The British evolutionary biologist and author, Richard Dawkins, participated in a debate in Oxford in 2008 in which he said, “You could persuade me that there was a God who created everything but this is incompatible with a God who cares about your sin, what you do with your genitals, and what you think about.”
Many people today would go further than Dawkins, saying that a person’s sex life is a vital expression of their true, authentic self and anything or anyone who opposes that self-expression (including the God of the Bible) is unloving and even dangerous. Underlying this view is the modern belief that all of our natural thoughts and desires (sexual and otherwise) are fundamentally good. Perhaps you share this reasoning.
And yet, how many of us would want all of our innermost thoughts and desires to be recorded and replayed for our friends? Can any of us honestly say that we would be comfortable having all of our private opinions aired publicly? Probably not, because we know that as well as thoughts of kindness or compassion, we also have ugly thoughts that we’re ashamed of, thoughts that are judgemental, self-centred, condescending or arrogant.
Jesus knows this about us. He once said: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person” (Mark 7:20-23). Maybe this sounds like a harsh assessment. But the point Jesus is making is that every person born into this world is broken in some way. And this has an impact on our sexual desires.
The surprising thing is that Jesus knows all of this about us and yet he chose to die for us anyway. What does that mean? It means that God is for sexually broken people (which is all of us).
Is it fair, then, to accuse God of being unloving or dangerous because He cares about who we sleep with? If we agree with the Bible, that not every desire we experience is necessarily good, then the fact that God wants to put boundaries around who we sleep with makes Him loving, not unloving. And as Creator and Designer, He alone has perfect knowledge of what is best for us.
So what does our Creator and Designer say about sex? In the Bible, sex is something that is given (not taken) in the context of a permanent, male-female marriage. And when we look into the Bible’s primary reason for this ‘restrictive’ (as many people would see it) view of sex, what emerges is actually weirder than you might think.
The reason God says what He does about sex is that it has spiritual significance as a picture of the unity and love between Jesus and Christians. In other words, Christian marriage is a signpost. The very best romantic relationship on earth is only a tiny echo of Jesus’ love for his Church. And that love is permanent, binding, and extraordinary sacrificial.
There’s a lot that might sound confusing here and that’s because what God says about our bodies, about marriage and about singleness doesn’t make much sense until we understand who God is. So if you’re reading this because you’re engaging in sexual activity that the Bible disagrees with and it’s keeping you from visiting church or exploring Christianity, please be assured that no one at our church is going to interrogate you about your personal life. We would love it if you would accept this invitation to come along to one of our Sunday services to hear more about the God of the Bible. Because He might not be who you think He is.
