Sexuality

Sex is a big deal in our culture, and yet our cultural perspective on sex and sexuality is entirely paradoxical and befuddled. In some respects, sex means so much more than it used to:

What is the biblical vision of sex and the body?

What is life in the Kingdom all about?

Today we are taught that sexual desire is central to human identity. The concept of sexual identity is a very modern concept, and it points to our cultural understanding that sexual desire is essential to forming personal identity.

Why is the overhaul of our perspective on sex so crucial?

Today we are taught that sexual self-expression is essential for healthy personhood. We’re told that healthy people explore their sexual and erotic desires. People should express their sexual desires in ways that feel self-fulfilling. And underneath this is the belief that sexual expression can indeed be self-fulfilling and self-actualizing. Exploring sexual desires is a way of finding out who you really are.

What is life in the Kingdom all about?

Sex means so much more than it used to.

But at the same time, sex also means so much less than it used to.

Today we are taught that sex is morally neutral. Sex is neither good or bad in and of itself - it is simply a tool for self-discovery and self-fulfillment.

Today we are taught that sex can be simply recreational - just for fun and with no more meaning or significance than going for a hike or watching a movie - unless of course you want it to be, in which case it can be unitive, it can be procreational, it can be spiritual, if only for that particular individual.

Today, sex and sexual desire is used for such trivial purposes like selling things, or gaining attention or fame. - commercials, lyrics, movies, fashion.

So we live in a culture that elevates sex and sexual desire to such a degree that it is central to personal identity and fulfillment, while at the same time denigrating it to a neutral, insignificant tool to we used for nothing more than pleasure and profit. It’s confusing! Sexuality means everything and it means nothing.

Sex is a big deal in the Scriptures too! Jesus speaks to the issue a number of times in his Jewish context, and Paul speaks about sex a whole lot more in his Greco-Roman context. In fact, when we look at the rhetoric of these two, whose words make up the bulk of the New Testament, we see that they reserve pretty biting and intense language for the subject of sex and sexual desire.

Let’s look at a well known passage in .

Let’s remember the context here. This is part of a famous stretch of teaching known as the Sermon on the Mount, and it was a teaching that was directed at Jesus disciples. These are people who have committed themselves to who Jesus is and what he is all about and who desire to fashion their lives and identity after him. This is important to remember, because a serious misstep that we can make as Christians is to make the biblical vision for sex and sexual desire the primary and forefront issue, and making this the first issue or talking point that we bring up when having a conversation with someone who is not a Christian. But if someone is not a follower of Jesus, why on earth would they be compelled to follow his teachings? Alright, so let’s avoid that misstep and recognize that Jesus himself is giving this teaching to people who have already committed their lives to him and desire to be formed by his teaching and mission. Paul does the same in his letters. He is writing to Christians. Okay, so that’s important to remember.

Jesus introduces this section in the same way he has introduced his other teachings in this Sermon on the Mount:

(27) “You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” (28) But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

This is a pattern in the Sermon on the Mount, “You have hear it said…but I say to you...” To understand what Jesus is doing here with this pattern, we’ve got to recognize what Jesus is doing with this entire sermon. Jesus is all about announcing the arrival of the Kingdom of God - this sphere of life where the good will of God is reflected in all of creation and humanity, this sphere of life where all relationship that were broken by sin are restored, and at the center of this Kingdom is Jesus. So Jesus is speaking to his disciples about what Kingdom life looks like. What does it look like to live as Kingdom people, people who embody the teaching and mission of Jesus.

Now, God had always been about creating this sort of people, which is why he gave the people of Israel (the people from whom Jesus descended and is fully a part of) his commands, often summarized as the Law. One of the purposes of the Law, or this array of God’s commands, was to reveal to God’s people how to live as Kingdom people. And here we see that Jesus affirms that - he affirms that God’s commands point people towards God’s will. “Do not commit adultery” accurately points to God’s desires for us.

“Do not think that

Jesus sees himself as very much in line with this. He hasn’t come to do away with these commands, but as he says in verse 17, he has come to fulfill them. Jesus has come to fulfill the purposes of God’s command. He has come to make, or re-make more specifically, people to be Kingdom people, people who know and are able to pursue the desires of God.

