The forgiveness of God is gratuitous liberation from guilt. Paradoxically, the conviction of personal sinfulness becomes the occasion of encounter with the merciful love of the redeeming God.
What does sexual flourishing look like for the Christian? For the young married couple in their twenties, the divorced father of three, or the same-sex attracted teen? What does it mean to appreciate our God-given sexuality while submitting expressions of it to his authority and good plan? Allowing culture to dictate our response is not the right answer. But allowing the purity movement, a Christian subculture that we created and allowed to shape our worldview, isn’t the answer either.
My dad used to say at the end of almost every sermon: “Don’t take my word for it. See for yourself.” Then he would hold up his Bible as if it were a road map, bidding the congregation to take up this precious gift. As you read my fumbling attempt to summarize God’s sexual ethic, please don’t take my word for it. Open his book. Press into the Scriptures. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you eyes to see and ears to hear. Open it while alone, in prayer. Open it with others, in study. Open it often and let it be a light to your feet.
One of the realities we discover as we dig into the Bible is the miraculous embodiment of God in Jesus. Holiness took on flesh. The light that made Moses’ face shine, the whirlwind that approached Job—this God became human. He had a body. Has a body. And I don’t say this to be crass but to take God at his Word: Jesus was a sexual being.
Joy Beth Smith bravely presses into this truth, noting that during his time on earth Jesus had to “figure out his body and control its reactions as a young boy and later as an adult, even as women knelt at his feet or tugged on his robes.”1 Why does the fact of his embodiment make us uncomfortable? I believe it is because we struggle to separate sexuality from sexual sin, and therefore it is hard for us to imagine that Jesus could be both sexual and sinless. Smith calls this unhelpful union a “man-made bridge.”2 We built it together, and together we must knock it down, starting with the fact that sex is a God-created, God-imagined good.
Sex existed before the fall. It was not the original sin and, despite centuries of artistic depictions of Eve as a seductress, neither was it the first temptation. Sex was part of God’s plan from the very beginning, part of his creation, and as Nancy Pearcey points out, it was part of what God pronounced “very good.”3 Genesis 2 records the creation of Eve who, after being formed, would “become one flesh” (v. 24) with Adam—a phrase used in Scripture to describe both the mystery of the marriage covenant as well as the physical act of sexual intercourse (1 Corinthians 6:16). In the beginning, sex was good. God made it and those expressing it were united in the covenant of marriage.
We see that goodness, that freedom and intimacy, in Genesis. Adam and Eve were both fully naked and “they felt no shame” (Genesis 2:25). Can you imagine? No insecurity. No blushing. Just pure, uninhibited sexual unity between husband and wife. No bed sheets were needed. No window shades pulled down. They enjoyed sex freely, in front of the birds and the bees, knowing God could see them and was completely unbothered by it. In the garden, sexuality was free from shame.
It was also free from sin. What has happened since that time in the garden? When did sex get distorted? Perverted? When did it turn from a source of joy to a source of shame and brokenness? We know the answer. We have read about the tree and the serpent and the fruit. But what really happened on that fateful day when sin entered the world happened after Satan whispered four words to Eve: “Did God actually say . . . ?” (Genesis 3:1 ESV). The first temptation of humankind was to disbelieve God. Sin—sexual and otherwise—always begins by doubting God’s words. After Eve and Adam ate the fruit from the forbidden tree, sin was made manifest in the form of bodily shame. Genesis 3:7 records: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths” (ESV). They didn’t feel the need to cover their hands or feet. They covered their genitals. Sexual self-consciousness entered the world that day.
And self-consciousness and self-worship go hand in hand. Daniel Darling believes that “self-worship was the seduction offered in Eden.”4 Looking at the story this way, we see temptation to sin not as low-hanging fruit, dangled by a God who likes to watch humans squirm, but as humankind’s outright rejection of God in favor of self. This is what Adam and Eve were really choosing over obedience to God. Look at what the serpent went on to say: “God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5).
