7 Things You Need to Know About Marriage and Sex

The author to the Hebrews said that marriage should be held in honor among all (Heb. 13:4). That word, honor, is frequently used in the New Testament to describe something costly, such as gold or precious stones. The verse might be translated, “Let marriage be valued by all” or “Let marriage be precious to everyone.” Yet for many people today, marriage as a treasure has lost its luster.

Over a decade ago, research from the Barna group observed,

Interviews with young adults suggest that they want their initial marriage to last, but are not particularly optimistic about that possibility. There is also evidence that many young people are moving toward embracing the idea of serial marriage, in which a person gets married two or three times, seeking a different partner for each phase of their adult life.

More recent research has shown that marriage is being postponed in life for many Americans and cohabitation before marriage has climbed drastically from 2007 to 2016 (up 29 percent). The biblical depiction of marriage as a lifetime commitment between one man and one woman is rejected by the majority of Millennials and Gen Xers (those born between 1965 and 1996). Current social trajectories highlight just how unpopular the traditional Christian view of marriage has become. Rod Dreher writes, “There is no core teaching of the Christian faith that is less popular today, and perhaps none more important to obey. . . . There is no other area in which orthodox Christians will have to be as countercultural as in our sexual lives.”

The Christian view of marriage didn’t just recently become a hard teaching. When Christ was on earth, among the Jews there was a school of thought that permitted a husband to divorce his wife for just about anything. For the Greeks and Romans, divorce could be accomplished through oral or written notice, and prostitution and adultery were common. Jesus’ teaching on divorce elevated marriage and protected women from abandonment in a society where the right of divorce belonged almost exclusively to the man (particularly among the Jews).

According to Jesus, marriage is a complementary, contractual relationship whereby one man and one woman commit themselves to each other for life. We need to recover the beauty of this kind of relationship in a society that often sees marriage as a form of entrapment. The goal of this resource is to go deeper into what the Scriptures teach about marriage, and then to consider what that teaching has to say about our view of sex.

Footnotes

• https://www.barna.com/research/new-marriage-and-divorce-statistics-released/.

• https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/13/8-facts-about-love-and-marriage/.

• https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/01/17/generation-z-looks-a-lot-like-millennials-on-key-social-and-political-issues/#gen-z-and-millennials-have-similar-views-on-gender-and-family.

• Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Sentinel, 2018), 196.

• Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 75.

Marriage is a creation ordinance instituted by God in the book of Genesis. God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:18). After God created Eve and brought her to Adam, he said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). These verses demonstrate that marriage is to be a complementary union between a man and a woman. Jesus, responding to the Pharisees’ question on marriage, said, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt. 19:4–6).

Complementarity highlights the fact that marriage is a partnership between two equals who have unique gifts and callings within the marriage relationship. When God called the woman a helper fit for the man (Gen. 2:18), he was not suggesting that she was in any way inferior to him as to her personhood. In fact, the title of helper was frequently attributed to God throughout the Old Testament (Exod. 18:4; Deut. 33:29; Ps. 70:6). Thus it doesn’t signify a lesser status, but a particular role or calling. When she is described as a helper fit for the man, the Hebrew word carries the idea of correspondence or mirroring. “The man’s form and nature are matched by the woman’s as she reflects him and complements him. Together they correspond. In short, this prepositional phrase indicates that she has everything that God had invested in him.”

These observations on biblical marriage are important because they teach us that marriage is never supposed to look like one spouse ruling over the other despotically. The apostle Paul made this absolutely clear when he likened marriage roles to the relationship that exists between Christ and the church. “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:22–23). Christ’s headship over the church isn’t characterized by harsh words and a heavy hand, but self-giving sacrifice. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. . . . In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies” (Eph. 5:25, 28). Jesus led by serving, therefore husbands should view it as their calling to serve as strong providers, nourishing and cherishing their wives. As the church submits to Jesus, wives are called to submit to and respect their husbands. A helpful resource for unpacking what this looks like on a more practical level is Tim and Kathy Keller’s book The Meaning of Marriage, especially the appendix “Decision Making and Gender Roles.”

In light of the recent discussions in our day about same-sex marriage and transgenderism, it’s also important to mention how complementarity relates to those subjects. Same-sex marriage cannot fulfill an integral element of the complementarity we see in Genesis: male and female biological distinctness. Same-sex relationships were condemned throughout Scripture as being unnatural distortions of sexuality (Gen. 19; cf. Jude 7; Rom. 1:26–27). Sexual relations between
the same gender and confusion of gender (Deut. 22:5) both undermine the creational picture of marriage, as well as the gospel parable Christian marriage is to exhibit to the world (Eph. 5:32).