And so Jesus puts his own teaching right alongside God’s commands. God said, “You shall not commit adultery,” and Jesus intensifies it, “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Why? Because Jesus knows people don’t just end up in bed with someone else’s spouse. People aren’t just suddenly hit with an intense desire to have an affair. No, there are deeper issues at work that drive people to forsake their vows and commitments and betray their fellow human being in this way. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount we see that Jesus knows the Kingdom doesn’t come about by modifying our behaviors or just jumping through the right religious hoops - no we become Kingdom people by allowing Jesus to work on root issues, deep issues that are sometimes feel like they are at the very core of our being, but deep issues in our lives that fracture our relationship with God and with other people, issues that lead us to ruin.

This is why Jesus locates the source of the problem not in the sexual act of adultery, nor in the prolonged stare with lustful intent, but where? He says the source of the problem is what’s going on in the heart. These actions, they are but symptoms. And a good doctor doesn’t treat symptoms with no regard for the cause, and Jesus is a good doctor. He wants to go after the source.

Now why is Jesus so upset here? I mean look at the language he uses! He commends self-mutilation as a way forward. He is worked up about this. Or when we read Paul in , he is worked up about this issue of sexual immorality, the example that he gives being sleeping with a prostitute. Why are Jesus and Paul so triggered by this issue of sex and sexual desire?

Well for one thing, it is not because they hate sex. Jesus is not a prude. He is not afraid or unsettled by the subject of sex and sexual desire. Because if we look at and 2 of Jesus’ Bible, the Old Testament, we see that after God created human beings, male and female, fit for one another in every way, including physically and sexually, they come together in marriage, where they commit themselves wholly and fully to one another, making a covenant between themselves, and in that context they express and seal that unity of mind, body, and spirit in sex, and what does God say? He says it is very good! There is an entire book of the Bible that celebrates sex and sexual desire. Song of Songs or Song of Solomon. It’s a book of romantic love poetry, at times even semi-erotic. Jesus grew up listening to Song of Solomon, this compendium love poetry that depicts sexual desire between a man and a woman leading into marriage. It was read annually around the time of Passover. Listen to this beautiful section near the end of the book (8:6-7):

“Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the LORD. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.”

In the Scriptures, sex is a sign of the personal, legal, social, economic, total union between a man and a woman who have made that commitment to one another in marriage. It is this wonderful gift in which the married couple can outwardly express that union and maintain it as well. Absolutely beautiful and passionate. Our bodies are good. Sex is good. Sexual desire is good.

But is it really as easy and simple as that? Is it really as black and white as to say that sexual desire is good? Notice what the author of this love poem likened desire to: fire. Is fire good or bad? Well, that depends. If it’s heating up my burgers on the grill, it’s good; or if it’s keeping my house warm. But it can also very well be burning my steak, or consuming my house. In the same way, it’s not so easy to say that sex and sexual desire is good - it’s like fire. In the marriage covenant it is a beautiful and powerful expression of a whole person united to their spouse. It’s unifying and leaves a legacy of love, intimacy, and commitment, and from that passion, new life is actually created! But outside of the security of the marriage covenant, this power can cause some of the deepest emotional scaring that human beings can undergo, leaving a legacy of alienation, guilt, and shame of bad sexual experiences. More than any time in my lifetime, we as a society are hearing stories of people who’ve been deeply burned by the fires of sexual desire. Sex can be a wonderful thing that leads to new life and greater love and unity. Sex is good when it’s in the environment that harnesses it’s power towards human life and flourishing; but when it isn’t, it can be a destructive, consuming force that leads us into truly un-human behavior.

And this is why Jesus and Paul are so triggered by the misuse of sex and sexual desire, because they recognize that when sexual desire is abused, it turns us into black holes. Tim Mackey, a pastor out in Portland uses this phrase a good bit to describe how sin twists our understanding of what people are for: what are humans here for?

Well when Jesus was asked, what is the greatest commandment given by God - another way to ask, what are we really here for, what is God’s will for us, what would it look like to live up to God’s purpose for humanity? - Jesus responds by saying “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” What are we here for? We’re here to know and be known by God, to be in a loving relationship with Him, to know his grace, and love, and the responsibility that he has given us as his image bearers. And to love God is to reflect His love to others. And this love is not a making of our own design, it is fashioned according to our image, it isn’t based on some impersonal, universal, spiritual force, but it is founded on the God of Israel, who took on flesh in Jesus, was crucified, and raised from the dead.

