It would be difficult to conceive –– if that is the right word –– of a culture which is more sex-obsessed but less sexually satisfied than our own.

The media are especially fond of extolling the joys of sex, and they find a ready, willing and gullible public. One of the gurus of this whole approach was the novelist D.H. Lawrence, a man plagued by impotence. Lawrence wrote of sex in mys­tical terms:

And God the Father, the Inscrutable, the Unknowable, we know in the Flesh, in Woman. She is the door for our in-going and our out-going —– in her we go back to the Father: But like the wit­nesses of the Transfiguration, blind and unconscious.

Sex, apparently, has become a means of grace –– indeed the mediator between God and man.

Alas, if we make a god of sex, it has a way of turning out to be a devil. The world has become schizophrenic. It lauds sexual free­dom, then expresses mock horror when a civil or ecclesiastical dignitary actually acts on that philosophy. It told us there were no rules, then passes a whole host of lawyer-enriching laws against sexual harassment.

Where do we go for a touch of sanity?

It comes as a bit of a surprise to many people that it was not Channel 10’s Sex/Life or Alex Comfort who invented sex, but God Himself. There it is on the first page of the Bible:

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female He creat­ed them. Then God blessed them and God said to them ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth’. Gen. 1:27-28a

We cannot obey God’s command here without engaging in sexual relations. God did not create a unisex culture. He made men and women different for good and necessary reasons. Sex for procreation: While there will be some people who remain single (Matt. 19:11-12), most peo­ple will marry. If so, they engage in lawful sexual relations –– relations upon which God has set his seal of approval. Children do not make a marriage (1 Sam. 1:8), but they are a heritage from the Lord (Psalm 127:3). In fact, “happy is the man who has his quiver full of them” (Psalm 127:5). While today’s received wisdom is that chil­dren are a burden to be complained of as often as possible and disposed of as soon as possible, the Bible delights in the arrival of new-born life.

Hence the Psalmist rejoiced in God: “He grants the barren woman a home, like a joyful mother of children” (Psalm 113:9). On the other hand, Rachel almost wished for death when she was unable to bear children (Gen. 30:1).

Relational aspects of sex: Yet the Bible has another purpose for sexual relations within marriage —— a relationship purpose. In all their pre-Fall innocence, Adam and Eve were to become one flesh (Gen. 2:24). In the next verse it is said that “they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they felt no shame”. There is no false prudery here, as in the old limerick:

There was an old lady of Harrow
Whose views were decidedly narrow.
 At the end of her paths
She installed two bird baths ––
One for each sex of sparrow!

The Bible is both pure and earthy in its treatment of sexual relations. Fornication, adultery, homosexuality, incest, paedophilia, pornography and all other sexual perversions are always wrong. Even lust in the heart is worthy of ever­lasting damnation (Matt. 5:27-30). Masturbation too would seem to be an assault on the Bible’s teaching that sex is not a solitary exercise but to take place with one’s married partner of the oppo­site sex (1 Cor. 7:9).

Both the Old and New Testament speak of sexual relations in a very positive way. One of the 66 books which make up the inerrant Word of God is the Song of Solomon, which is a love song. The lan­guage is obviously sexual without being frank in the moderns sense (Song of Solomon 7:1-3). Proverbs 5 speaks the same language. It contains a warning against sexual immorality, then goes on to speak of the relational aspects of married love:

Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well. Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be only your own, and not strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth. As a loving deer and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and always be enraptured with her love. Prov. 5:15-19

Male and female are not identical in their functions, but there is a mutuality in married sexual life.

Let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband ren­der to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.1 Corinthians 7:2b-5

Sex is not only for producing off­spring but is also to express the lifelong commitment of a man and woman to each other. To state the obvious, it is meant to be enjoyed.

Sexual relations are not to be casual; they are not to be invested with a kind of pseudo-spirituality that we find in D.H. Lawrence; they are not to be splashed across our movie screens in the name of honesty and frankness. It has been long noted by the best social commentators that cultural advance and sexual morality go together.

As sex is treated in a more exotic and uninhibited way, so it has created an insa­tiable desire for more of the same. Paradoxically, in all this intoxication there is more than a touch of boredom, of a sense that sex without a Christian frame­work is promising more than it can deliv­er. Sex is on the brain –– which is a bad place to have it.

Not so with God’s view. Sexual rela­tions within marriage provide the God-given way for children to be brought into the world in as happy, stable and secure an environment as possible. And they provide the way for a husband and wife to express in a physical and joyous way their commitment to each other. As always, Christians ought to practise what they preach!