All I have just said about sex being one flesh and pointing to Christ as marriage does means that a husband and wife should never become mere objects of sexual gratification for one another. Just as it’s wrong to use an unmarried person to gratify our lust, so it is with our spouses. There ought to be mutual consideration, tenderness, sacrificial love, the desire to please and delight the other more than to be served, and so much more in the sexual lives of married Christians. This doesn’t mean that it can’t and won’t be physically delightful. Rather, it means our deepest sexual pleasures will be found in satisfying, honoring, and loving each other.
So much of modern culture is at war with the Christian understanding of marital sex. Exposure to porn, which many men and women have suffered both before and sometimes during marriage, undermines godly marital sex. Casual sex on prime-time television makes selfish ways of thinking about sex as natural to modern people as breathing. This is often carried into their marital relationships. A quest for powerful physical sexual experiences even in marriage can become consuming, leading to sin. For example, many worldly sex manuals encourage couples to enhance their sexual relationships by viewing erotic films together. The powerful orgasm becomes something like the Holy Grail. When this happens, sex is treated not as an act of love that’s also pleasurable and fulfilling but as an end in itself. When we do this, sex becomes more like an illicit drug than the beautiful experience God gave married men and women to enjoy.
On the other hand, yes, there ought to be joy in marital sex, even laughter at times, along with many other earthly goods such as comfort and release. The Bible doesn’t give us a dour, stingy, only-your-duty view of marital sex. In Genesis, when Abimelech looks out his window, he sees Isaac enjoying what appears to have been some kind of sexual intimacy with Rebekah (which is why he concluded that Rebekah wasn’t Isaac’s sister). The English Standard Version renders it “laughing with” her, while the King James Version uses the term “sporting” (Gen. 26:8).
The Song of Solomon presents us with powerful sexual desire and anticipation between a groom and his intended bride. In the first chapter alone, we find every one of the senses called upon for this. In fact, in the English Standard Version the subtitle “Solomon and His Bride Delight in Each Other” following verse seven refers to the anticipation of physical, sexual intimacy in marriage. Consider this stunning passage, in which the groom is speaking to the bride:
How beautiful are your feet in sandals, O noble daughter! Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand. Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a heap of wheat, encircled with lilies. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim. Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon, which looks toward Damascus. Your head crowns you like Carmel, and your flowing locks are like purple; a king is held captive in the tresses. How beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights! Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its fruit. Oh may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine. (7:1–9)
The Puritans are often viewed as cheerless people who wouldn’t have encouraged the enjoyment of marital sex as something good in itself. Nothing could be further from the truth. One Puritan minister said that, in sex, husband and wife should “joyfully give due benevolence one to another; as two musical instruments rightly fitted to make a most pleasant and sweet harmony in a well-tuned consort.” Another urged that sex in marriage should be enjoyed with “good will and delight, willingly, readily, and cheerfully.” Both gave excellent pastoral advice.
Footnotes
We sometimes also see “caressing” in various translations.
Both quoted in Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 44.
