In an earlier Pensee, I quipped “Everyone has a sexual agenda.” I initially spoke that soundbite while at lunch w/some other counseling students. Everyone has an agenda for their sexuality- from feast to famine and everything in between.
As made as sexual beings, we will do SOMETHING with our sexuality. Question is, what?
Piper’s thoughts in chapter 1 of Sex and the Supremacy of Christ are profound. The first is that “Sexuality is designed by God as a way to know God more fully.” The inverse is just as true- “all misuses of our sexuality distort the true knowledge of Christ” or “conceal the true knowledge of Christ.”
So, sex within its proper contexts as established by our Creator, and revealed in the Bible, is a way to know God more fully. Marital love and faithfulness is a picture of what our relationship with Jesus is to be like- self-giving, self-forgetting, exclusive, face-to-face intimacy. “God created us with sexual passion so that there would be language to describe what it means to cleave to him in love and what it means to turn away from him to others.” This is not the only reason, but a big reason (filling earth with His image is another big reason).
Piper mentions only a few passages in which God does use the language of sexuality to describe what our relationship should be like, and unfortunately what it is often like. Idolatry is described as prostitution, adultery etc. Ray Ortlund Jr.’s excellent book God’s Unfaithful Wife explores this most vividly. The Bible is shockingly vivid at times. Yet, we also see the “mighty mercy of God” in how Jesus has paid the penalty for our whoring and prostitution (seen both in Ezekiel and Hosea).
So, our misuse of our sexuality speaks lies about God. They create a communication breakdown as well. Ever had someone cheat on you? I had a girlfriend do that- it rocked my world. And she was only a girlfriend, not a spouse. Was it ever hard to talk! Her wandering heart said I was not enough to captivate her. That is what we are saying about God. Masturbation says “I can satisfy myself better than You can.” Or, “Since you refuse to satisfy me on MY terms, I’ll take care of it.” Sex outside of marriage says “I can love God without being committed to Him.” Pornography use says “I’m too afraid of the real thing… so these images will have to satisfy me.”
Piper’s second big point is “Knowing God is designed by God as a way of guarding and guiding our sexuality.” He also puts it this way “all misuses of our sexuality derive from not having the true knowledge of God.” In Scripture, knowing God is associated with sexual purity, and rejecting the true knowedge leads to all kinds of sexual impurity (Romans 1:18ff; 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 among others).
Many people now become Christians with tons of sexual baggage. I was one of those people. Some things changed immediately, some took time. Real life is not like The Matrix where you get a 2 minute download thereby acheiving perfect, true knowledge of God, and therefore perfectly godly sexuality. After conversion, we still believe some lies about God. So the process of sanctification involves both gaining more true knowledge of God, and putting off the sexual corruption associated with false knowledge of God. As Piper says, these two interact with one another so the going can be slow at times. But as progress is made in one area, progress will be made in the other (the old hermaneutical spiral thing). So there is hope for Christians who still struggle with their sexuality.
Sadly, there are some sexual struggles so profound that they may not be resolved in this life. The person may be able to resist the temptations to satisfy such deceitful desires, but they linger on like Paul’s thorn in the flesh so too might learn that His grace is sufficient.
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