Sex in Marriage Commanded!

We need to revisit a point mentioned earlier. After creating Adam and Eve, the Designer gave them instruction—He educated them. This education included the following plain directive: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24).

This is more than mere symbolism. It is a plain command—“they shall”—to the married couple to come together in sexual union.

The apostle Paul expounds this point in a condemnation of fornication, which is sexual activity outside of marriage: “Now the body is not for fornication...Know you not that he which is joined to an harlot [prostitute] is one body? For two, says He, shall be one flesh” (I Cor. 6:13, 16). Notice that Paul also refers to Genesis to define the meaning of “one flesh.” The New Testament supports the Old Testament on this as it does in so many other points—and vice-versa.

God commands that a man and woman become one flesh in sexual intercourse—but only within marriage. Throughout the Bible, and often in the strongest possible language, God condemns the use of sex in any other context than that of marriage between one woman and one man. Any illicit use of sex—and God includes adultery, premarital sex, homosexuality, bestiality, incest or other perversions—violates the Seventh Commandment.

Scripture instructs people to avoid all possible contamination of sex. The physical body was intended to serve as the very temple for the Holy Spirit, received upon repentance and baptism (Acts 2:38) and dwelling in us from that point forward. Put another way, your body is to be reserved as a place in which the perfect, holy, pure Supreme Creator of the entire universe may enter and dwell. How few today are living their lives with this in mind.

Continuing in Paul’s instruction to the Corinthians, and this is most emphatic: “FLEE FORNICATION...Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? For you are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (I Cor. 6:18-20). Of course, most people have no idea that their body was designed to literally “house” God Almighty. Rather, most today seem to live as though their bodies are the city dump—a place in which every vile, rotten and foul thing dwells!

One of the chief themes in chapters five through seven of I Corinthians is sex, and sex within the marriage relationship. In context throughout, the instruction to “glorify God in your body” equates to a COMMAND to actively use the gift of sex—but to use it properly, and only within marriage!

Consciences “Seared”

Many today seem to live as though they have no conscience. So many now lack the once more present inner human voice reminding them of right and wrong—and I am not here speaking of the Spirit of God leading Christians from within. When it comes to sex, millions of consciences no longer experience the slightest hint or inkling of feeling that they are doing anything that could be wrong.

If one is repeatedly exposed to a false concept, it can become deeply ingrained, as if burned into the mind with a branding iron. A burn on the skin will often form a scar. Scar tissue is different from healthy tissue in two ways: It is neither as strong nor as flexible as normal skin. In other words, it does not function as well as it should, and it is not easily or quickly changed.

The kind of scarring described here is referred to in Scripture as one who has had his conscience “seared with a hot iron” (I Tim. 4:2). The mental and emotional scars caused by this falsehood leave them unable to experience the kind of happiness that God intended within marriage.

But no matter how far one has gone into immoral, or even amoral, sexual behaviour—and I recognize that this could include many (probably most) readers of this book—one’s conscience can be successfully reprogrammed to come to feel as God intended. A tender conscience can return to the most hardened person, but only with God’s help.

The only way out of this predicament is to seek God in fervent prayer, asking Him to completely cleanse false concepts from the mind! Then one must actively and intensely study the Bible so that God’s thoughts regarding sex can replace all the wrong kinds of human thinking. Finally, spending a great deal of time regularly thinking about the principles and laws being learned from God’s Word—the Bible calls this meditation—will help ingrain them as deeply-held values.

The Other Side of the Coin

There is a second and opposite kind of problem that can also sear the conscience.

Because they have been conditioned to wrong thinking, many people enter the marriage relationship having a false sense that they are wounding their conscience through the enjoyment of sexual pleasure. The idea that sex, even within marriage, is shameful, has reduced many marriages to a study in misery. Frigidity and inability to overcome feelings of guilt have blocked true marital happiness for tens of billions of couples over thousands of years. This is a separate and very real problem that many readers of this book are facing.

Satan has effectively deceived the masses about sex from the moment that he was so successful in this way with the first couple. Like Adam and Eve, so many women—and this can certainly include men—seek to cover themselves in shame, even within their own bedrooms, until the lights are out.

Many have been so thoroughly conditioned to the idea that sex is shameful that their minds and consciences have also become “seared with a hot iron” (I Tim. 4:2), the only difference being that they feel the wrong things, instead of feeling nothing at all. The mental and emotional scars caused by this supposed Christian thinking have left them unable to experience the kind of happiness that God intended within marriage.

No matter which of these two backgrounds the reader brings to this book—a free-sex, licentious past behaviour or the once more typical “sex-is-shameful” thinking—there is hope for you. You can recover! But it involves seeing the big picture presented here.