Adam and Eve had everything they needed to flourish—physically, emotionally, and sexually. The world and everything in it were about God’s glory, and the Garden of Eden was a place where his image bearers could worship him just by enjoying his beautiful earth, each other, and sweet intimacy with their Creator and friend. All their needs were met. Until the day Satan reminded them that they were not God.
And the desire to be the god of your life—of your sexuality—is still a serpent in the ear, a lie in the heart. We are not above falling for the original sin over and over again. Recognize that self-worship is behind every act of disobedience, even the ones we try to justify or minimize. Every time we sin, we are saying, “I choose to be my own god.”
The fall destroyed perfect intimacy with God and with one another—a destruction that we are still recovering from, accompanied by longings that will not be satiated this side of heaven. Created good, our bodies now live under the weight of that day, along with the rest of creation, groaning and longing to be made new. When we sin sexually, it is not because sexuality is corrupt or because sex is evil, but because we are corrupt, continually exchanging the truth of God for lies (Romans 1:25).
During a unit on the theology of surveillance at the University of St. Andrews, my classmates and I discussed the watchful eyes of God. The reverberating response in my discussion group was that God doesn’t need to watch everything, and that there are some places his eyes shouldn’t go. When pressed, it became clear that these comments were generally referring to what happened in the bedroom.
I can hear Whitney Houston singing: “His eye is on the sparrow / And I know He watches over me.” These words bring comfort in certain contexts, but in others we find ourselves wishing that God wasn’t quite so omnipresent. All the same, we cannot hide from him:
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:7-12)
God not only sees how we treat sex in our hearts, our bodies, and our minds, he also cares how we treat it. And he knows we need Jesus’ blood to cover our sins—including the sexual ones. Paul reminds us: “You were bought at a price.” How do we, as Christians, respond to such a gift? By glorifying God in our bodies—and with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (1 Corinthians 6:20; Mark 12:30).
Our sexuality is not independent from God or our call to love our neighbors. How we treat sex affects those around us. When we view pornography, for example, we are not just sinning against God, we are sinning against the people in that image or movie, against our spouse (if we are married), and against other image bearers of God who have become depersonalized and objectified as a result. When we lust after someone in our heart, it may seem like a private sin, but it is nevertheless against a real person. Treating them selfishly in our minds is bound to show up in the way we treat them in person.
A woman I interviewed confessed that her private sexual fantasies trained her brain to “see men as objects.” Even when an individual wasn’t the object of her lust, she says that her devotion to habitual masturbation had created a selfish mindset. She began viewing other people as existing to meet her emotional needs. “When they didn’t say the exact things I wanted to hear or do the exact things I wanted them to do in order for me to feel loved or accepted,” she withdrew, became angry, or picked a fight.
There are no hidden or harmless sexual sins. We have been called out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9). Even the most discreet sexual sin will have its effect on our intimacy with God, our church, and our witness, which is why God calls us to step into the light of his grace and forgiveness—day by day, minute by minute. And when we live in this liturgy of repentance and forgiveness, we will not despise the eyes of God.
As you may be aware, I am not the only one reevaluating the messages of evangelical purity culture. Two of the most recent books on the topic contain stories of times the authors had sex with their boyfriends. They both deem these instances of extramarital sexual intercourse good and holy—a time of deep communion with God.
Linda Kay Klein, who describes herself as a Christian standing “outside of the hand [she] grew up in,” writes:
I was twenty-six. In a quaint Japanese hotel room with a long-term boyfriend that I was certain I would marry, in the way in which we are absolutely certain of just about everything in our twenties. And the sex/shame brain trap just . . . broke. I prayed the whole while. Thanking God for the moment, the man, and most of all, that I might finally be free. And a holy presence filled the room. My boyfriend startled. “Is someone else in here?” He asked. “Yes,” I answered him.5
Similarly, Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber writes about a time after her divorce:
When I started seeing my boyfriend, I felt connected to him and to my body and my desires and my erotic nature in a deep way. It was like an exfoliation of my entire spirit. It softened me and opened my heart and cleared away the gunk in my head. It was good. Not perfect. Good. Good like bodies. Good like chocolate cake. Good like when God saw what God made, and God looked at it and said it was good.6
Bolz-Weber insists that “when two loving individuals, two bearers of God’s image, are unified in an erotic embrace, there is space for something holy.”7
Beloved, do not be deceived by such thinking. The gospel of self is everywhere, and it tastes sweet, like wine. Which is why we must drink all the more deeply of God’s Word—so that our hearts are not deceived: God is about his glory. God loves you, and your highest good is to be about his glory too.
