The Theology of Sex

“The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body… he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality.” – 1 Corinthians 6:13, 17-18

It is nearly impossible not to internalize some views of sex from the world around us. In our culture, sex is consumeristic: it is about self-gratification, feeling good physically or emotionally, or being used as a tool to get what we want. In our culture, sex is solely physical; it is an appetite to be met, and can be divorced from the mental, emotional, spiritual and relational. Pornography has made it even more about performance and objectification. Lastly, sex in our culture is idolatrous; it is portrayed as the ultimate source of fulfillment in and of itself.

But the Bible tells an altogether different story. God invented sex, as a good thing without shame. Have you thought much about why? Paul says that our body is meant for the Lord. Sex is a signpost that points us to God. J. I. Packer writes, “A signpost only helps those who will head the way it directs, and if you insisted on camping for life beside a lovely signpost, you would be daft; you would never get anywhere.” Sex points to the triune nature of a God who exists in a state of mutual, self-giving love and joy, a kind of constant union of which sex perhaps gives us a glimpse. It points to the wholeness of union we will have with God one day in eternity (Ephesians 5:32). And it points to the gospel itself, by acting out the creation of new life through the giving of self within a covenant. 

Rather than consumerism, sex is literally and symbolically about relationship, with God and with our spouse. Rather than being merely physical, sex is portrayed as a union of all levels of our being. Rather than implying that sex is essential for happiness, the Bible tells us about people like Paul (1 Corinthians 7:7) and Jesus who never had sex, and that there won’t be sex in heaven (Luke 20:35). Ultimately, sex is not all about us: there is something mysterious and wonderful here, something in the roots of our longings and the way our bodies are made that testifies to God himself. Don’t you know, Paul says, that your body is meant for God, that you are one with him, that the Holy Spirit lives inside you, that you are not your own? We aren’t to flee sexual immorality because of a low or fearful view of sex, but because of a high view of it, because we don’t want to do anything that would obscure what it is truly meant for. 

Evangelism

“Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’” – Acts 17:32

I came to the Bay Area intent on sharing Jesus with nonbelievers, convicted that this was part of the main reason we were called here. But it has been a slow and challenging process. People seem to respond like the Athenians: when Christianity comes up, they react with a sense of suppressed antipathy at worse or a complete lack of openness at best, like those who mocked Paul. Then I begin to build relationships, aware that I may be one of the few Christians they come to closely know: and that takes a great deal of time and patience, like those who wanted Paul to come and repeat himself again. We’ve been here almost three years, still hosting gatherings for friends and families and neighbors, still reaching out during school runs and swim meets and playdates, but it’s hard to see any kind of progress.

In the face of all that, my resolve to share Jesus has atrophied to some extent. I’ve stopped praying regularly by name for nonbelievers in our lives. I’ve become more cynical about the odds of anyone believing. I hesitate longer before mentioning my faith. And then I came across these words towards the end of J. I. Packer’s book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God: “So persevere in presenting Christ to unconverted people as you find opportunity. You are not on a fool’s errand. You are not wasting either your time or theirs. You have no reason to be ashamed of your message, or halfhearted and apologetic in delivering it. You have every reason to be bold, and free, and natural, and hopeful of success. For God can give his truth an effectiveness that you and I cannot give it.”

The truth of God’s sovereignty, Packer argues, should make us take even more seriously our responsibility to evangelize, which he defines as sharing the good news regardless of conversion results, and which he reiterates is a command for all believers to obey. The fact that God is the one who can and does work against the blindness of sin and the schemes of Satan to bring people to a saving knowledge of Jesus gives us confidence: it is not up to us. And this confidence does three things: it makes us bold in the face of apathy or contempt, because we know God can change even the hardest hearts. It makes us patient when there is no immediate response, because we know God works in his own time. And it drives us to prayer, because we know we need help and that God alone is able to draw others to salvation. 

Do I really believe God is sovereign, or not? Or have I been unconsciously trusting in my own abilities and methods, applying my own timeline and expectations? Do I truly love the people around me, and do I truly love and believe in the power of the gospel? You are not wasting your time, Packer reminds me. Persevere in every opportunity. Don’t be ashamed; have hope. It is God who works, and he uses you to do it.

Satisfaction Through Substitution

“And he came down from offering the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offerings… And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces.” – Leviticus 9:22, 24

“Apart from what the Bible tells us, we really don’t know anything of the awful nature of sin and the awful holiness of God. If we forget that we really don’t know anything, we are kidding ourselves.” – J.L. Packer

Admittedly, the book of Leviticus is a bit weird. Reading it is like trying to decode a language utterly foreign to the modern mindset. Makes me recall something N.T. Wright wrote: “We need to come to the text, trying to give 21st-century answers to 1st-century questions, rather than 19th-century answers to 16th-century questions, as much of the church still tries to do.” The burning question for an Israelite at that time would have been: how does one enter God’s presence? The Israelites had a tangible understanding of “the awful holiness of God” and “the awful nature of sin.” They had gone to great lengths to build a tabernacle but no one was able to enter it. How was this to be resolved? 

God introduces a radical new answer: substitutionary sacrifice. If you’ve been in church for a while, it’s easy to get inoculated to this concept, but consider what it would have meant to hear that instead of dying, another could die in your place. Instead of your child or wife or friend dying, another could die in their place. For every kind of sin, there was a kind of sacrifice. There was a way. Understanding this is the key to understanding the cross. As John Stott writes in The Cross of Christ:

“The righteous, loving Father humbled himself to become in and through his only Son flesh, sin and a curse for us, in order to redeem us without compromising his own character… The biblical gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us… The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation.  For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.  Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.  Man claims prerogatives that belong to God alone; God accepts penalties that belong to man alone.” 

What does this mean for our 21st-century questions? Often our response to inadequacy is to try harder, to strain ever onwards in self-actualization, to achieve or acquire something more. This is what our world tells us to do. It’s not natural to admit our efforts will never be enough. It’s scary to trust something outside of ourselves, just as it would have been scary for Aaron to offer the animals and trust the fire would consume them and not the people. But over and over, in every mention of fat and entrails and organs, God is saying, there must be a substitute. And you must completely trust that the substitute is enough. That is the only way.

On some level, if I really absorbed this truth, my life would be driven less by anxiety, fear, guilt, and more by rest, thankfulness, awe, and love. Much of my life is a growth in grasping and living into something inherently foreign to my own tendencies and culture. But better a feeble trust in the right thing, perhaps, than a strong trust in the wrong thing. Even if all I can whisper is, “I believe; help my unbelief,” that is something. What would it mean for you to believe this truth, and how would you live even just a little bit differently?