A PASTORAL LETTER
Dearest family,
When we looked briefly at Romans 1 a couple of messages ago, in our series on Biblical Sexuality, we noticed that Paul’s emphasis was on the relationship between Creator and creature. Here are some clues: “since the creation of the world… his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made… they worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator who is forever praised.” (1:20, 25) And there is a greater than Paul! Listen to Jesus, when he is talking about the sin and resultant brokenness in sexuality that accounted for unlawful divorces. “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female.” (Mt. 19:1-9) If both Jesus and Paul direct us back to the beginning, to the Genesis text, then we should probably follow their directions and example. If Jesus asked us the same question it would be helpful if we could answer, “Yes, we have read that!” And so we did, last Sunday. With reference to the two creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2, I drew your attention to three foundational issues about our creation that have huge significance for our understanding of our sexuality.
o our creation in the image of God
o our creation as male and female
o our creation as body-spirits
When we view God's directives for our sexuality this way, by trying to determine what scripture presents as intrinsic to God’s creational intent and design, then in the words of theologian George Weigel, "The first moral question shifts from 'What am I forbidden to do?' to 'How do I live a life of sexual love that conforms to my dignity as a human person?’” To put it another way, the question ceases to be initially “How far can I go in sexual acts?” but becomes “What and who is my sexuality for?” For the purposes of this letter let me just repeat some things about the last of these. This is all about what we commonly now call “body-theology.” The imago dei in Genesis is about the totality of who we are. We are not disembodied but embodied spirits. There is a relationship between our bodies and our spirits. In a real sense, our bodies too bear the image of God. What we do with our bodies matters. How we view our bodies matters. Disorder in our spirits will often be expressed physically, and possibly sexually. In 1 Cors. 6 Paul is dealing with a challenging sexual situation. There is behavior that is not consistent with the kingdom of God, and he warns them of the many sexual behaviors that they were once participating in but have now been delivered from: washed, sanctified and justified. There is much in this chapter, both on explaining the nature of Christian freedom, that in Galatians terms, is not about indulging the flesh, abusing one’s neighbor or disobeying the law. The Corinthians had rationalized their sexual sin: stomach for food and the body for sex. Sex was just a bodily hunger that it was appropriate to satisfy as one would hunger. So Paul moves from his treatment of true freedom to a word about fornication and he states bluntly: “The body is not for sexual immorality…” (6:13) He makes three points about sexual sin: it is a danger (not beneficial); it is a dictator (it can master you); it is a distortion as the Corinthian argument illustrates. But what is interesting here that I want to draw your attention to, in the light of the Genesis presentation of our bodies and spirits that bear God’s image, is that Paul’s response to pervasive sexual sin is again not to give a list of rules, but to quote Genesis 2:24 about the union of a male and female body in one flesh. His answer to the sexual questions is to teach about our attitude to our body.
A biblical understanding of the body, a theological not a biological one, is fundamental to our view of self, to an understanding of how we relate to others and to ourselves. We have seen from Genesis that we are body-persons.
Our sexuality is good only in so far as we respond in our maleness and femaleness to the ordering and empowering word of God. It is only the image of God that includes our body that gives us an understanding of the relationship between sexual acts and spiritual consequences, for good or for bad. What we do with our body, and how we view it, is of vital importance. If it can be offered to God it can also be offered wrongly to others and to forces of darkness. In one sense, sexual sin always involves offering your body to that which is not God. It is understandable why false gods had fertility rites, and required sexual intercourse with cult prostitutes. In the giving of seed, the pact was made with the gods. It was symbolic of giving your life. Paul is clear in 1 Cos 6 that there is an aspect of sexual sin that is “against your own body.” (v18) Your body is affected and suffers consequences: your biology, your psychology and even your neurology.
There are those who hate their bodies, maybe because of how it is in their eyes, or because of previous sin committed by it, or because of what has been done to it. We find ways to camouflage and hide who we really are, who God has wonderfully made us to be. There are those who fear the body. They fear its capabilities, they fear it being tempted, they fear arousal, they may fear the physical touch of love for any number of reasons. There are those who abuse the body: physically through addiction, or even workaholism, through appearance and gender disguise, or sexually through self-gratification. There are others who disrespect the body. They disregard its health, they demean its creational design. The disrespect may be expressed in sexual voraciousness or excessiveness, or in shamelessness and unholy sexual behaviors. There are some who idolize the body: its appearance, its health, its capabilities and capacities, its strength and power, its contribution to their identity, its sexual performance. I’m sure you may be able to add to that list but this is sufficient to alert us to the way that the enemy of our souls will happily run interference with our sexuality by twisting our view and understanding of our bodies as they are meant to be offered to the worship of God, and for the purposes of God.
