God, Your Body and You

by Dave Wilkinson
Romans 12:1, 1 Corinthians 6:9-2
October 11. 1998

Almost half of the nation's high school students have had sexual intercourse, including six in every 10 by their senior year. According to a survey released last month by federal health officials, 38% of ninth graders, have had sex. At 10th grade, it is 45%. By the 11th grade, it is 54% and by 12th grade, 61%.

With these kinds of numbers, it is vital that we talk about sex openly -- especially with young people. There is so much pressure -- from movies and ads and television and from their own peers.

Now it’s not true that "everyone is doing it." The rise in intentional abstinence is being called by some observers "a second sexual revolution." And as alarming as the figures for high school sexual activity are, they are markedly better than in the late 1980's. Abstinence education works. But much of our popular culture still teaches that sexual activity is the thing to do. "So what's wrong with me if don't?"

Sexuality is one of the most confused facets of our confused age. The recent events in the White House which I plan to preach on on November 15 have only added to the confusion.. This means that as the people of Christ living at the end of the 20th century, we badly need to think and act out of a biblical perspective.

The schools are good at teaching the mechanics. But we cannot trust either books or schools to adequately address the most important aspects of sexuality --the emotional and the spiritual. That has to happen in the church and in the home. That is why I am excited about the topic for today’s "Parenting Teenagers" class and the "My Life, My Choice" seminar next weekend.

I recognize that most of the adults here this morning are in committed marriage relationships. Deciding what to do should not be an issue for us. But we need to be able to express to our children as they grow, not only what God says about sex but also why He says it. We need to do in the church and in the home what the schools cannot do. We need to fill in the picture. We need to learn and communicate the more central aspects of sexuality which are "meta-physical" -- beyond the physical.

What does God's Word tell us about sexuality?

First, that sex is God's creation -- Genesis 1:27: "so God created human beings in His own image -- male and female He created them"

Second, the Bible says that sex is good -- Genesis 1:31: "and God saw everything that he had made -- including maleness and femaleness -- and behold, it was very good."

Third, and this is foundational for everything else the Bible says, that God intends sex to be a deeply uniting experience between husband and wife. It is much more than the temporary uniting of two bodies. It is a total union of two persons. Genesis 2:24 and Matthew 19:5: "Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall become one flesh."

And fourth, that God's word makes it very clear that some sexual behavior is forbidden. In this way, sex is a whole lot like baseball. The game of baseball is a game played with very rigid rules. The field is a right angle. It encompasses only ninety degrees of the 360 degrees in a circle. A ball hit within those 90 degrees is fair. A ball hit in any other in the 270 degrees not encompassed by the that right angle is foul. Baseball is a very rigid game. It’s very exclusionary. And, within those limits, we can play a really great game. In the same way, God gives us precise rules on sexuality. He says: "outside this boundary is foul. But within this angle, you can have one of the great experience of life."

God doesn’t forbid certain types of sexual expression, because he’s anti-sex. He lays down rules because he values us and our well being so highly. God wants us to use his gift the right way -- in ways that will help us grow, not bring us down. Sex is like fire. Used the right way, fire can warm us and cook our food. Used the wrong way, it can burn and scar us.

What are things out of bounds?

First and foremost, sex outside of marriage is out of bounds. God's standard is abstinence before marriage and faithfulness within marriage. This may not be a popular thing to say in a free-wheeling, self-expressive age. But our role is not to be popular. Our role is to say what God says.

Abstinence before marriage and faithfulness within marriage. That's God’s standard.

Why?

Well God tells us in His Word that sex is not just physical. It is also spiritual. It goes very deep to the core of who we are as human beings. And this means that the proper expression of sexuality involves taking responsibility for ourselves and other people -- not just physical responsibility but emotional and spiritual responsibility.

The operative word for that kind of responsibility is commitment -- not temporary commitment, partial commitment or conditional commitment or "being in love" but total commitment. In a word, marriage. The promise is that sex in this marriage commitment is a profound spiritual bond -- likened by Paul in Ephesians 5:32 to the bond between Christ and his church. Living together is not marriage, and will yield very few clues about what marriage is like because you can't understand a promise except from inside a promise.

The goal of sex in marriage is for a man and woman to grow together. In God's plan, sexual expression properly comes as a result of growth and commitment -- not as a spur to it. As many have discovered, sexual expression that comes too soon in a relationship becomes the center of a relationship and stops other growth. This is true whether a couple goes "all the way" or just skates around the edge. Sexual promiscuity is like drugs. It doesn't raise our performance. But it certainly does lower our standards and maim our relationships.

