3 SEXUALITY IS A GIFT FROM GOD!

The worlds of theology and sexuality are commonly viewed as being miles apart. People tend to think of themselves as being divided into two parts, body and soul, with the soul being the good part and the body the evil or bad part. We do not agree with this view and hope to present what we see as a more holistic, biblical model.

Although the Bible is not an instruction book for sexual functioning, it gives a clear picture of

• God’s value of our individual sexuality and

• His high regard for the sexual relationship in marriage.

Scripture’s high view of the human sexual dimension elevates sex as something to be cherished, like a family jewel or heirloom. It is a precious gift to be stored carefully and not allowed to tarnish until it is shared with a special person. However, in society today, sexuality is often treated more like a piece of junk jewelry, something given to a child at age fourteen to be worn to school and later thrown into the bottom of the bike bag.

The Bible speaks about sexuality as a prized gift. It designates sex for marriage because it is within this commitment that the qualities of a highly held view of sexuality can be fulfilled. The Bible portrays sex as a symbol of the relationship between God and his people. It puts sex in the context of the deepest commitment one human can make to another: a lifelong commitment to honor, cherish, and be faithful until death. When we accept sex and sexuality as a precious gift from the Creator, it clearly sets us apart from those who misuse it as junk.

In the book of Genesis, the Bible tells how Adam and Eve were “naked and unashamed,” experiencing a free, open relationship that had no barriers. Their relationship was not based on power, intimidation, social myths, or cultural control. Later, Scripture refers to Christ as the “last,” or new, Adam and teaches that believers bear Christ’s image (1 Cor. 15:45–50). This makes sex without shame a viable potential for the Christian. Unfortunately, the church has let social culture dictate many distorting images of sexuality. When we can rid ourselves of these limitations and live lives of freedom and openness in marriage, then we can be sexually free and fulfilled.

We hope this biblically based view will become central to your attitude in enjoying your sexual relationship with your spouse. We can affirm our body, including our sexuality, as a God-given gift to be enjoyed as it is used responsibly. Our sexuality is part of our total being—not merely a physical, fleshly, or “evil” part of us. It reflects the image of God in us.

Many of the biblical assumptions found in this book come from Genesis, particularly the creation account.

GOD’S PLAN

Sexual by Creation

Sexuality is part of God’s plan of creation. Our maleness and femaleness, our sexuality, is not something added on or part of our sinful natures; it is part of the original perfect creation of mankind.

It’s in our bones. By implication, then, our sexuality is nothing to be ashamed of, but rather something to enjoy.

In God’s Image

As we see in Genesis 1:27, not only were we made male and female, but that maleness and femaleness are representative of God’s image. We don’t know exactly how, but in some way our sexuality reflects the image of God.

Genesis 1:26–27 tells us: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (emphasis added).

It is clear from this passage that mankind was created by God in accordance with a particular model or design. That design is described as the “image of God.” We should point out that it is not the male alone whom God made in his own image, rather, “male and female he created them.” Man and woman, male and female, are created in God’s image.

What else can we learn about the meaning of our creation in the image of God? We see that the man and woman, created after the animals, were the only part of creation identified as being in God’s image. God’s image is something we have and animals don’t. So God’s image cannot be anything we have in common with the animal world. We have physical bodies, and so do animals, so the body can’t be a distinguishing factor. The meaning of God’s image is that we are created to be in relationship. That means we have the capacity to be in relationship with God, which the animals do not have, as well as the capacity to have relationships with one another.

Our image, as it reflects God and as it relates to sexuality, includes two dimensions: our sexual functioning and our functioning in relationship as a couple. The first command given to mankind was to “become one.” This is a sexual function. The second command involved dominion and choice. These are relationship functions. As we move farther into this passage, the freedom of choice includes the choice of obeying or disobeying God’s commands. Therefore, being in the image of God includes higher levels of function than just animalistic sexuality.

Physical, Emotional, Spiritual

To understand the high view of our sexuality, we must understand the Hebrew view of the human person as an integrated whole. The Hebrews never divided people into body and soul, as did the Greek dualists, or into body, soul, and spirit, as some of us tend to do today. Rather, the Hebrews thought of a person as a unity of the physical, emotional, and spiritual. These various dimensions of a person were closely related and were often used synonymously or interchangeably.

Lovemaking cannot be just physical. That does not mean there is never a time when only physical release is needed, and you provide that for each other. But if there is to be a fulfilled relationship, there must be more to it than meeting physical needs. The total person—intellect, emotions, body, spirit, and will—becomes involved in the process of giving ourselves to each other.

God-Given Sexuality Includes Sexual Intercourse

In the beginning, the perfect, sinless state of man and woman included sexual union, and this, too, was a perfect and beautiful part of God’s creation plan—part of our being reflections of him, here on earth.

The two of us grew up with the implicit view that sexual union occurred after man’s fall into sin. Yet Genesis 2:24 occurs in the account before any report of sin. It says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” The phrase “become one flesh” refers to sexual intercourse. But this means far more than a mere physical meeting of bodies. The Scripture is talking about that mystical union between husband and wife that unites two people as total persons. This becoming one also reflects our being created in his perfect image. Furthermore, “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (v. 25). Apparently there was a completely open relationship between male and female, and there was a completely open relationship between God and man. This honest fellowship continued until Adam and Eve disobeyed God; then sin interrupted both relationships.

