God's Design for Sex

[1 Corinthians 6:12-7:2]

"All things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything. "Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food"—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, "The two will become one flesh." But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: "It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman." But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

[Rev. Dwight Yoo]

Sex is found in our top 10 music. our movies. advertisements. Our culture is overboard in their practices in regards to sex. Friends with benefits. This is clearly not God's design & intention for sex. We need to be the light in our culture. We need to deal with sex with graciousness, seriousness, and love.

Biblical Principles on Sex

1) Sex should be celebrated as good, but not worshiped as god.

In Corinth, there were christians who were trying to justify sleeping with prostitutes. This sounds ridiculous, but there's a reasoning behind this. Greek thinking believed in dualism. There is a spirit and a body. There is low value in regards to the material and the body. The things of the body doesn't matter. Sexual urges were like an itch. If it itches, scratch it. But Paul rejects this thinking. He says the body belongs to God. Then he goes on to talk about Jesus' resurrection. Why? Because in the resurrection, Jesus was PHYSICALLY resurrected. With scars and everything. The resurrection was not only spiritual which flies contrary to this Greek view of dualism. So both spirit and body are sacred. Flesh is not just some sort of shell for the spirit, but rather tied to the spirit. So sex is a sacred and good creation of God. There is beauty and joy in sex. It is not a dirty thing. It is not a vulgar and base thing. "Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight..." - Proverbs 5:19 It speaks of a husbands delight in his wife.

But there are those who look too highly upon sex. God should reign supreme over sex. We should find our greatest satisfaction in God, not sex. The Screwtape letters speaks of what happens when we turn from God to sex as ultimate: "An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure..." We try all these new things to make it more pleasurable. We try different things... maybe even invite other people into our sex life. And there is ever less returns for all that work. Sexual urges become our master and we become slaves. Just like any other addiction.

Sex is only to be enjoyed in marriage between a man and a woman. That is how God designed it to be. We should submit to Him in sexual matters. This is a hard sell in our day and age. To tell people that God wishes to limit their freedom. They want to do anything they wish.

"The pleasures and goodness of sex are heightened, not lessened by proper restraint, in the same way the Colorado River is made more powerful by the walls of the Grand Canyon. The very narrowness of the river's channel there makes for a greater river. Farther south, as the river flows through the deserts of California and Arizona, it is shallow, wide, and muddy, even stinky in spots. Wider boundaries diminish the river; sharper, stronger, and narrower boundaries strengthen it. Less is more." - Sex and the Supremacy of Christ

2) Sex is for Procreation, Pleasure and Bonding

Some religions say that sex is solely for procreation. How do we know? The book of Song of Solomon. There is no reference to childbearing and procreation. It is about sexual pleasure between a husband and wife. It is also about bonding between the couple. It is the physical expression of the oneness of a couple spiritually and in thinking. It is a covenant renewal. A renewing of the promise of marriage between husband and wife.

Sex outside of God's boundaries is cheapened, demeaning and hurtful...

As the body of Christ, we bring Jesus into any distorted sexual act we do. It is like we are taking Christ's hands and doing sinful vulgar things. This should not be.

It also cheapens the other party. C.S. Lewis puts it this way: "when we say of a lustful man prowling the streets that he wants a woman. Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition, One does not keep the carton after one had smoked the cigarettes." Sex without strings demeans the other person. They are simply a vehicle for your lust.

When sex is done wherever and with whomever, it loses it's bonding power. The act is no longer one of love, but rather just a simple act.

Christians at Corinth were arguing that food and sex were the same thing. But Paul says that we sin against our own body when we commit sexual immorality. What does this mean? Consider this. When we eat something, lets say we overeat... we overeat so badly that we puke our guts out. No one mentions it 4 years later. No one questions whether we are forgiven over that. But sexual immorality is quite different... it has a greater cost to those who commit it.

3) Sex is a Sign-Post

Sex teaches us something about God. "Sexuality is designed by God as a way to know God in Christ more fully." Sex is known as "knowing someone" The literal translation of the interaction between Adam and Eve was this: Adam KNEW Eve. And she conceived. God wants to know us. Not as friends. Not as acquaintances. But as a husband knows his wife. He wants to know us fully naked before one another. When heaven comes and we are standing before God, we will realize that which sex has been pointing us to all along. We will no longer need sex nor will we need it. The passion, the fulfillment, the joy, and the consumation... That is a small picture of what happens we were finally arrive Home.