This was a question a teen recently asked me after a sermon on sexual purity. I suppose it’s because we covered a lot of the don’ts that Sunday. You know the ones; don’t have sex before marriage, don’t have sexual relations with someone of the same gender, and don’t watch game of thrones. The don’ts often lead many inside and outside the church to disregard the bible’s view on sex as rigid, suppressive and outrightly bigoted. We get lost in all the don’ts that we never get to the why behind them. It’s a lot easier to dismiss the don’ts than the one behind them. Before we get pulled into the next debate let’s ponder the why(s).
1. Self-control leads to more success in life than self-indulgence
This is a general life principle but one that is downplayed in our contemporary culture. There is much emphasis in recent times on trusting yourself and knowing what’s good for you. To be guided by your instincts or feelings. Common phrases like 'follow your heart' encourage one to indulge in what they feel most inclined to. While instincts may not be evil, they aren’t necessarily right. Sexual desire is good but if it acts as a chief guide, it will cause more harm than good. Though it’s hard to admit it, I think deep down we know that not everything we desire is good.
On the flip side, there is a religious alternative to self-control; strict dogma that requires utmost restraint of desire. Here the don’ts are welcomed with open arms. Each time sexual desire springs up, the rules are repeated with greater fervour while disregarding the lawgiver. There is a rigid adherence to moral law almost to the point of renouncing desire altogether. This is neither healthy nor biblical.
Self-control is a blessing of God. Scott Hubbard, a writer at Desiring God describes it this way: “If our God-given appetites are a stallion, some let the horse run unbridled, while others prefer to shut him up in a stable. In Christ, however, God teaches us to ride.” Contemporary culture teaches us to indulge in our sexual appetites while morality asks for the denial of desires but Jesus through the bible teaches us to direct them. A wild horse will destroy a garden, a caged one will be of no use but a tame one is the pride and joy of all.
God-given self-control trains us to limit the excesses of desire. Both passion and abstinence are gifts of God as are fasting and feasting. The time for each is governed by the infinite wisdom of a good God. Take a cue from Christ in how to practice this. When fasting for 40 days in the desert, hungry and tired he was tempted to eat bread. Instead of indulging he feasted on something greater
Matthew 4:4: Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”. This is what directing your desire looks like. Submitting them to God and asking for satisfaction greater than indulgence. To grow the fruit of self-control in your life study the word of God, store it in your heart, testify of it with your mouth and pray to God to keep watering the seed.
2. We are created beings
Your very body was made by another. We are created beings with the ability to choose what to do with ourselves. Though we have bodily autonomy we must remember that even our free will did not come from us. We are created, not self-deriving. The fact that we did not will ourselves into existence means our bodies are a gift of the one who made them. It’s a humbling reality to think about.
God made us sexual beings from birth. We discover our sexual design during puberty, but God knew why he built us this way before we ever existed. It is for a purpose that can’t be defined by anyone else but the one who made us.
Say I got you flowers for Valentine’s Day. You take them home, pluck each petal out, slice them up thinly, and make a vegetable stew. Naturally, when you taste your broth, you’ll spit it out and come quarrel with me for giving you roses. When you use something for its wrong purpose it will lead to frustration no matter how hard you try and make it seem right. Roses were created to be smelt and seen. Sex was made to grow life-long intimacy between two covenant partners of the opposite gender.
Gifts thrive when used for their intended purpose. Their boundaries create safety. Safety that is necessary as you share the most venerable parts of yourself with another in the marital bed. Trust in the wisdom of the one who knit every part of your sexual body. We will be accountable to the gift-giver at the end of time. Steward your body with his guidelines in scripture. Beyond what God says is enough, lies not ecstasy but nausea.
1 Corinthians 6: 18-20:
18Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.19 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;20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
3. We were made for intimacy
I’ve often wondered why we were made sexual beings from birth, why we have sexual desires from puberty yet most will marry in their 20s, or why even those who will never marry have sexual desires. Sexuality seems to have been made for a greater purpose than just marriage. Sexual desire compels you to say without words ‘I was not made to be alone but to share life venerably with another.’
Beyond pushing you to pursue a romantic relationship, your sexual desires nudge you to fulfill the deep longing to be fully known and loved. Strange as it may be, our bodies long for intimacy that can only be satisfied in the soul. An intimacy that reaches beyond what we know in the physical world.
Sexual intimacy is a beautiful gift, yet it can’t satisfy the deepest longings of the soul. It is a longing that can only be satisfied by one who reaches beyond the physical. One who is ever-present: who is always available. Whom you can talk, laugh, and cry with you at any time. With whom at any place, time, or circumstance you are truly never alone. One who is all-powerful: who can meet all your needs, who is the very source of all good things. Who gives fully of themselves. One who is all-knowing: who knows your heart of hearts. Before you even say a word they already know what you're thinking. One who truly understands you because they created you.
Beloved, no human on earth can meet your deepest needs for intimacy. We were made to be fully known and fully loved by God. Is there a greater intimacy than that? In God, we experience the culmination of all relationships. God is the friend like no other (John 15:13-14), a loving father (1 John 3:1), who cares for us as a mother (Isaiah 49:14-15) and who dresses the church in robes of purity as Christ’s bride(2 Corinthians 11:2).
We find more than a relationship with God; we experience the greatest love imaginable. We find our all in all in the arms of our creator. Therefore, we should care what his word says about everything.
Acts 17:24- 25, 28
24 “He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples,25 and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need. 28‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’