God offers forgiveness for sin -- including all sexual sin. But you can only lose your virginity once. And even forgiveness doesn’t mean that we live without consequences. You can rebuild in God’s grace. But it’s so much better to have never torn down. It’s not so easy starting anew. You tend to go toward the same level of involvement and more the next time.

One of the big problems with premarital sex and adultery is that they affect our ability to experience sexuality the way God intends it.

Sexuality is 90 percent in the mind. And each sexual experience has an impact. Premarital sex means that when you're finally ready to experience the marriage commitment, your mind is cluttered up. You can't grow and discover together the way God intends. Extramarital sex or adultery is perhaps even more damaging. It is impossible to feel the openness God intends us to experience in married love if we are taking guilt, shame, hurt, anger, or fear of comparison to bed with us.

Would you buy a pair of shoes without trying them on? That's a reason given for premarital sex. The answer is that of course we wouldn't but a pair of shoes without trying them on. But there is a huge difference between a person and a pair of shoes. What happens to a pair of shoes doesn’t matter. What happens to a person, made in the image of God, is of great consequence. One does not consider establishing a life-long relationship with a pair of shoes. There is no chance that by accident a pair of shoes will have little ones. So the comparison breaks down and becomes meaningless.

There are some pretty basic differences between adolescent male and female attitudes toward sex. A study of the motives of college students who had premarital intercourse showed that the men's number one reason was to gain physical pleasure. Curiosity was second. Only 5 percent gave "Love" as their motive!

On the other hand, young women overwhelmingly had intercourse because they thought they loved. For the young women it was, "I love him." But for the young men the big reason was "I like it!" A person becomes a thing -- a means to an end.

That's also the nature of pornography. In pornography, a person, made in the image of God, is turned into an object -- a thing. For example, "Playboy" is a totally one dimensional view of life. There are intentionally no babies in Playboy -- in the ads or in the cartoons. There is no relationship in Playboy between sex and babies. Children don't exist and neither do old people except as a joke. It is a flat, one-dimensional view of life. It is a twisting of what God made holy. Sex is God's creation. He considers it good. And the essence of all sin is taking what God created for good and twisting it. Evil cannot create anything. It can only twist.

Abstinence before marriage and faithfulness within marriage. That's the line God lays down. And because of the profound emotional And spiritual dimensions of sexuality, there is no such thing as "safe sex" outside His lines. It's not just a matter of AIDS. It's a matter of the spirit.

If sex were just a physical function like eating or sleeping we could treat it casually. But it is not. It is much more complex, much more important and much more spiritual.

In Romans 12:1 Paul writes that, as a response to God’s love and self-giving., we are to present our bodies to God as living sacrifices. This blunt reference to our bodies was meant to shock some of Paul's Greek thinking readers. Brought up on Platonic thought, they regard the body as an embarrassing encumbrance -- not as a place for pleasing God. Their slogan was 'the body is a tomb', in which the human spirit was imprisoned and from which they longed for its escape. Some modern commentators, apparently unhappy with Paul's earthy language, suggest as an alternative translation, 'offer your very selves to him' (REB). But Paul is clear that the presentation of our bodies is our rational act of worship. No worship is pleasing to God which is just inward, abstract and mystical. Worship must express itself in concrete acts of service performed by our bodies and by the restraint of our bodies impulses.

Now Paul does not elaborate upon what he means by presenting our bodies to God as living sacrifices in Romans 12:1. But he has already touched on this idea back in chapter 6. There he said, "Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness." If you have given Jesus your heart, he also expects your body. This is especially important in the expression of our sexuality.

One place that really needed that word from God was the city of Corinth across the Adriatic from Rome over in Greece. Corinth was the home of a temple dedicated to the goddess of love, called Aphrodite by the Greeks, Venus by the Romans. One thousand temple prostitutes lived in Corinth, standing on the street corners luring men into their "sacred web."

In 1 Corinthians 6 Paul writes to men in the Corinthian church who were accustomed to going to cult prostitutes at the temple of Aphrodite. He writes: "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? May it never be. Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute become one flesh with her? For He says: "The two shall becomes one flesh." But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with him. Flee sexual immorality. For every other sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you. Therefore glorify God in your body".

