acting improperly toward the virgin he is engage to, and if she is getting along in years and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning. They should get married.
“But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind, who is under no compulsion but has control over his own will, and who has made up his mind not to marry the virgin – this man also does the right thing.
“So then, he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does even better.”
Now here’s his argument. If they are engaged, a man engaged to a virgin woman – and he uses the phrase, “he is engaged to her”, the virgin he is engaged to – and they want a sexual relationship, he says they should get married.
Now he doesn’t say, “If you are engaged and the sexual desires are strong, then go ahead and sleep together since you are committed to each other, so it’s okay.”
He doesn’t say that. He says if the desire is that strong, get married.
In other words, premarital sexual intercourse is not the option.
The same thing is clear from Verse 2:
“Because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.”
He doesn’t say because of the temptation to immorality, get a girlfriend and stick with her, nor that a commitment to marriage (as in the case of the man who is engaged to a virgin) justifies the act of sexual intercourse before marriage.
Now he says if your desire for sexual relations with your fiancée is that strong, go ahead and get married, because marriage is the context that God designed for the sexual relationship. Because it is the context where you do not belong to yourselves anymore; you belong to each other. You are in that oneness that is recognized by society as well. But it is a oneness that brings you into that knowledge of one another and experience of one another where the sexual relationship is not only necessary but important.
This highlights the value of sex in marriage and prohibits sexual relationships outside of marriage.
Not there seems to be currently an assumption among many Christians that premarital sex is permitted, it’s okay, especially if you are going to be married and you are planning to be. Or at least it is not as sinful as it used to be. But we cannot conclude this from reading the writings of Paul.
In my preparation for this message I read an article by a counselor in the United States. His name is Elmer Magnussen and his article is called “The Eroding Effect of Premarital Sex”. In part of that article he says this:
“Every couple coming to me for counselling who have had premarital sexual relations have had post marital sexual adjustment problems.
“Because of this, whenever I see a couple (whether they are Christian or non-Christian) for premarital counselling, I require one major commitment from them in order for us to be effective in accomplishing some goals.
“I ask them to agree to refrain from sexual intercourse until their wedding night. If they do not consent to my request, I inform them there is no way we can prepare them realistically for marriage.
“I have never had a couple refuse to make this commitment after hearing my reasons for it.”
And in this article he gives some of the reasons why pre-marital sexual relationships have what he calls an eroding effect on the marriage itself.
Now I have had this article put up on our website because I would encourage those of you who will find this helpful to go there and read it. It’s only about four pages long. It is not extensive, but it is practical, it is borne out of experience.
And it gives us not just the scare tactics where you might become pregnant or you might contract some disease, which is usually the strongest reasons for giving for avoiding sex outside of marriage. But he gives other good, clear psychological and biblical reasons why sex before marriage has its negative effects on the sexual relationship after marriage.
So I recommend that if this is an area of interest to you that you read that. We will keep that on the website at least for this next week. It is on the front page – there is a link on the front page, so it’s easy to find.
However, as I close let me give the last word to Philip Yancey who I have quoted earlier. And Philip Yancey has written a book called “Rumours of Another World”, and I want to quote part of it. He said,
“I once heard an actor being interviewed on late night television.
“‘Tell me,’ said David Letterman, ‘you are a sex symbol who plays all sorts of exciting roles with gorgeous women. How does that compare to your real life off-screen?’
“The actor reminded Letterman that he had been happily married for twenty years. And then he said this, ‘Here’s the difference in a nutshell: in the movies life is mostly about sex and occasionally about children. Married life is mostly about children and occasionally about sex.’”
And Yancey goes on to say,
“Sex is such a powerful force that a young person may have trouble understanding how anything else could ever eclipse it. Most married people, like the actor, will tell you that sex within marriage is neither as easy nor as important as they had imagined it would be before marriage.
“It expresses intimacy, yes. It provides pleasure, but much of marriage consists of making day-to-day decisions, managing the complexities of careers and schedules, rearing children, negotiating differences, juggling finances and all the other effort involved in keeping a home running.
“Marriage strips away the illusions about sex pounded into us daily by the entertainment media. Few of us live with over-sexed supermodels. We live instead with ordinary people, men and women who get bad breath, body odors and unruly hair, who menstruate and experience occasional impotence, who have bad moods and embarrass us in public, who pay more attention to our children’s needs than to our own. We live with people who require compassion, tolerance, understanding and an endless supply of forgiveness and so do our partners.
“Such is the ironic power of sex. It lures us into a relationship that offers to teach us what we need far more – sacrificial love.”
I suggest to you that’s the key. It’s almost God’s little trick. He has given us this sexual desire as something that is strong and attractive to lure us into a place that demands that we give unconditional love, patience and generosity.
Yes it gives us this wonderful experience of love and closeness and togetherness but it produces helpless babies who need our time, our energy, our money, our patience and wisdom, our care.
My daughter and son-in-law would normally be here – they are not here this morning because they are awaiting the birth of their first baby who is two days overdue. And they are about to make a huge discovery that the beautiful attraction of the magnetic power of love and sexual desire that brings people together in marriage, after the next day or two, when this beautiful little baby girl is born (and I know she will be beautiful because she has her grandmother’s genes in her – the worst thing about this, by the way, is I am going to be married to a grandmother in a few days’ time).
And this beautiful little baby is going to need their unrelenting love and patience and money and time and energy and discipline (we can’t go there because we have got a baby at home.) And it is going to last for at least 20 years.
And do you know something? That is what it is all about. The power of love and sex is to bring us to the place where it brings out of us the best thing it possibly could: selflessness and unconditional love where you live your lives in the interest of somebody else.
But it is not God’s trick; it’s actually what it’s about. And if we don’t know that, sex will become a broken play thing. And not only will the sex itself be broken, but it will break us in the process.
And God would save us from that by saying, “I have given you the mechanism, I have given you the means, but I have also given you the structure as two of you become one in every possible sense.”
And that is a life-long pursuit, a life-long journey and it doesn’t happen easily, it doesn’t happen quickly and you learn through your pain, and we learn through our mistakes and we learn the same things again. But that is the biggest prize of all.
Let’s pray together.
Lord, we thank You that You have not only created us but You have provided the context for which the creations that we are might find fulfillment and purpose. Forgive us that we have elevated sex to such an unrealistic and high place that can only but disappoint us in the course of time.
And we thank You too for the fulfillment that Your Word speaks about in living singly as well as in marriage. I pray for those of us here this morning who need to confess to You our failings, our sins, knowing that You forgive. But knowing too there is a time for healing and restoration, which we ask that You will bring into our lives that we might be the whole people You created us to be, that those of us who are married here this morning, that we might enjoy that oneness on every level that You want us to enjoy it, that we care and love and belong to, and give to and protect and nurture each other. Make this our desire and make this real for us. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.