Aftershock - Your Sexual Relationship With Your HusbandSample

God’s Mysterious and Beautiful Design for Sexual Relationships

The mystery of sexual intimacy defies words, but it was designed to be lived out in the context of marriage and to declare the glory of God. It’s the positive ideal or prototype of the marriage relationship.

Sexual sin violates God’s divine, fulfilling, faithful, and safe design for human sexuality in marriage. That violation creates deep wounds that hinder our ability to experience sex inside marriage the way God wants us to. We rarely give much thought to the mystery and symbolism of sex as it’s described in the Bible, or how it’s designed to contribute to human happiness and wholeness.

Every marriage falls short. We are all imperfect sinners. We are all sexually broken in some way because our sexuality is so closely intertwined with our humanness. It’s normal to have ups and downs in the marital sexual journey. It can be difficult at times, but it’s designed to be unifying and sacred.

Genesis 1:28 says, “God blessed [the man and woman]. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” Think of that! Before any other command, before humanity’s fall into sin, before human history had even begun, the Lord’s first word to His children was “Go have sex!” And He made sure that this exhortation was recorded in His Holy Word so that all future generations would know about it.

The Old Testament prophets consistently used marriage and marital sex as illustrations of Israel’s relationship with Yahweh. The apostle Paul followed in this same tradition when he quoted an Old Testament verse from Genesis 2 and then compared it to the relationship between Christ and the church (Eph. 5:32).

In Revelation 19:9, history finds its consummation in “the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And in Revelation 21:2, we find the “new Jerusalem” described as a “Holy City . . . coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

From the first page to the last, Scripture represents sex as a matter of the highest importance to God. It’s a physical thing with a very intentionally designed heavenly meaning, and we are its stewards.

Next, we’ll look deeper at the concept of sacred sex.