Sometimes when I hear someone talking about the “Christian ideal” for sex and marriage, I laugh.
Jesus says in Matthew, “For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others have been made eunuchs; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”1
According to Jesus, some people are so devoted to God that they don’t need to be married. They have transcended the married state, moving past it to a place of union with God in which having a spouse is simply unnecessary. Now, obviously if everybody did this, we would have no future anybodies, but the point is, Jesus states this matter-of-factly. As if it’s the most normal thing imaginable.
So according to Jesus, there’s being married, and then there’s something else.
In the book of Luke, Jesus says, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels.”2
In the first text, Jesus claims that some have “renounced marriage” for a state of union with God. But in the second text, he says that this will be true for all sorts of people in “the age to come,” the implication being that this will be true for people who are married now.
And in Matthew 19, Jesus affirms the one man, one woman marriage bond, the “one flesh” of Genesis, adding, “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”3
So Jesus has no problem with marriage and sex. He goes to weddings and quotes Genesis and celebrates all that should be celebrated. It’s just that he sees marriage, and therefore sex, as not the ultimate state.
Maybe the better word here is temporary. Sex, marriage, husbands, and wives—all appear to Jesus to be quite temporary, not in this life but in the next one, the one after this.
With Jesus’s words in mind, notice the words of Paul in First Corinthians: “I wish that all of you were as I am.” Paul wasn’t married, so he’s telling his audience that he wishes they were unmarried as he was. “But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”4
That’s a great line, isn’t it? “Better to marry than to burn”—a classic.
Paul continues, “Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned.”5
If you’re married, you haven’t sinned.
Well, that’s a relief.
But he’s not done: “But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this. . . . I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife—and his interests are divided. . . . A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord. In my judgment, she is happier if she stays as she is—and I think that I too have the Spirit of God.”6
Paul doesn’t seem concerned about whether a person is married. If you aren’t, great. You’re more free to serve God. If you are married, splendid. Love the person well, and the two of you get on with your life together.
After all, it’s better to marry than to burn.
Missing Something?
Paul says that he doesn’t have some sort of black-and-white message from God on whether people should be married. It’s possible for destructive messages to be sent to people who are single. That they are second class, less than, that they don’t fit, that they should find someone, get married, and join the rest of us who are “normal.”
If you are single, and you’ve been sent messages or it’s been hinted at or even said to your face that you are somehow missing something, that you aren’t good enough, that you don’t fit—that is not true. It’s not just that you’re fine single. The premise of the scriptures is that you are able to connect with God and serve God in ways that those who are married can’t. The tilt is for being single, not away from it.
The last thing Jesus ever says, or even implies, is that people who aren’t married are somehow missing out. So according to Jesus, if you aren’t having sex, you aren’t missing out on anything. And if you aren’t missing out, and marriage, according to the scriptures, is somehow temporary, then what does this say about our future?
Our future, together, after this life?
What does sex now say about life forever?
A good place to start is the end. The Bible ends with a book called Revelation, written by a man named John. In the last two chapters, John paints a picture of “a new heaven and a new earth,” which he says will come about at some point in the future. He looks and sees “the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.”7
Of all of the symbols and metaphors and images he has to draw from, John describes the end of the world as we know it as a wedding celebration. For John’s Jewish audience, this made perfect sense. This goes all the way back to the Exodus and Mount Sinai. To God and God’s people, coming together at the mountain. To the Shekinah hovering over them. To the marriage of the divine and the human.
To God’s desire to be with people.
The text continues: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.’ ”8
God with Us
The vision John has is not of people leaving earth and going somewhere else. It’s a vision of God coming here and taking up residence in our midst.
What would that be like? We read that this city “does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light.”9
Light exposes things. Light shows how things really are. There is no hiding in the light. Light is freedom. There is nothing to fear because everything is shown to be exactly what it is.
In the light, everybody is known fully.
Which is what people crave in sex, isn’t it? To be known fully and still loved, still embraced, still accepted.
We read that in this city, “nothing impure will ever enter it.”10 Isn’t that what sex is supposed to be for people in its greatest moment? When it is free from power and coercion and manipulation and agendas and fears, when it is simply two people giving all of themselves to each other, holding nothing back?
We read in John’s account that there is a tree of life in this city, and that “the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”11 The healing of the nations is the dream of the Jewish prophets, the dream of God—for everybody to finally get along. No war, no conflict, no strife. Harmony between all of humanity. Isn’t that the dream of any relationship? Isn’t that why people continue to step into relationships, even when they’ve been hurt time and time again? Because we still find new ways to hope that there, we will finally get along with somebody.
All of us connected with each other in one giant global embrace.