If I could put it simply, and hopefully memorably, Paul essentially says that to have good sex you have to know what makes for a good body. He’s not talking about membership at the local to get that body looking irresistible and confident for any sexual engagement. You will have good sex, good in the way that Genesis uses the word good, if you realize what makes for a good body, spiritually. He is not talking about some ethereal mystical body here, but about our real bodies that belch and bleed and sweat and sag and puke and pale. The fact is that our bodies are potentially instruments of good or evil. Creational obedience is a body activity. The way he makes his point is to describe three major relationships that our body, your body as a Christian, has.
1. Your body’s relation to God (v14): "God raised the Lord from the dead and He will raise us also." You are His creature, you are his creation. You are not a soul parcel-wrapped in a body but a body that became a living soul. There is an indivisibility of body and soul. What your body does, you do. All genital sex is personal sex and involves your inner life. That’s why fornication corrupts the spirit at a deep level. It was Lewes Smedes who said that you can’t go to bed with someone and leave your soul at the parking meter. This does not negate the fact that sexual desire is God-given and that pleasure, as C.S. Lewis reminds us, is God’s idea not the devil’s. God made the nervous system but the pleasure experienced is better seen as a by-product, not the main goal, if we understand intercourse as an act that in Genesis terms, unites lives, unites body and spirit. Paul is telling us here the incredible value and significance of our bodies that should cause us to think twice before sexual sin. The body was awesome in past creation and it is going to be awesome in future resurrection. The value of the body has been finally endorsed by the incarnation, and therefore, in its relationship to God, we should not abuse or devalue what God loves, what God desires holiness for and what God intends to raise. Your body has an awesome relationship to God.
2. Your body’s relation to Jesus (v13, 15): “The body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body…your bodies are members of Christ himself” The same word is used here to describe our uniting with Christ (glued together) and the uniting with a prostitute, or any other extramarital sexual relationship. Here is the Genesis truth about the spirituality of sexual intercourse, represented by the meaning of one flesh, and the nature of that union and communion that is not merely physical. This is why in healing prayer we do a lot of healing and deliverance ministry with those who have become bound in their spiritual lives through the soul ties that have resulted in fornication or adultery. Despite consensual sex you can be spiritually violated. Paul’s logic is simple for those who belong to Christ and whose worship (there we are again) is to present their bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. “This is your spiritual act of worship.” “You are not your own. You were bought at a price.” (v20) Any questions on sexual rights? With his sacrificed body, he gave up his spirit, and bought you, body-spirit with that enormous cost. If He’s got your body he’s got everything if you think about it. You cannot take your body, that is no longer your own, away from Christ and give it wrongly to another. You are betrothed to him as a bride to the groom. Your body has an awesome relationship with Jesus!
3. Your body’s relation to the Holy Spirit (v19): “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” Would you fornicate in the sanctuary? What would stop you? Why would we quench the Spirit through sexual sin? We fool ourselves if we think we can be suddenly independent, and unattached to Jesus and His Spirit, and do what we want sexually. Are we sensitive to the indwelling Spirit of Christ? Do we violate and drive through the Spirit’s convictions, and quickening of conscience and pleadings. Paul is a realist: he is always telling folk not to be too proud to just flee temptation, to ensure the body avoids wrong contacts, does not get into wrong contexts, and that we do not, as I’ve suggested earlier, allow ourselves to harbor wrong convictions about our body or come to wrong conclusions about it. Instead, Paul wants our bodies to participate in prayer, to live according to God’s precepts, and especially, as he suggests to the Corinthians in this passage, to ask and allow the paraclete, the Holy Spirit, to succor and strengthen, resist and reject that which would bring your body into uncleanness.
So there you have it. What is good sex? To help answer that, we need to ask what makes for a good body. That will help determine where you take it, what you do with it, what you do to it, who you give it to. What makes for a good body? The knowledge that:
o God has a relationship with it: he raises it
o Jesus has a relationship with it: he redeems it
o Holy Spirit has a relationship with it: he resides in it
So in the end, let’s remember the beginning: our creation as the image of God; our creation as male and female; our creation as body-spirits. All those in favor? Any questions about sex?
Pastorally yours,
Stuart
https://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)