Things That Make Christians Different From The World: Marital Intimacy
As we continue this series on the differences between what the world thinks and believes and what we as Christians think and believe it is important and in my opinion very necessary to talk about a very sensitive and sometimes controversial topic: sex.
I know that this topic can make some people squirm and feel uncomfortable but intimacy between two married people is what God ordained and designed for us as people. And believe me we as Christians believe way differently about this subject than most people in the world do. But we have to learn, as Christians, to be able to talk about this subject biblically, intelligently, and without shame or reservations because this subject is extremely important today because of the way that the world is abusing one of the greatest gifts that God ever gave to us human beings.
We cannot let the world set the tone on this important subject and if we as Christians feel like we can’t even say the word sex without somehow feeling dirty or embarrassed then we will cede this discussion to the world and it will, in the end, ruin millions if not billions of lives worldwide.
The world has been blurring the line between godly, marital intimacy and worldly love or more to the point lust for centuries now. And satan loves this because it is another way to separate people from God through immoral sexual behaviors. But sexual intimacy between two married people, that is one man and one woman, is a wonderful gift from God!
In Genesis 2:22-25 we read this about the way God ordained marriage and intimacy to be lived out:
22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.
23 The man said, "This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man."
24 For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
In This passage of Scripture we see how the woman was created by God and what one of her roles was to be and that role was to be the wife of Adam. This is also where we see that God ordained for them to come together in an intimate way and show their love for each other physically in a godly way.
Sexual intimacy between married Christian couples is what God ordained for us as Christians and though many people in the world get married, if they are not in a right relationship with God then they have only a part of the equation for healthy and godly intimacy down and are still lacking a relationship with the one who created marriage and the intimacy that is involved in that marriage. And therefore these folks can and usually do pervert this gift of intimacy on a regular basis.
Now is that to say that Christians cannot and will not defile this wonderful gift that God has blessed us with? I wish that I could say that this was true but it is not. I once had a discussion with a man in my old Sunday School class about the verse of Scripture that reads as follows: Hebrews 13:4 Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
The man I was talking to was saying that he and his wife could do whatever they wanted to in the bedroom and that since they were Christians and they were married that it would all be ok in the eyes of the Lord. I was attempting to correct my brother on his very incorrect interpretation of this verse of Scripture. Just because we are Christians doesn’t mean that we get to do whatever we want and justify our bad behavior by twisting God’s Word to suit our wrong desires.
The good news about this episode was that eventually he came to me and said that he was sorry and that he was wrong for trying to justify wrong thinking and wrong actions by misusing Scripture and he changed his ways or at least that was his story and he was sticking to it!
I find it very sad that Christians try to have it both ways like my friend thought he could do. It’s sad that Christians think that we can act godly and worldly at the same time. There are things that the world calls “fun” when it comes to intimacy but the Bible calls a lot of this so called “fun stuff” sexual immorality.
God laid very clear rules down for how to have intimacy with your spouse and as Christians we have to stay within those boundaries or else we are committing sexual immorality just like the world does.
Adultery is rampant in our society and the world at large today. God takes a dim view of adulterers and adultery and rightly so. Adultery breaks the trust between spouses. Intimacy in a marriage is to be cherished and guarded by both spouses at all costs.
In Proverbs chapter 5 verses 20-22 we read this: Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another man's wife? For a man's ways are in full view of the LORD, and he examines all his paths. The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast.
What we just heard is the wrong way to think and act as Christians but in a few verses prior to the ones that I just read we read this:
15 Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. 16 Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares?
17 Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers.
18 May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
19 A loving doe, a graceful deer--may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love.
Do you see the contrast here between what God says is good and what the world says is good? I understand that there are a lot of people in the world who think that adultery is wrong. But there are a lot of people in the world who don’t think it’s wrong at all. There are websites that I have learned about on T.V. (not in real life!) and I have never been to any of the websites that I’m talking about just to be clear! But there are places on the internet where one can go and find people who want to cheat on their spouses anonymously.
The one guy that I saw on television that ran one of these sites tried to rationalize his making money on the poor choices of others and the pain of others by saying that they would cheat anyway so they might as well do it the easy way! This is just one of many ways the world perverts the intimacy that God designed for His children. And I would be very surprised if there were no Christians using this contemptible website too.