The gospel of self continues throughout the ages, and there are pastors, writers, and theologians who continue to infuse this false gospel into books and sermons alongside Scripture, making it difficult to sort out truth from lies, right from wrong, holy from wicked. But God urges us:
Brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy . . . offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. . . .
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. . . .
Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh. (Romans 12:1-2, 9-10; 13:14)
There is forgiveness at the cross for every sin. And we can grow from our mistakes, learn from our failures, and even look back with thankfulness at times when God showed mercy to us despite our disobedience. But when we start calling “holy” what God calls sinful, we have ceased to honor him. We have misunderstood what holiness means.
Holiness is not premarital sex without shame. Holiness is God, the Lord Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come (Revelation 4:6-8). Paul is swift to deal with sexual immorality within the church. It is not tolerated. In Corinth, a man was having sex with his mother-in-law. Paul heard about this, that the church not only failed to confront this man’s sin but seemed to take pride in letting it continue. He did not mince his words: “Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:6-8).
If he were alive today, Paul would have been less concerned with sexual immorality in Hollywood or in politics and more concerned with those who claim the name of Jesus engaging in unrepentant sexual sin. Sexual sin should not be allowed to flourish in our churches. Whether that sin takes the form of sexual harassment, premarital sex, pornography addiction, or something else, it should be rooted out and dealt with in truth, wisdom, and love, not hidden away, excused, or praised.
Jude calls us to “show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh” (Jude 23). How might this relate to our interactions with those who are caught up in sexual sin? Theologian Michael Green says that believers have the privilege of offering, through Christ, “a robe of righteousness for the man clothed in filthy rags (cf. Isaiah 61:10)” but that “once he begins to revel in the filthy garment, once he tolerates it and toys with it, he ceases to be a useful servant of Christ at all. Once he treats sin as normal and commonplace, he is on the way to betraying the gospel.”8
Does this mean that the merciful heart, gentle with love, is more susceptible to downplaying sin? I don’t think so. But if I am honest, I must admit that my genuine mercy often gets twisted up in my desire for human praise. I may start out with the right motives, but somewhere along the line my desire to be loving morphs into a desire to seem loving. And I can start to soften the edges of sin, calling what God has deemed filthy, clean. In doing so, I fail to love God and my neighbor.
There will come a day when our desire to seem loving will make war with our desire to be loving. On that day, it is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that any of us will stand on solid ground. Pray now for that strength. Our Christian calling is to walk side by side with truth and love. Selfish mercy cowers away from naming sin. It fears people more than God. But true mercy knows that what each of us needs more than anything else is the gospel—and the rivers of living water that rush in when we recognize ourselves as sinners and Jesus as Savior.
As much as we might prefer theology to come in black and white, our relationship with sin is complicated. In Romans 6, Paul says that Christians are those who have “been set free from sin” (v. 7). We have died to it and are no longer sin’s slave. But in the very next chapter, Paul points out that, although he delights in God’s law, sin continues to wage war inside him. He admits: “Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me” (Romans 7:21) and laments that, rather than doing good, he often does the very evil he hates (v. 19). But here is hope at the end of Paul’s admission: “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v. 25).
