Thrive!

Sex– everybody makes a big deal about sex, or they don’t.

What’s up with that?

Sex is a normal, natural and enjoyable part of life, like eating ice cream, or sleeping in late, or playing a game.

My view is that sex is God-made and USDA approved.

Sting once said, “If God’s got anything better than sex to offer, he’s certainly keeping it to himself.”

On the other hand, many people get along fine without being sexually active.

Tracey Ullman once said, “As I get older, I just prefer to knit.” Hey, whatever works. Singleness, not being sexually active, getting older has no shame in it, it is just the right place for some of us.

Whatever stage of life we are at, it is healthy to talk about sexual culture because competing views on sexuality have caused a lot of confusion, and harm.

Some of us might see sex as dirty, shameful, something to keep secret, to avoid talking about. Others may have come to see sex as something so casual and free that it is not restrained by anything — marriage or morals or sensitivity.

We Americans are bipolar on sex. On one hand, we are Puritanical, we claim high morals, we shame people over sexual misconduct, on the other hand, many of us just can’t seem to keep our pants on.

So what to think?

First sex is something God came up with, it’s his idea, and it’s a really cool one. The Bible looks at sexuality as part of our God-made identity. I like this. When I experience my own sexuality, I’m like, “God made me this way. It’s his fault.”

Genesis 1:27 tells us that God made male and female out of himself. So our sexuality is an-in-his-image thing. Then the Bible tells us that God set us up to pair up, and make babies. This is why Christians are prolific,  pro-life, baby-making and baby adopting. We grow our own, or we pick up others along the way. We Christians are pro-sex.

That’s good. It’s spiritual.

Your sexuality is a God-made pleasure, a sacred way to oneness in marriage and a spiritual way to join God in his creative work. How cool is that! Sex is divine!

1 Corinthians 6:12 explains this, esp in the Message version of the Bible.

“There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.”

This scripture is clearly marking out sex as spiritual thing, not simply a skin thing. This follows Jesus when he says, “A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh?”

If sex is about spiritual oneness in a marriage, then, what about sex outside of marriage, sex by people who aren’t married or by people who are gay? The answer is so important for Christians.

1. God’s love for us any of us is not stopped by our sexual behavior or even our sexual sin.

2. Salvation is not achieved by sexual purity.

That’s really good news for most of us.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. Ep. 2:8

God saves us by what he does, not by what we did. God is very compassionate toward our sexuality.

So many of us fall into sexually immoral or harmful behavior because we just want to be loved. I was talking to someone recently, who slept around a bit when she was younger. She said something like, “I wanted love, I just got sex, I still wanted and needed love.”

God, he get’s that, and so he comes to help us into moral, lasting, loving relationships.

But we still need to understand that not everything is good for us.

1 Cor. 6 says, “Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.

There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another.

Don’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.”

God loves and values us so much he doesn’t want us harmed by misusing your sexuality. God wants us to build trust and safety with him, and each other, in our marriages and churches. Therefore we must carefully and mindfully avoid sinful sexual behavior such as lusting, cheating, sex outside of marriage and adultery.

God doesn’t want us to do these things, because they deeply damage trust, erode relationships and just crush love.

Consider water. Sex is like water. It can be tasty, life-giving, healthy and satisfying and it can also flood your house, and wash it away.

This is why the Proverbs speak of drinking water from your own well. Drink your sexuality from your own marriage, and do not go outside of that where you may encounter a flood of damage and harm.

What to do?

1. Mind your own moral business.

Steward your own sexuality, work on your own purity, not on others. This enough work, to work on yourself.

Of course some people are called to bring justice to this area of life, to prosecute sexual predators, to protect with laws, to stand up for those who can’t stand for themselves.

But too many Christians have gotten so busy judging non-Christians for how they have messed up, or how they have compromised marriage that we end up presenting Christianity to them as a judgmental, rule-based, hateful religion.

I get it. Not many people take their sexual morals from the Bible. But the truth is, I can’t control others, and I am personally responsible before God for only my own sexuality, and for the sacredness of my own marriage.

And here is the cool thing.

My wife and I — by our faithfulness to each other and God — make our lives and our marriage sacred and this is not compromised by anything anyone else decides to do.

I encourage you and me, to mind our own sexual business.

That will keep us busy enough.

2. Don’t condemn others. especially for their sexual choices or failures.

Jesus didn’t.

John 3:17

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

God did not call us to be the moral sheriffs of the world. We won’t redeem the world by condemning it. We know our work is to help them see Jesus, and that his death on the cross, and his forgiveness, will clean them up. When we point people to God, he points them to righteousness.

3. Let God work his purity in you.

Lastly, I advise you to get off the shaming treadmill of trying to make yourself pure, and to let Christ live out his purity in you. This is such a deeply mature and spiritual way to view yourself. Righteousness is something God gives me, and works in me, not something I do by just trying harder.

I have little hope in the world managing sexuality well. There is no good track record! But Christ at work in us, that is the hope of righteousness.

Once when my wife and I were house shopping, I wanted to buy this one house, she didn’t. So we didn’t buy the house. God — well my wife — said not to! A few months later, we found another house, perfect for us. There we raised our girls.

Sexuality works well when it is like houses shopping with God along as the Realtor. When God says, “No, this is not a good deal,” then “No” is best.

God always has the best in mind for us — regarding sexuality and love — therefore, it is best to wait on him, to hear his voice, and to follow his ways.