We read that in this city, “no longer will there be any curse.”12 The curse is a reference to the entrance of death into the human story in the garden of Eden. This curse is everywhere we look. Even the best possible relationships have a certain ache to them because someday, inevitably, one person is going to stand over the casket of the other. It all ends there. For everyone.
For many people, sex is brief moments when everything is okay with the world, even if it isn’t. It’s escape from the pain and suffering and brokenness of life. It’s a short time when all is right, even if lots of things around us are falling apart.
In Revelation, God announces, “I am making everything new!”13 Isn’t that the longing of every embrace, every act of love, sex itself? To start again, to give yourself away, again, to try again for hope and healing and restoration?
We find sex so powerful because it provides people with glimpses into the world we all desperately desire but can’t seem to create on our own.
Which raises a few questions.
If marriage has a purpose, to bring hope to the world, what happens when the world doesn’t need hope?
What happens to marriage when every hope has been fulfilled?
If sex is about connection, what happens when everybody is connected with everybody else?
If marriage is about the man and the woman filling each other in, complementing each other, bone of bones and flesh of flesh, what happens when the man and woman are complete in and of themselves?
What happens when everything we need from each other we have in God?
What happens in the presence of God when we are everything we were originally created to be?
If marriage is meant to show people what the oneness of God is like, what happens when everybody is one in the presence of God?14
If marriage is a picture of something else, what would happen to marriage if we found ourselves living in the midst of that something else?
Is sex in its greatest, purest, most joyful and honest expression a glimpse of forever?
Are these brief moments of abandon and oneness and ecstasy just a couple of seconds or minutes of how things will be forever?
Is sex a picture of heaven?
In First Corinthians 12, Paul claimed to have seen a vision of heaven, and the phrase he used to describe it in Greek is translated “unwordable words.” He wrote that he saw things man is “not permitted to tell.”
Maybe that’s why the scriptures are so ambivalent about whether a person is married. About whether a person is having sex.
Maybe Jesus knew what is coming and knew that whatever we experience here will pale compared with what awaits everyone.
Do you long for that?
Because that’s the center of Jesus’s message.
An invitation.
To trust that it’s true,
to trust that it’s real,
to trust that God is actually going to make all things new.
My Father’s House
In the first century, generally a young woman would be married in her early teens, often at thirteen or fourteen. It would become known that she was now “of age,” and her father would entertain offers from the fathers of young men who were interested in marrying her. If the fathers agreed on the terms of the marriage, there would be a celebration to honor the couple and announce their engagement. At this celebration, the groom would offer the young girl a cup of wine to drink.15
But she doesn’t have to drink it.
She can reject the cup. She can say no to his offer of marriage. Even though everything has already been arranged, she can still say no. It’s up to her.
Can you imagine the pressure on the young fella?
Here is everybody you love the most, friends and parents and relatives, gathered in a room, watching to see if she will accept the cup.
If she says yes, the groom gives a sort of prepared speech about their future together.
Because if she takes the cup and drinks from it, that only means that they are engaged. They aren’t married yet. Something still has to happen.
Or to be more precise, something has to be built.
If she says yes, then the groom goes home and begins building an addition onto his family’s home. This is where he and his bride will start their new family together. And so he works and works and works, building a place that they can call home. And here’s the interesting part: he doesn’t know when he’s going to finish. Because he doesn’t have the final say on whether it’s ready. That’s his father’s decision. And so his father periodically inspects his work, looking to see if the quality of what the son is building properly honors his future bride. The father has considerations as well. If he has many sons, and they’ve all built additions, then his house is getting quite large. There are many rooms in it. This was called an insula, a large multifamily dwelling. If the father had built his addition onto his father’s house, then by now, several generations later, this is a large dwelling with rooms for a lot of people.
Back to the story.
The future bride is at home, learning how to run a household. She also doesn’t know when the work will be done, so she’s preparing herself for a date that’s coming, she just doesn’t know when.
And then the day comes. The father inspects and tells the son that it’s time. So the son gets his friends, and they set out for her house to get her. But how will he know what room is hers?
He’ll know because she has filled her lamp with oil each night and set it in the window, so that when he comes, he’ll know which room is hers.16
And so he goes to get her, and they gather their friends and family, and there’s a giant procession back to his house, where the party starts.
And so when she takes the glass of wine at their engagement party and drinks from it, the groom says to her: “My father’s house has plenty of room; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Does his speech sound familiar? This is what Jesus says to his disciples in John 14:2–4.
When Jesus wants to assure his followers that they’re going to be okay, that their future is secure, that they shouldn’t let their hearts be troubled, he uses the wedding metaphor.
They would have known exactly what he was talking about. They would have heard the groom’s speech growing up, the ones who were married would have given it to their brides, and they all would have taken part in numerous wedding celebrations.
To describe heaven, Jesus uses an event they had all experienced and basically says, “It’s like that.”
That is like this?