The gift I am referring to here is, of course, human sexuality. God gave this gift to be enjoyed only in the context of one man and one woman in marriage. This is not my opinion, but my belief, because it’s what the living, inspired Word of God says. Marriage is itself a God-ordained institution, part of His desire to have all societies founded upon the family, which, of course, is the natural result of procreation. Recognizing these facts is a key to understanding why God put such high guard rails around sex:
Genesis 1:27-28a, 2:23-24: So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it;…” And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Matthew 19:3-6: The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Also read Matthew 19:7-9; 1 Corinthians 7:1-40).
Hebrews 13:4: Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
You can see from the Scriptures that marriage is intended by God to be a lifelong commitment, with there being few exceptions. One of the purposes of human sexuality is to procreate. Without procreation there are no children who will grow up to be adults and form their own marriages and families. Another purpose is for intimacy between a husband and wife. By way of a process we cannot fully understand, when a man and a woman have sexual intercourse there is not only a physical union taking place but also an emotional and spiritual bonding. As stated in some of the verses just cited, “they shall become one flesh.” It is like they are two halves of one person, bonded together through physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy. This closeness between a husband and his wife is the closest human counterpart we have to closeness with God, though our relationship with the Lord obtains its intimacy in a decidedly different manner. The processes described here are two important reasons why the gift of sex is restricted to the marital bed. To cut it loose from its moorings is to invite all manner of bondage, demonic activity, and destruction.
Couples having sex outside of marriage in their childbearing years produce not only unwanted pregnancies but also children who are born into a family not patterned after the Biblical mandate of marriage. Because of God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, use of contraceptives is disobedience to God. The unmarried should not be sexually intimate, and married couples should have sex at times in the woman’s monthly cycle where she is not likely to be fertile if they wish to control the number of children they have. Anything that causes the termination of a pregnancy, whether birth control or abortion, is a no-no, and abortion is murder. As for the bonding that takes place between people engaging in sexual activities, this is not limited by the age or the gender of either sex partner. You are bonded to anyone you have sex with, and they to you. These bonds are known as soul ties. It takes prayer and, quite often, deliverance to be freed from them.
Also, the gift of sex, because it is such a pleasurable activity, is subject to a wide range of misuses and abuses. Since sexuality is an integral part of our being whether we are in the procreative years or have passed into older adulthood, sexual sins are especially detrimental to us. In both the Old and the New Testaments, sex outside of marriage is forbidden. Leviticus 18:1-30 is a veritable treatise on the subject, outlawing and forbidding such activities as incest, homosexuality, adultery, having sexual relations when a woman is menstruating, bestiality, and in forbidding to sacrifice children by fire to Molech (a Canaanite god), abortion (also see Leviticus 20:1-21).
Here are some other Scriptures to ponder:
Genesis 19:1-5: Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face to the ground. And he said, “Here now, my lords, please turn in to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way.” And they said, “No, but we will spend the night in the open square.” But he insisted strongly; so they turned in to him and entered his house. Then he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. Now before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter, surrounded the house. And they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may know them carnally.”
(Also see Judges 19:1-28).
Be accountable to some spiritually mature same-sex Christian friends. By the way, celibacy includes not masturbating. Avoid pornography also. Remember how the Word says you sin against your own body when you commit sexual immorality? That not only includes sexual activities expressly forbidden in the Bible, it also includes pornography. The lurid imagery and videos feed your mind like sexual fantasizing does, but in a more amplified way. You actually rewire your brain when you use porn, and this rewiring changes your sexual desires and responsiveness. Some people become so addicted to pornography that in an actual sexual encounter they cannot even perform. Thank God the damage can be undone!
Illicit sexual activity is rife with consequences. Broken marriages, sexual addictions of various kinds, involvement with porn use or even participation in the dark world of the pornography industry, practicing or soliciting prostitutes, human trafficking, sexually transmitted diseases, perverse and unsafe sexual practices, illegal sex, abnormal sexual desires and responses, and eventually a hardened heart and a ruined conscience if sexual immorality goes unchecked…The list goes on and on. Even if you do not break man’s laws on sexual conduct, you still are counted as a sex offender in the court of heaven if you engage in sex outside of marriage. Don’t do it—ever.
While the focus of this blog so far has been on extramarital sex, there are also boundaries which need to be set in the marriage bed. Sex between a husband and wife must always be consensual, never forced. Nobody else belongs in the bedroom except that man and woman who are married. Threesomes, wife-swapping, swinging, and so on are all adulterous even if the husband and wife are okay with that sort of thing. The Word of God is our final authority, and it makes no provisions for extra partners in the marital bed. Not to be vulgar, but just to edify—oral and anal sex are extremely unsanitary and fall under the category of sodomy, so even in the marital bed these should not be done.
Besides all this, in a marriage, although sex is very important, there is far more to such a relationship than that.
By now it should be clear why God placed such high guard rails around the gift of human sexuality. Properly enjoyed, it is an awesome blessing, one that truly brings a husband and wife close together physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Those who have children know what a blessing that is also. Because of the pleasurable and powerfully bonding nature of sex, however, it has some of the greatest potential for misuse and abuse of anything known to mankind. The consequences of illicit sex are wide-ranging and catastrophic, even if the damage is not immediately obvious or visible. When God tells us to do anything, regardless of what it is, it is by far the best thing to do it God’s way. That is certainly true of the gift of human sexuality.
