God's Design For SexSýnishorn

SEX AND MORALITY

When it comes to sex, we enjoy God’s gifts of sensuality and “fleshly” pleasure to the fullest extent only when they’re experienced within the proper context: marriage.

Though the notion of Christian sexual morality is often criticized as “repressive,” it’s actually a matter of restraining and channeling the power of sex to make it as effective as possible to our lives.

Are you familiar with the word “dissipation”? It refers to the wasteful squandering and loss of positive energy that results when a substance is not properly contained. When water is forced to flow through a narrow channel, for example, it generates incredible power. But if it bursts outside of those boundaries and spills out across the land, that power is lost.

That’s dissipation, and the word has a particular relevance to the question of sexual morality. This is what the writer of Proverbs had in mind when he penned the following verses:

Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well. Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets?
Let them be only your own, and not for strangers with you.
Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth.
As a loving deer and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times;
And always be enraptured with her love.
For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman,
And be embraced in the arms of a seductress?
                                   (Proverbs 5:15-20)

Clearly, these are not the words of someone who is “uptight” about sex, who “fears” the world, or who rejects the beauties of creation. Such poetry does not flow from a “repressed” mind that “avoids the joys of life,” as some critics of sexual morality would have it.

On the contrary, it expresses deep and ecstatic appreciation for the vibrancy and vitality of sexuality that is under control. This is what has inspired those who believe in God and who keep His commandments to declare, “You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

This is one of the best kept secrets of the “straight-laced religious life”: all the best research indicates that the most sexually satisfied people in modern society are not the adventurous swingers, but rather faithful, monogamous married couples.

This, then, is what Christian sexual morality is really all about. It’s not a set of restrictive rules designed to prevent us from having fun. It’s the key to total fulfillment of our sexuality. It’s the doorway to a truly satisfying and abundant life in the realm of marriage and male-female relationships.