God’s sexual ethic is first meant to reveal our sin as “utterly sinful” (Romans 7:13) and to devastate us into acknowledging our need for a Savior. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount reveals us all as sexual sinners: the virgins, the serial adulterers, the porn addicts. We all fall short of God’s command to see one another as brothers and sisters in all purity. The main point is not pursuing sexual purity but recognizing our impurity and our desperate need for Christ. So many of us walked right past the gospel on our way to a purity conference. Our parents and youth leaders were so concerned about our budding sexuality, scrambling for direction and wisdom, that some of us ended up signing abstinence pledges before falling on our knees in repentance. We wore purity rings as badges of honor, forgetting that it is Jesus who cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
The Christian pursuit of sexual purity is biblical, but it must flow out of a recognition that it is Jesus who makes us pure. Otherwise, we become Pharisees. And the Pharisee inside us will eventually ask: Why pursue sexual purity if it does not earn us favor with God? Sinclair Ferguson notes that the “medicine the gospel prescribes” for this kind of thinking is “understanding and tasting union with Jesus Christ himself.”9
Pursuing sexual purity to earn God’s approval is just one of our many misguided motivations. Pursuing sexual purity to earn blessings like marriage, sex, and babies is also misguided. Just like the legalist, the believer in purity prosperity will eventually ask: If disobeying God’s sexual ethic doesn’t always result in immediate physical consequences, and if pursuing sexual purity doesn’t guarantee a happy marriage, great sex, and lots of babies—why pursue it? Tim Keller, summarizing John Owen, reminds us that obedience is not “simply a way to avoid danger and have a good life” but is “a way to love and know Jesus for who he is.”10 We don’t earn Jesus. We receive him as a gift. Obedience, sexual or otherwise, is one way we get to love and worship the God who rescued us.
Pastor and author Scott Sauls recently addressed the swinging pendulum of responses that exist in the church when it comes to sexual ethics. On one side, there are those who hold firmly to all of Scripture, but lack “pastoral compassion, empathy, and grace.” On the other side, there are those who show mercy and kindness but are often “lacking in biblical fidelity.” He believes that “the sex question is one that sincere believers must wrestle with. We must remain committed to being counter-cultural where the culture and the truth are at odds with one another.”11
In contrast, Nadia Bolz-Weber tells the story of Cecilia, a parishioner who grew up during the evangelical purity movement and, like so many of us, committed to saving sex for marriage. After walking away from the church in her late twenties, Cecilia started dating her boyfriend and having sex. He eventually cheated on her, and she was left brokenhearted, wondering if his decision had anything to do with her sexual inexperience. Bolz-Weber concludes that Cecilia was “robbed” by the church, who “took away over a decade of her sexual development.” Bolz-Weber and Cecilia both admit to being angry. Their anger is not at the boyfriend who cheated but at the church for keeping Cecilia from the chance to gain the “kind of wisdom that comes from making her own choices, from having lovers, from making mistakes, from falling in love.”12
Essentially, Bolz-Weber believes that the church failed Cecilia because it upheld God’s sexual ethic. I too believe that the church has failed in its approach to sexual purity. We have turned sex and marriage into household idols. We have talked about virginity as if it were a means of salvation. We have adopted a version of the prosperity gospel. We have shamed victims of sexual abuse for actions committed against them. We have dehumanized men and women by talking about them as pitfalls and obstacles instead of as image bearers. We have allowed cultural tides to carry us away from the revealed Word of God. But, beloved, upholding God’s command to keep sex within marriage has not been one of our failings. And I will stand by all the other antiquated sticks-in-the-mud who still remember Jesus’ words in John 14:15: “If you love me, you will obey me” (WE).
How can a Christian flourish sexually according to God’s sexual ethic? By surrendering, body and soul, to God the Creator and lover of our souls. By praising him with every fiber of our being—soul, mind, and body—and by treasuring Jesus himself as the gift, the benefit, of life with God. Ferguson points out that the serpent’s temptation in the garden was “an assault on both God’s generosity and his integrity.” Satan was lying to Adam and Eve so that they would separate God’s command from “God’s gracious person.”13 God’s call to sexual purity is not separate from his love for you. Remember that.
We don’t like to talk about obedience. But the gospel wouldn’t exist without it. Philippians 2:8 says of Jesus:
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Jesus lived a life of obedience—including sexual obedience—in this flesh. He felt the ache of longing, the grief of losing, the joy of friendship, the temptation to reject God’s voice. We are not alone in this body of flesh. God understands intimately and commands lovingly. Through new life in Christ, we who “once chose to be slaves of sin” are now free to obey God with our whole heart (Romans 6:17 LB). When self-worship changes our “Yes, Lord” into “Why not?” we must ask ourselves this question about the embodied Christ: Did what Jesus do in his physical body matter to God?
