One of my pastor-mentors said, “When sex is good, it’s great. But when sex in bad, it’s still pretty good!” A good observation, but the Bible has more to say on the subject. The American notion of living together may or may not be exclusive, but it is by nature… far from permanent. God tells us in Genesis that our sexuality is designed to be exercised in a marriage relationship… defined as being exclusive, and permanent.
So what is sex? It’s an intimate, monogomous relational connection between maleness and femaleness that reflects the nature of God. It’s the fusion of two souls. The Bible compels us to lead sexually pure lives…. to express our sexuality through a marriage of intimate, exclusive, permanence. … and the payoffs for sexual purity are wonderful.
Here are just a few payoffs for sexual purity:
1. You will have a whole self… to connect with someone else in an intimate, exclusive, permanent relationship.
When you get married there will not be parts of yourself spread out all over the sexual horizon.
A commercial for Las Vegas shows a group of girls having fun, flirting and partying with some guys and says, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Does the Aids virus know this? Has it heard of this? Does Herpes, and VD… do they understand how this works? Do broken hearts, and sexual images emblazoned on the brain concur with this false pretense? By any standard it’s a wonderful thing to take a pure body and a healthy heart into the beginning of a marriage.
2. You get to be a whole person in your sexuality.
We lose a part of ourselves when we bond to someone in a non-permanent relationship. If you’re struggling – I think I’ve got just the illustration for you. Go to the freezer. Get your tongue nice and wet…. Stick your tongue to the side of the icemaker… and hold it there a few minutes until it freezes to the icemaker. Then I just want you to walk away. That is a physical picture of the consequences of a sex relationship outside of marriage. People who say “I’ll just go fuse myself to this person… and then walk away.” You are leaving part of yourself on the frozen bedpost of someone else’s life.
Lewis Smeads wrote “There are only two situations in which people feel no shame. The first is the state of wholeness…. the other is the state of illusion.” People who leave parts of themselves on the sexual horizon and say feel no pain have souls that are eroding away… and they don’t realize it. They will tell you, “Hey, I moistened my tongue, I stuck it to the icemaker. I walked away and it doesn’t hurt!” Blood is dripping from their mouths and half of their tongues are still stuck to the side of the icemaker. They justify their actions by saying, “I feel no pain!” “This is wonderful, so refreshing!” The only way one feels no pain is if he or she is living in deception or if they have destroyed the nerve endings on their tongues. I believe there are a lot of people on our planet that have destroyed the nerve endings of their souls. The Bible calls that condition a seared conscience.
Here are some words of advice:
1) Those who are whole – you who have guarded your sexual purity, celebrate what you have. Enjoy God’s gift.
2) Those who are not whole – you have given a part of yourself away. First, if you’re still doing it… stop. Just stop. Even if it’s the person you are going to marry someday. That’s like going to the same freezer over and over.
3) Allow God to begin healing your life. If you’ve given a little or a lot of yourself away… through God’s grace, He can begin to fill the void in your soul… leading you back to sexual wholeness. You can experience forgiveness and renewal today!
Sexuality can become a lifelong source of joy… or it can become an unending journey of emptiness. Let God bless you by enjoying sex in the context of a godly marriage.