Dr. Lewis Smedes helps us feel the implication of Paul's theology in his book Sex for Christians. Smedes writes: "Sexual intercourse involves two people in a life-union; it is a life uniting act -- it does not matter what the two people have in mind. The whore sells her body with an unwritten understanding that nothing personal will be involved in the deal. The buyer gets his sexual needs satisfied without having anything personally difficult to deal with afterward. He pays his dues, and they are done with each other. But none of this affects Paul's point. The reality of the act, unfelt and unnoticed by them, is this: it unites them -- body and soul--to each other. It unites them in that strange, impossible to pinpoint sense of 'one flesh.' There is no such thing as casual sex, no matter how casual people are about it. The Christian assaults reality in his night out at the brothel. He uses a woman and puts her back in a closet where she can be forgotten; but the reality is that he has put away a person with whom he has done something that was meant to inseparably join them. This is what is at stake for Paul in the question of sexual intercourse between unmarried people."

Smedes continues: "There is no question that Paul's view runs against the grain of common sense and experience. However, common sense also tells one that a piece of bread and a glass of wine do not carry an invisible load of supernatural grace. But does that prove that they do not? Some people have no sense of God's urgent presence in them and the world around them. Does that prove he is not there? Many people have sex without any sense of being personally united with their partners. Paul knew that people all over the world violated his sense of reality with no trace of awareness that they were doing so -- people high on sexual technique, jaded by sexual indulgence, and scornful of sexual rules may be dead to what Paul is saying. But the question is whether Paul sees reality as it is.

"Some Corinthian Christians believed that sex was merely a body-function, it did not matter what the Christian did with it. Paul said that it matters a lot. It matters because the body is the person, though not the whole of him. Nobody can really do what the prostitute and her customer try: nobody can go to bed with someone and leave his or her soul parked outside. The demand for self-restraint is not a kill-joy rule plastered on the abundant life by antisexual saints. It is respect for reality as Christians understand it. The moral law fits the inner reality of sex."

Paul says in 1 Corinthians that sexuality goes deeper to the core of who we are than anything else. It is much deeper than a physical appetite -- "food for the stomach and the stomach for food" as he writes in verse 13. It is also more than a psychological reality. At the bottom, sex is spiritual. That's why God values highly enough to protect it so explicitly in his Word.

What God says is limiting. It’s meant to be.

Eugene Kennedy, professor of psychology at Chicago's Loyola University wrote in the "Los Angeles Times": "To promote safe sex as a "real world" response, is to accept promiscuous sexual behavior as a given, about which only the prudish are alarmed. In fact, sexual activity is not psychologically or humanly neutral. It can be, and is, harmful to the growth and development of teenagers who are, in effect, being told to do what they want but to be careful about it. That is the equivalent of abandoning the young when they need us most, of abusing them sexually by neglect."

Kennedy writes: "we condemn our schools for not being able to teach mathematics, reading or history, and yet we entrust them with sex education without hesitation. We are in a fever about the content of our diets, our exercise workouts and the labeling of every jar or can of food, for we are obsessed with taking good care of our bodies. But we hardly show any interest in nurturing our spirits, in labeling truthfully those things, such as promiscuous and precocious sex, that can truly harm the growth of personality. Safe sex, safe food, sad lives -- these constitute the bitterly ironic triad of current existence. "Safe sex will not protect teenagers from the distortions in their sense of values that sex without fidelity or emotional commitment may visit upon them. Safe sex for teen-agers is not a "real world response," because it traps them on a fantasy island -- the slow death of the psychologically isolated, who may be good at sex but have never learned how to live intimately with another human being."

The Bible is very clear. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10: "Do you not know that know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators (those who engage in premarital sex) nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor various kinds of homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God."

But what if you're on Paul's list? What if you've hit some foul balls? What's the good news?

The good news is that you can be forgiven for your past. Even if you've lived your whole life in foul territory, you can be set free. A lot of damage can be repaired.

In verses 9 and 10 Paul lists all sorts of people who will not inherit the Kingdom of God. But then Paul writes in the very next verse -- verse eleven of our text -- "and such were some of you." In other words, "some of the Corinthians believers were fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals and all the rest."

"That's who you were." Paul says. "But that is not who you are." For, Paul says, "you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God."

It matters what your past holds. Sin, even forgiven sin, leaves its scars. But what matters much more is the future. God offers forgiveness and healing. " If we confess or sins", John writes, "God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." God says to us through Isaiah: "though you sins be like scarlet, you shall become while like wool."

You can be a new creation in Christ. But if you are a new creation in Christ, you are called to live like one. God calls us to get out of foul territory. And He also promises us that, within His will, we can rightly and joyfully enjoy one of the best gifts He has to give.