This set of posts comes from Pastor Mark Driscoll and his wife Grace. The sermons series The Peasant Princess brought up dozens of questions that they felt they should respond to. The result is this series: Christian Sex: Frank Answers to Honest Questions.
Please see this video for an introduction to this series.
Answer:
In 1 Corinthians 6:12, Paul lays out three criteria for Christians to consider when making sexual decisions, All things are lawful for me,' but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me,' but I will not be enslaved by anything.
Is it lawful?
In Genesis we see that our Trinitarian God made everything good. The only thing that is called not good is that our first father, Adam, was alone. So, God made a woman, our first mother, Eve, to be Adam's helper and bride. God then essentially walked her down the aisle and officiated the first wedding between the first man and first woman. Thus, God set the precedent that, though different, men and women are equal as his image-bearers, and that marriage is a gift for one man and one woman to enjoy, and as a result called all of this very good.
Furthermore, God created their bodies for sexual pleasure to be enjoyed in marriage without shame, saying in Genesis 2:24-25, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Therefore, God's intent is that men and women would marry and enjoy sexual pleasure without shame.
Simply, according to God, marriage and sex are related, connected, and exclusive. Sex as God intends it is for one man and one woman in marriage with the overarching purpose of oneness. Subsequently, by definition anything that contradicts God's intent is sinful. Thus, sinful acts include homosexuality, bestiality, bisexuality, fornication, friends with benefits, adultery, swinging, prostitution, masturbating a person who is not your spouse, oral sex with anyone other than your spouse, anal sex with anyone other than your spouse, heavy petting outside of marriage, dry humping outside of marriage, rape, polygamy, sinful lust, pornography, phone sex with someone other than your spouse, sexual chatting online with someone other than your spouse, prostitution, pedophilia, incest, and anything else invented next to try and escape the clear teachings of Scripture.
In the New Testament, porneia (from which we get the word pornography) is translated 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. This is because God in his wisdom knew that if he only listed certain sexual sins as off-limits, someone would find a loophole by which to keep the letter of the law while denying the spirit, and write yet another book explaining how to sin against God in a way that is biblical.
Lastly, it is vital to remember that your standard for beauty is your spouse. God did not give Adam and Eve a standard of beauty, but rather a spouse. This is because our spouse is to be our standard of beauty. Great trouble comes to a marriage when this principle is violated.
Is it helpful for me and others?
To determine whether or not to engage in a sexual act that is lawful or permissible (meaning that Scripture does not forbid it), we must also consider whether or not it is helpful. To do that we must ask what the Bible says about the functions, and freedoms of sex.
Regarding the functions of sex, the Bible gives the following purposes for marital sex, and each is beneficial to the marriage:
- Pleasure (Song of Songs)
- Children (Gen. 1:28)
- Oneness (Gen. 2:24)
- Knowledge (Gen. 4:1)
- Protection (1 Cor. 7:2-5)
- Comfort (2 Sam. 12:24)
Great problems occur when any one of these purposes is elevated as the sole or primary purpose of sex. When that occurs, couples will love sex and hate children, for example. Or, love children but only have sex when the woman is fertile, which biblically is not frequent enough.
Will I become enslaved by it as a false god?
In Romans 1:24-25, Paul says that people either worship God our Creator and enjoy his creation-including our bodies-or people worship creation as God, and in sexual sin offer their bodies in worship. Paul goes on to explain that those who worship creation invariably worship the human body because it is the apex of God's creation. In this upending of rightful worship, sex becomes a religion and the sex act a perverse sacrament.
Paul flatly states in Romans 12:1 (NIV) that worship is offering our bodies. Therefore, in a very real sense all sexual sin is idolatry. (Idolatry is the worship of someone or something other than the one true God.) Paul makes this connection between sexual sin and idolatry in 1 Corinthians 10:7-8: Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.' We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day.
In the end, it must be accepted that sexual sin is idolatry and the worship of someone or something other than God as a god. Since the first two of the commandments tell us that there is only one God and we are to worship him alone, nothing could be bigger than this issue because sexual sin is ultimately a worship disorder.