The beauty of biblical marriage is that it is truly unity in diversity. Man and woman, created uniquely different, are united by God with their particular strengths to bless each other and the world around them. The two mirror each other in equality but complement each other in their roles as husband and wife. This is how God created marriage to operate, and it is a sign of our living in a fallen world that we have distorted it through abusing or abandoning our particular roles. True healing can come only by confessing that we have fallen short and setting our eyes on the perfect Bridegroom, Jesus, who fulfilled his role as the Savior of humanity. When we embrace his work for us, we are renewed in a right relationship with God and enabled to relate to one another as he calls us to, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Footnotes

• Genesis 2:18, The NET Bible First Edition Notes (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2019).

• Timothy Keller and Kathy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (New York: Penguin, 2013).

A study some years ago found that about nine-in-ten Americans (88 percent) cited love as the primary reason for getting married. It was more important than the idea of making a lifelong commitment, or companionship, and certainly prioritized over the monetary and tax benefits associated with marriage. When it comes to getting married, love truly is the glue that makes relationships last. But what do you do when the feelings of love go away?

In the Bible, true love is something that is fixed more than it is felt. It is stabilized by the contract, or covenant, that binds two people together. There are different kinds of covenants in the Bible, but generally speaking we might define a covenant as an arrangement between two people or parties that creates a new kind of relationship. In these covenant relationships, there are often certain obligations that each party assumes. Think for example of the promise to love for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, and so on. Marriage is meant to be rooted in a pledged covenant love.

The Bible talks about this kind of “love contract” more than you might think, and there’s even a special word for it in the Old Testament. Moses told Israel, “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations” (Deut. 7:9). The phrase “steadfast love” translates the Hebrew verb hesed. It’s the same word used when God made a covenant with King David, promising that his hesed would never depart from David’s house (2 Sam. 7:15). It’s even used in the description of God’s marriage to Israel in Hosea 2 where God pledged, “I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy” (v. 19).

Marital love is a hesed kind of love, not to be confused with the feelings of “being in love.” C. S. Lewis helped to clarify this distinction in his book Mere Christianity,

Ceasing to be in love need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this sense, as distinct from being in love is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask and receive from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other. . . . They can retain this love even when each would easily if they allowed themselves, be “in love” with someone else. Being in love first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.

This kind of covenant relationship modeled after God’s steadfast love for his people ensures that earthly marriages can endure the ebb and flow of feelings. But more than that, it should comfort us in those moments when we question God’s love for us. God doesn’t love you today and stop loving you tomorrow. His love for his people is contractual, grounded in what’s called the new covenant (Jer. 31:31–34). This promise to love was sealed by the Bridegroom’s very blood (Heb. 9:11–28) and is as sure as the bread we hold in our hands every time we take Communion. Rather than question whether or not God truly loves us, we are called by Christ on the basis of his gospel to rest in believing that he does. May our love for one another, especially in marriage, take for its example the steadfast love of Christ.

Footnotes

Victor Lee Austin is a priest in the Episcopal Church whose wife died tragically of brain disease. In his book Losing Susan, Austin walks through the story of meeting his wife, their falling in love and getting married, her diagnosis before the age of forty, and her untimely death. Halfway into the memoir, Austin shares with great vulnerability how there came a point during his wife’s illness where he became her full-time caregiver. He had to take his “dearly beloved to the toilet and wash her soiled sheets.” He explains, “On September 29, 1978, I vowed to love Susan as my wife in sickness and in health for as long as we both were alive.” It was in the midst of faithfully loving his wife that Austin discovered something he did not expect.

It is not only that I had to do these things for Susan, things that I did not foresee and for which I was usually quite unprepared. It is, also, not only that in doing these things I found God to be with me and, in the tensest moments, to be present and helping me through. It is this: I found joy in doing these things. Wiping Susan’s bottom, when I had to; washing sheets; guiding her through the obstacles of an airport; taking her to the hospital; sitting by her bedside; shuttling from home to hospital to work and back again . . . I would weep. I would be angry. I would pace the floor. But there was joy in my bones.

The covenant vow that sustains marriage is not a joyless commitment. Although the media may depict marriage as a loss of personal freedom, we mustn’t assume with it that joy comes primarily through self-indulgence. If you view your spouse as an object who exists to bring you joy, you’ll only do them harm and be disappointed. As odd as it may sound, one of the strange but glorious things we discover in marriage is that joy doesn’t come through demanding but denial, self-denial. It’s there that we too can find joy in our bones.

Jesus told his disciples, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12–13). In the verses immediately prior, Jesus had said, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

When we give of ourselves for the good of others, the joy of Jesus rests in us. If this is true of our relationships in general, how much more will it be true within the marriage bond? The key to joy in marriage is the cultivation of a selfless attitude that embraces the reality that Paul reminds us that Jesus taught: “It is more blessed to give than to receive: (Acts 20:35).