Yes. It is possible to appreciate sex, honor bodies, and love one another without rejecting God’s sexual ethic. There is no one who cares more about our bodies than God. He created them—knit them together in our mother’s womb. He grows them, cares for them, sympathizes with their weakness through the embodied Jesus. And he has promised that he will one day resurrect them. God’s care for and lordship over our bodies is reflected in 1 Corinthians 6:13-20:
The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples 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 bodies.
Ferguson points out that “it was not legalism for Jesus to do everything his Father commanded him. Nor is it for us.”14 Sex that honors God is practiced and celebrated within the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman. It is precisely the fact that men and women are different that makes their coming together as one through sex in marriage such a beautiful mystery. The communication it takes. The intentionality and patience. It is their commitment to monogamy in marriage, to forsaking all others, that speaks to an even greater covenant. And the possibility of procreation, that a husband and wife’s sexual union can create new life, is unique to heterosexual sex and provides us with modern-day miracle after modern-day miracle. Yesterday, my friend grabbed my hand and held it across her pregnant belly. I felt a kick from the little life inside her, and I stood in awe over God’s design.
God created sex to be experienced between one man and one woman in the covenant of marriage for our flourishing. Not only for the continuation of the human race and unity between husband and wife but for the whole church, as a living illustration of Christ’s love for us. If you are not married, the covenant of marriage, lived out around you, is meant to help you flourish. And you don’t ever have to be a bride or a groom to experience covenant love, as every member of the church is bound to Christ, nourished and cherished by him, in holy union (Ephesians 5:29).
Still, our heads spin with the cultural questions of the day, the people we love, and the things we want. The serpent’s words appear on our own tongue: “Did God really say . . . ?” What about the engaged couple? What about two consenting men? What about me and my boyfriend, once we feel safe and ready? We love each other. Isn’t that what matters?
Many modern theologians would say yes. In Shameless, Bolz-Weber says that “we should not be more loyal to an idea, a doctrine, or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people.”15 While this might sound loving, and even remind us of the second greatest commandment, it ultimately dethrones God. It plays the soundtrack to the original sin on repeat, setting us up as the gods of our own lives. When Bolz-Weber explained some of the meaning behind the vagina statue she created, she said she wanted it to declare to the world: “This part of me is mine and I get to determine what is good for it and if it’s beautiful and how I use it in the world.”16
In contrast, Tish Harrison Warren, an Anglican priest, points out that yonic (vagina-shaped) imagery has been in the church for a long time. Because this distinctly feminine shape represents birth, it has been used in the design of baptismals, which are meant to represent our new life (or “rebirth”) in Christ. Rather than acting as statements of autonomy, Warren says these yonic baptismal fonts declare “a rejection of self-constructed morality. They remind us that, if we are baptized, Jesus calls the shots about morality and the right use of our bodies.”17
It is not our lack of sexual exploration or liberation that should grieve us but the years that our lusts have eaten, the time we could have spent surrendered to Christ, enjoying intimacy with him; the heart space that could have been filled with his promises, that we instead spent on rebellion and lesser things. God, give us courage and strength to uphold your vision for our bodies, our relationships, and our love. Help us to flourish in obedience to you.
1. Why do you think God created sex? What is its purpose?
2. What does sexual flourishing look like for the married Christian? The single Christian? The same-sex attracted Christian? The widowed or divorced Christian?
3. Do we need a new Christian sexual ethic? If so, what should it be? If not, why not?
4. How should we deal with sexual sin in our local churches?
5. Do you believe God cares about your body? Why or why not?
Have each person write down an answer to the following question: What does sexual obedience and sexual flourishing look like for you, right now, at this stage of your life? Then have everyone write down a prayer, asking God to help them honor him with their sexuality. If you have time and are willing, break off into groups of two or three and take turns praying each person’s prayer for them. Or, share some of your individual prayers with the whole group.