“When I speak of knowing Christ, I mean it in the fullest biblical sense of grasping the truth about Christ, and growing in the fellowship with Christ, and being satisfied with the supremacy of Christ.” from Sex & the Supremacy of Christ.
I know my wife. There are truths I know about my wife. In the time of our marriage, I have learned more truth about my wife (and false ideas have been corrected). But I know things about lots of people- as someone who likes biographies. But I don’t have fellowship with them. I do have fellowship with my wife. Last night we sat on the back porch after CavKid went to bed. We talked about the future- longings and hopes. Okay, I mostly talked since she was preparing the Bible Study Fellowship kids program. I did this as I read about True Christian Joy from the Puritan Papers. But we talk, we have a relationship and care about each other. That goes far beyond knowing she is kind, friendly, prefers a clean house etc. I hope our fellowship deepens as the years go by. I know it isn’t automatic. And I am satisfied with her as my wife. I’m not looking to replace her or go on a Wife-Improvement Project (that could be a new TLC show).
Most of get it about our spouses- but we don’t realize that this is supposed to reflect our relationship with God. There should be a deepening of our understanding of God, fellowship with God, and satisfaction for all God is and has done for us in Jesus. This is essentially Piper’s starting point. Jesus is supreme, and as we submit to His Lordship our lives become increasingly ordered and righteous. When we reject His Lordship, our lives become increasingly disordered.
Even if we want to change, we really cannot unless we submit to the Lordship of Jesus and rely on His grace. This is particularly true when we want to restore sanity to our sex lives. The supremacy of Christ must be recognized or we’ll be like ants trying to move a mountain. To borrow John Frame’s terminology, we must see that Jesus is present, present with authority, and present to control. He is present in our disorder, or our attempts to see order restored. Our sexuality, for better or worse, is under His supremacy for either His blessing or cursing.
“Little souls make little lusts have great power.” If our souls are not being expanded by satisfaction in the all-satisfying One, we inevitably find ourselves enslaved by little lusts. If we are not submitting to Jesus, we will quickly submit to our fleeting passions. But why is it that this often leads back to sex? “It is inevitable that the human heart, which was made to be staggered with the supremacy of Christ, but instead is drowning in a sea of banal entertainment, will reach for the best natural buzz that life can give: sex.”
Here’s one that rubs against the grain of our fallen culture, and fallen nature. “Our knowing all that God promises to be for us in Christ Jesus gives us the power to suffer with joy. And here’s the link: we must suffer in order to be sexually pure.” Piper ties this in with Matthew 5:28-29.
We suffer in a number of ways. We suffer from unsatisfied desires. And unsatisfied sexual desire is one of the loudest, strongest, dominating desires we experience. It is up there with hunger and thirst. It demands to be satisfied- whatever the cost. Purity requires that we suffer through that physiological and spiritual hunger.
We suffer scorn and shame by a culture that thinks we are fools to seek purity. They call us names because we believe sex is good, and should be kept in God’s intended context. It used to be a good thing to be a virgin, not anymore. It used to be good to think that homosexuality was wrong, not anymore. It used to be good to think that adultery, swinging and open-marriages were wrong, not anymore. So we are labelled “narrow-minded”, and “dangerous”.
As Joseph learned, purity can cost you a job (security, dignity, even life itself) if you reject the advances of a powerful person. Many people, men and women, have learned that. Unless we believe the promises of God, we will choose not to suffer, failing to realizing we will suffer more.
Cavman Considers 
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