Over the past few weeks Christians have done a good job at explaining to the public what they do not believe about sex. We have shared what we are against but I have heard little about what we are for. Below are seven truths Christians believe about sex...
1) God created us male and female in His image and likeness with dignity, equality, value and worth. Men and women are different and complement one another.
2) Love is more like a song than a math equation. It requires a sense of poetry and passion to be any good at it, which is why people who are stuck in their heads struggle and are frustrated by it, and lovers prefer songs to syllogisms.
3) Marriage is for one man and one woman by God's design. This is the consistent teaching of the Bible from the table of contents to the appendix and the teaching of Jesus Christ Himself.
4) God created sex. God made our bodies "very good" with "male and female" parts and pleasures. When our first parents consummated their covenant, God was not shocked or horrified, because He created our bodies for sex. The reason sex is fun, pleasurable, and wonderful is because it is a reflection of the loving goodness of God, who created it as a gift for us to steward and enjoy.
5) Sex outside of marriage is a sin. Sinful sex includes homosexuality, erotica, bestiality, bisexuality, fornication, friends with benefits, adultery, swinging, prostitution, incest, rape, polygamy, polyandry, sinful lust, pornography, and pedophilia. For married people, the following acts with anyone other than your spouse qualify as sin: masturbating someone else, oral sex, anal sex, heavy petting, dry humping, cyper-sex, and phone sex. In the New Testament, the Greek work porneia (from which we get the word pornography) is translated into English as "sexual immorality" and encompasses all sorts of sexual sins. It is frequently used as a junk drawer in which every sort of perversion is thrown because people are prone to invent new ways of doing evil.
6) Sex is to be done in such a way that there is no shame. Many people experience shame in regard to sex. Sometimes shame is a gift from God in response to our sexual sin, sometimes it is the devastating feeling we bear because we have been sexually sinned against, and other times we have not sinned or been sinned against sexually but feel shame because we have been thinking and feelings about sex in general, or a sex act in particular. We must remember that the marriage bed should be without shame. In marriage, husbands and wives are allowed to enjoy each other in almost any way they can imagine; unless it brings shame on a spouse or involves another party outside of the marriage.
7) Your standard of beauty is your spouse. God made one man and one woman. He did not ask them if they wanted someone tall or short, light or heavy, pale or dark skinned, with long or short hair. In short, He did not permit them to develop a standard of beauty. Instead, He gave them each a spouse as a standard of beauty.
One of our culture's powerful lies-fueled by pornography, sinful lust, and marketing-is that having a standard of beauty is in any way holy or helpful. God does not give us a standard of beauty-God gives us spouses. Unlike other standards of beauty, a spouse changes over time. This means if your spouse is tall, you are into tall. If your spouse is skinny, you are into skinny. If your spouse is twenty, you are into twenty. When your spouse is sixty, you are no longer into twenty, but rather into sixty. And if your spouse used to be skinny, you were into skinny, but now you are into formerly skinny. We are to pour all our passion and pursuit of sexual pleasure into our spouses alone, without comparing them to anyone else in a lustful way.
*Taken from Real Marriage by Mark & Grace Driscol
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