Beyond Awkward Side HugsSample

Yes, Scripture teaches that sex is for marriage, but Scripture has so much more to say about maleness and femaleness—including our sexuality and how God designed us to long for connection with each other. If our messages about sexuality are limited to that of abstinence before marriage and smoking-hot sex after marriage, then we’ve fallen prey to the idea that marriage and intimacy are really all about sex and that even maleness and femaleness are only about genitally expressed sex.

But as we see from Scripture’s witness and Jesus’ incarnation, God’s creation intent is broader and so much more beautiful than the narrow scripts we’ve been fed. Sexuality is a far bigger concept than what a husband and wife do when they’re naked. Sexuality is about us, as gendered people, living with and loving the community of men and women around us. Just as Jesus did.

In God’s first created world, Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed all the time, not just when they were having sex. They were also unashamed together when working in the garden, preparing meals, naming the animals, and talking with God at the end of the day. Jesus, the second Adam, invites us to live as unashamed men and women all the time, even if clothes are now de rigueur this side of Eden. . . .

Men and women are sexual beings, and the longings and desires we have for connection are God-given impulses that he intended to move us toward community and relationship. Yes, sin has corrupted each and every one of our desires. But the role of the Spirit is to restore our desires not extinguish them, and that includes our sexual desires.

Not all gendered interactions need be erotic. Not all intimacy need be sexualized. Scripture gives us a multitude of role models and a richness of language to express love in community in appropriate ways. In God’s family, we get to live as brothers and sisters—intimate and close as men and women—without it being weird.