A word of caution here, though. This principle is never to be used as a way of manipulating your spouse. The wife or the husband who demands that their partner give on the basis of this truth demonstrates that they do not yet understand it. To truly believe that it is blessed to give is to embrace the life of emptying, but this will never be possible unless we are simultaneously being filled. In order to be joy-filled givers, we must first become humble receivers. Yes, we receive the love and goodness of our spouses, but more importantly, we must be nourished by the gifts of our heavenly Bridegroom. If you don’t first become a humble recipient, receiving the daily bread of God’s grace through prayer and the Scriptures, you’ll soon find yourself depleted and unable to give. So if you’re going to be a giver, you need to first be a taker—a taker of the grace of God in Christ, daily resting in his mercy so you can extend that same selfless love to your spouse.

Footnotes

• Victor Lee Austin, Losing Susan: Brain Disease, The Priest’s Wife, and the God Who Gives and Takes Away (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016), 91.

In the Old Testament book of Leviticus, a distinction is made between that which is sacred and that which is common. The sacred belonged to the LORD. It was to be treated with reverence (think about the vessels of the tabernacle courts or the altar outside of the tent). If the people of God weren’t careful, through their sin they could profane that which was sacred. If they treated God’s worship lightly or introduced idolatry into the pure worship of God, they would defile that which God had set apart.

In Scripture, sex is depicted as a gift from God to be enjoyed within the covenant of marriage. This is very different from how many people today understand sex, especially since the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Many assume that the Bible treats sex as a taboo subject. They conclude that the Bible has a low view of sex, while the world embraces it for all it has to offer. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. The Bible has the highest view of sex, because it treats it as a gift to be enjoyed in its proper context. Did you know that there’s even an entire book in the Old Testament called the Song of Songs that consists of erotic love poetry? Scripture celebrates the goodness of sex, and it calls us not to defile God’s good gift by treating it lightly.

In the book of Hebrews we read, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Heb. 13:4). The word undefiled means to be pure or spotless. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, the word was used in the context of the sacred worship of the Israelites. This doesn’t mean that Christians should view sex as a kind of ritual worship, but that the author to the Hebrews wanted to communicate to us a sense of its sacredness. Like the objects of the temple and the worship of God, the marriage bed should not be defiled through fornication or adultery.

There’s an ancient second-century letter written to a man named Diognetus that describes the conduct of the early followers of Jesus. The letter was meant to highlight the beauty of the Christian life and to demonstrate how distinctly the Christians lived from the rest of society. In this letter we read, “They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children, but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh.” In Greco-Roman society where sexual promiscuity was rampant, Christians stood out as those who would share their table (they were hospitable) but not their beds! They viewed marriage and sex as something to be protected. Not because it was taboo, but because it was precious.

Today, Christians can stand out in society by treating sex as a gift given to us by God. It isn’t something we need to fear talking about, and we shouldn’t believe the lie that the Bible’s view of sex is rigid or austere. We ought to have the highest view of sex and treat it with dignity and respect, rather than in a crass or flippant manner. This distinction will make the church and individual Christians shine brightly in a world drowning in sexual perversion.

If you are a Christian who has not kept the marriage bed undefiled but have allowed fornication or adultery to creep into your life, confess your sin and turn from it. Look to Jesus, the spotless and undefiled Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Our sexual failures aren’t beyond his forgiveness. After King David committed adultery and murder and came to repentance, he knew he could pray to the Lord, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow” (Ps. 51:7). The truth is that none of us are perfectly spotless. We’ve all defiled ourselves with sexual sin (Matt. 5:28), but the spotless Lamb can wash away your stains and dress you in his robe of righteousness.

Footnotes

• Epistle to Diognetus, chapter 5.

Maybe you've heard these objections to the Christian view of sex and marriage: “Why does God care about who a person sleeps with?” Or “If no one is being hurt, what’s the big deal?” And “Love is love, right!?” Many Americans believe that the purpose of sex is simply to connect on an intimate level, or even to connect with another person in an enjoyable way. Although sex ought to be both intimate and enjoyable, it can be twisted into something that does a lot of harm. One writer observed,

If we use sex in a disordered way, it can be one of the most destructive forces on earth. Look around you at the suffering of children brought up without fathers, the scourge of pornography destroying the imagination of millions, the families broken by infidelity and abuse, and on and on.