These people think that they are doing something in secret when actually nothing could be farther from the truth. In the first passage of Scripture that we read from Proverbs one of the things it said was this: Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another man's wife? For a man's ways are in full view of the LORD, and he examines all his paths.
And while we’re on the subject of the internet I have to address internet pornography briefly here too. The world doesn’t seem to have a problem with exploiting men and women in the so called “Adult Entertainment Industry”
These people take the gift of intimacy between a man and a woman and make it out to be nothing more than what animals do. It is just sex for the sake of having sex. There is no intimacy, no love, no caring no anything except lust between the people involved in this so called entertainment. Pornography degrades and cheapens something great that God wanted people to enjoy in the context of a godly marriage and satan just loves these people because pornography lures so many people away from the things of God.
But again, I have to say that many. Many Christians fall victim to this great evil. Once a person gets on the internet they are only about two or three clicks of the mouse away from all kinds of pornography and Christians are right there clicking away too. There is a very sad statistic that says that as many as 7 out of 10 Pastors are either addicted to pornography or are frequent seekers of it on the internet.
Watching pornography online can be seen as a form of emotional adultery too. This evil has ruined countless marriages and has ruined the reputations of many Christians over the years. We have to be better than this as Christians.
The last thing I want to bring up that clearly separates what the world believes about sex and what Christians should believe about sex is what the Bible calls fornication. Fornication is simply having sex with anyone outside of marriage. God says that having sex outside of marriage is a sin.
Look at how our culture looks at the so called “free sex” that is rampant among people today and it isn’t just young people engaged in this activity either.
Our television shows today are full of sexual references to people having sex outside of marriage, living together before marriage and having sex, playing up the idea that if a man or a woman has a lot of sexual encounters then they are some kind of heroes! What a crock!
There is a term used today by lots of people and that term is “hooking up”. Kids as young as pre-teens are engaging in this activity and becoming sexually active and it is ruining their lives with unplanned pregnancies and diseases, some of which may last a lifetime and can be terminal yet some in our society say it just young people experimenting and we can’t stop them from doing it so let’s at least give them contraceptives and teach them about safe sex. The ONLY safe sex is sex the way God intended it to be!
This “plan” in my opinion does nothing much except teach young people that it’s alright to have sex as long as they use contraceptives! This is the plan that a lot of people in the world believe is the answer to the problem of rampant sex in our society but I believe that God has a better plan and it is one that if Christians especially would adhere to then we would have less problems in the world but this plan also works for nonbelievers too.
This plan is called abstinence. God’s plan is pretty simple and straight forward, Don’t have sex until you’re married and the only have sex with the one that you’re married to. I love the way God thinks! His plan eliminates sexually transmitted diseases; it eliminates adultery and it eliminates fornication. God’s plan build up marriages, build trust between the spouses, builds great families, and harms no one! What a deal!
Now we all know that the world calls this plan silly, simplistic, and unrealistic. Just like the plan of salvation cannot be as simple as the Bible says it is, there has to be more to it than just accepting Jesus as one’s Lord and Savior so we had better add some things to it right? But like I said last week their so called wisdom is no match for God’s true wisdom! The world thinks that they are smarter than God but we all here know that is just a lie from satan himself.
Sex, when it is enjoyed within the boundaries of a godly marriage is a wonderful gift from God and we as Christians had better be setting a good example for the world to see and follow because if we are dishonoring it just like they are then there is no difference between us and them.
We as Christians cannot let the world continue to pervert the gift of intimacy that God gave us and try to tell us that what they believe is normal. There is nothing normal about sexual immorality and we as believers can either be part of the problem or part of the solution.
We have to all be adherents to God’s plan for intimacy and stand up for abstinence teachings. And we have to stop being ashamed of talking about this subject or else the world will continue to dictate the conversation. In the Christian realm, there is nothing inherently dirty about sexual intimacy. We had better find our voice and find it soon or else we will continue to see lives ruined, diseases run rampant, babies aborted, and the divorce rate continue to rise. I’m not ready to be a party to these things are you?
