Thoughts on Sex

  I don't think it's too bold to say that the sexual ethics in this country are pretty loose.  I think a lot of people are having a lot of sex with a lot of other people in relationships outside of marriage.  I'm not going to go looking for research to corroborate this, but I've seen and read enough studies to know that celibacy outside of marriage is probably not the prevailing ethos among a lot of folks.

  While many branches of the Christian church have been really good about condemning folks for doing so, I don't know if they've been as excellent at explaining why we believe that sex should take place within the bounds of marriage.  I think Paul captures some of this well in 1 Corinthians 6:16:  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.”   

  I think Paul is telling us that something more is happening during sex than just a physical interaction.  There is a level of intimacy that demands a committed relationship where, as Tim Keller put it in an excellent sermon, we can be emotionally naked as well as physically naked.  To believe that we can have one type of intimacy without the other is, I believe, preventing sex from being fully what it was designed to be.  

  Looked at in this way, the church should be able to say that we want sex to be within marriage because we want people to experience the fullness of what God intended sex to be within a covenanted relationship, rather than settling for a cheapened version that fools us into thinking that physical intimacy alone is all that sex is about.  The church can hold up the covenantal relationship of marriage and say that the reason to confine sex within marriage is because it gives us the emotional commitment to allow us to experience the full delight and glory of sex.  We can approach this positively, rather than negatively.  I think it might make a big difference.