Our culture boasts of a certain kind of freedom related to sexuality (freedom from the constraints laid upon us by previous prude generations or freedom from repressive religions). What many people are coming to realize, however, is that it isn’t freedom we’ve discovered but a new kind of slavery—one that leaves us feeling empty, lonely, and often used. God stands with the used and abused and promises to avenge them. Paul said,

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. (1 Thess. 4:3–6)

When Paul spoke of wronging someone through sexual sin, he used the Greek word pleonekteō, which means “to take advantage of someone, usually as the result of a motivation of greed,” or to “exploit, outwit, defraud, cheat.” Think of taking something that doesn’t belong to you for selfish reasons. Through sexual sin, we objectify others and use them as a means for our own gratification. What’s so heinous about this is that when we objectify another person, we dehumanize them in a sense. We’re no longer treating them as individuals but as a means to our pleasure. This is why God cares about who we sleep with.

If you asked any sane person today what they thought about racism, they’d say it is disgusting and a stain on American society. We recognize that the objectification of another person is wrong in things such as the American slave trade and see how it tragically dehumanized people and treated them as property for personal fulfillment. We don’t often see how this same dehumanization and objectification are happening all around us through things such as Internet pornography, sexual promiscuity, and adultery. Sexual sin treats precious image-bearers of God like objects or property and has an enslaving effect on the very ones engaging in it. This is why God stands in defense of the sexually abused; he knows they’ve been exploited and that his image was assaulted in the process.

Footnotes

• https://www.barna.com/research/what-americans-believe-about-sex/.

• Dreher, The Benedict Option, 196.

• J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2019), 757.

• W. Arndt, F. W. Danker, and W. Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 824.

As Christians, we’re accustomed to hearing that all sex outside of marriage is bad. So much so perhaps, that we’ve just assumed the opposite: all sex within marriage is good. The reality is, married Christians can experience sin in their sex lives too. Here are three ways we can use sex harmfully within marriage:

1. We can withhold sex to punish our spouse.

When someone has upset us, our natural defense mechanism is to build a wall that will keep them from doing it again. This is a way of protecting ourselves. We will often move from self-defense, to damage; seeking ways to make the other person feel the pain we have felt. One way we can try to hurt our spouse in marriage is by withholding ourselves from them. In a sense, this is a way of defending and damaging at the same time. We defend by not being vulnerable, and we hurt by withholding something precious. In situations like this, we need to exercise forgiveness. Forgiveness breaks down walls of defense, and sets aside the malicious intent to hurt. If you have been withholding yourself from your spouse to punish them for something they have done, consider talking to them about how they’ve offended you.

Be honest about your desire to withhold yourself, and hurt them, and pray for forgiveness. It may very well be that your spouse also needs to ask for forgiveness for whatever they did that initially hurt you. Withholding intimacy from each other is serious according to the apostle Paul, who wrote “Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” (1 Cor. 7:5)

2. We can selfishly demand sex.

Does the fact that we shouldn’t withhold ourselves from our spouse mean they have the right to demand sex from us? The answer is no. In marriage, Christ calls husbands to love their wives like he loved the church (Eph 5:25). Jesus’ love for his bride was utterly selfless in that he gave himself up for her (v.26). This call to love unselfishly extends to our sexual relationship within marriage.

We should, as Paul exhorted, have the mind of Christ, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Phil. 2:3-4) Selfish sex within marriage can be just as sinful as sex outside of the marriage covenant, since it is a way of laying our spouse down for us, instead of laying ourselves down for our spouse!

3. We can use sex to shame our spouse.

Because sex is such an intimate part of the marital bond, it’s extremely sensitive. When we’re frustrated about our sex lives, we can say hurtful things to our spouse related to this area of our marriage. This can further damage intimacy, and create a rift between couples. Solomon wrote, “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” (Prov. 12:18) Sadly, we can sinfully use our words to make our spouse feel insecure about themselves.

If a couple had a sexual history before marriage, that history can serve as fodder for the fiery tongue (Js 3:6), and in sinful moments we can ignite the past to make our spouse feel bad. Here again we need to take a step back and consider whether we have been using our words as a weapon to strike at one of the most sensitive parts of our relationship. If you’ve used your words in this way, repent of being rash, and consider the kindness of your Savior, Jesus. He knew your darkest secrets, and yet he didn’t use them against you. Rather than shaming the broken, Jesus speaks words of grace to them (Lk. 7:36-50). Likewise, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” (Eph. 4:29)

Sex within marriage can be good, but if we aren’t careful it can be just as selfish as sex outside of marriage. Married couples can weaponize sex leading to intimacy frustrations, but the good news is it doesn’t have to be that way. As Christ’s love shapes every aspect of our marriages, even our intimacy can become an example of selfless service; where both are vulnerable, engaged, and in love. Not in the sentimental sense, but the sacrificial sense.