Sexual Oneness Symbolizes the God-Man Relationship

The husband-wife sexual relationship is used throughout Scripture to symbolize the God-man relationship. This imagery begins in Genesis.

Read Genesis 3:7–22. When sin interrupted the communication between man and God, interestingly enough, it also interrupted the communication between man and woman. Notice verse 7 of chapter 3: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked.” Apparently they became ashamed. “They sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” One result of the Fall was that mankind lost some of the image of God that had been given them. Adam and Eve no longer had that unashamed, open, perfect relationship with each other as husband and wife. And then an even more interesting thing happened: Adam and Eve hid from God. They no longer experienced openness with God. They felt the same kind of embarrassment with God that they had demonstrated toward each other.

Now God enters the scene. He comes to deal with Adam and Eve in their disobedience. The first action he takes is to make permanent coverings for their genitals. Have you ever thought about what a strange sequence of events this is? Why, after these two people disobeyed God, would God enter the scene and make loincloths to cover their genitals? Why would those two events be connected? We believe that somehow human sexual organs and their potential are symbolic of the human potential to have a relationship to God.

It would seem that the total way in which two people get involved with each other in a sexual experience—the ecstatic, frantic, intense union that can occur—is a symbol of the way in which we can be intensely involved with God. We most lose ourselves to another person in the sexual experience. We are totally open and vulnerable with each other. God would have us give ourselves to him with the same abandonment.

The concept that sexual union is an example of the way God would like to relate to mankind is further developed throughout the Old Testament.

God’s Bride

Israel is frequently referred to in Scripture as God’s bride. In Jeremiah 7:9 and 23:10, the terms “adultery” and “adulterers” are used to describe Israel’s sin of worshiping other gods. Ezekiel 16 talks in great detail of how God’s grace was demonstrated to unfaithful Jerusalem. It talks in symbolic terms of a lover preparing his bride. The passage refers to bathing, oiling, clothing, adorning her; and yet she becomes an adulterous wife, who takes strangers instead of her husband (v. 32).

The entire book of Hosea is an account of God’s relationship with Israel, his bride. This symbolism is used regularly when God is trying to establish a relationship with his chosen people. When God began to make a covenant with his people, he said, “This is how I’m going to relate to you,” and then he laid out the conditions. And the conditions included his steadfast love and mercy. God wants to have a loving relationship with his people. This is symbolized in the sexual relationship. Isaiah 62:5 reads: “As a young man marries a maiden, so will your sons marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.”

Another interesting fact that confirms the symbolism is evident throughout the Old Testament. The Hebrew word meaning “to know,” referring to sexual intercourse, is the same Hebrew word used when the Bible refers to man’s “knowing” God. For example, Genesis 4:1 says, “Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain.” Jeremiah 24:7 quotes the Lord: “I will give them a heart to know me.”

Christ’s Bride

We find the most explicit passage showing the symbolism of the church (the body of believers) as Christ’s bride in Ephesians 5. It says, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands. . . . For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. . . . As the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (vv. 21–25). The writer, Paul, keeps interweaving the relationship of husband and wife with the relationship of Christ and the church. Then Ephesians 5:31 quotes Genesis 2:24, summarizing leaving mother and father, cleaving, and becoming one flesh.

The whole passage is basically saying that the sexual relationship is what best symbolizes the relationship between Christ and the church. In Revelation 19:6–7, the writer talks about Christ’s bride, the church, coming for the celebration, the wedding supper. This is a constant theme throughout Scripture. We have to assume that this symbolism is telling us there is something more to sex than physical release, since our sexual relationship is a model of how we can best understand God’s desire to have an intense relationship with us.

Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Christ did not claim his rights but became like us, so we could know him and invite him into our lives.

Solomon is a great model of the husband loving his wife as Christ loved the church. Solomon affirms and connects with the personhood of his wife. In response, his wife invites adventurous sexual activity. Solomon is effusive in his adoration of his new wife: “How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful!” (Song of Songs 4:1). He describes in detail what he enjoys about her.

In response, she pursues him with passion: “May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine” (1:2 NASB). “On my bed night after night I sought him Whom my soul loves” (3:1 NASB). “Come, my beloved, let us go out into the country, let us spend the night in the villages. Let us rise early and go to the vineyards; let us see whether the vine has budded and its blossoms have opened, and whether the pomegranates have bloomed. There I will give you my love” (7:11–12 NASB).

A Mystery

On the full meaning of this symbolism we read: “This is a profound mystery . . .” (Eph. 5:32). When the word mystery is used in the New Testament, we understand it to mean that the purpose of the event or teaching is in the process of being revealed to us. What we did not understand at all before, we can, through Christ, grasp with some degree of enlightenment. And someday the same concept will be clearly understood by all believers.

One thing most of us can be fairly sure of is that we do not experience the impact of this symbolism in the process of lovemaking. It’s not likely that a sexual experience will trigger great thoughts about our relationship with God. We are much more apt to be intensely aware of our own physical and emotional expressions and sensations.

We do believe that it is in this mystical union of two bodies that body and spirit come closest to a merger. Most of the time we let our minds control us. But in the moment of orgasm we are released from that control. Climax is a “total being” experience; everything about us enters into it. Perhaps this is how the sexual experience represents our relationship to God. In this total, intense fusion of body, emotion, and spirit, we are connecting with what it can be like to be totally one with God. This is, indeed, a mystery. One day we will understand it fully. Meanwhile, we can simply accept and enjoy the truth of it.