Tim Mackey, a pastor out in Portland uses this phrase a good bit to describe how sin twists our understanding of what people are for: what are humans here for? Well when Jesus was asked, what is the greatest commandment given by God - another way to ask, what are we really here for, what is God’s will for us, what would it look like to live up to God’s purpose for humanity? - Jesus responds by saying “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” What are we here for? We’re here to know and be known by God, to be in a loving relationship with Him, to know his grace, and love, and the responsibility that he has given us as his image bearers. And to love God is to reflect His love to others. And this love is not a making of our own design, it is fashioned according to our image, it isn’t based on some impersonal, universal, spiritual force, but it is founded on the God of Israel, who took on flesh in Jesus, was crucified, and raised from the dead.

This is our purpose as human beings, and in particular for the Christian church, this is what life in the Kingdom is all about. But misdirected sexual desire violates this fundamental ethic of the Kingdom because what we do when we lust, when we fuel sexual desire outside of its intended environment, what happens is that we say that the purpose of this other person is to fulfill my desires, to give me pleasure, to play a role in the story of my satisfaction - do you see how, in view of our true purpose, do you see how degrading and dehumanizing that is? We consume people, like a black hole - and in doing so we not only dehumanize others, but we dehumanize ourselves.

The most obvious place in our world where this is played out is in pornography, and it’s everywhere, and it’s made out to be such a light and harmless aspect of our society; but it is an all consuming fire that eats away at our humanity: individually and collectively. It eats away at our souls and turns our hearts that were made to give and to love and to serve, and it turns our hearts into black holes that take, consume, and use. And if we think that because it’s private, because no one knows about it, that it doesn’t affect anyone, well that’s simply not true. Look at what Jesus is talking about here. What is he talking about that is so dangerous for us that should take immediate action so as to avoid it, no matter how painful or inconvenient or drastic. He’s talking about adultery of the heart. What is more private or unseen than that? Jesus knows that what we do in private shapes our hearts, and our hearts affect how we relate to others - so what we do in private certainly does affect others, and pornography greatly affects how you relate to your spouse, to your children, to your coworkers, to everyone -and not just on a sexual level; but the more succumb to the lie that people exist for my satisfaction the more we perpetuate the fracturing of relationships that sin introduced into the world. And Jesus says there is no place for that in the Kingdom of God, where people work for the restoration of those relationships through the love of God in Christ.

And Jesus says there is no place for this in the Kingdom of God.

And where is the source of this problem according to Jesus? Our heart. And in a culture that screams at every hour of the day for us to follow our hearts, to explore our every sexual desire, to not question but to give in to our inner feelings, we need to hear that our hearts are not always trustworthy for leading us towards the paths that lead to life and flourishing. Our inner feelings are not always trustworthy to form an identity around, but that actually…we need to look elsewhere, outside of ourselves. Not to draw strength from within, but to receive it from someone else.

And Jesus

Jesus tells his disciples to take swift, decisive action in this area of life, because if not, we will be consumed. Look at verse 29:

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

This is, again, very strong language because this issue of sex, sexual desire, and the way that we dehumanize ourselves and others is very, very important to Jesus. Jesus is not saying that sexual sins are unforgivable, but what he is saying is that if these issues are left unchecked, if they aren’t brought to Jesus and the community of his disciples, but allowed to just go unabated, you will lose yourself in them.

God has made sex and sexual desire for something so much greater than that, and God has made you for something so much greater than that, and in Jesus you can become more than that. Jesus is committed to remaking you in his own image. If you have been or are caught in the clutches of porn, Jesus does not hate you. He wants more for you, and if you will let him, he can renovate your heart. If you are struggling with sexuality, Jesus does not hate you. He wants more for you, and if you will let him, he can renovate your heart. Condemnation and guilt is never the end of the story with Jesus. The story always ends with resurrection, with transformation - and that is what Jesus wants for you, and that is what Jesus is proclaiming he has won for you, if you let him, and you offer this area of your life to him.

We cannot change our heart,

I am

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