I began this series of posts with a guiding principle regarding sex and sexuality. I want to return to that principle, but now I’d like to add one sentence composed of four words that I believe represent a biblical viewpoint on sex and sexuality. Here’s the principle:
A Guiding Principle: What we believe about sex is a reflection of what we believe about God.
SEX is a GIFT.
The goal of this blog series is to help us discover that sex is not god. It’s not just an appetite. It’s more than just physical. It’s not inherently sinful, ugly and dirty, but that sex is actually a gift from God.
One of the reasons the church ought to be talking about sex is because the Bible talks about it and God created it. Your sexuality is a wonderful, mysterious and powerful part of God’s design!
Your sexuality is a wonderful, mysterious and powerful part of God’s design!
Do you realize that the Bible begins and ends with a wedding? In Genesis, it’s the first wedding of all time and history: the wedding of Adam and Eve where God served as the best man, gave away the bride and was officiating minister. In Revelation 21-22, it’s the wedding of heaven and earth. The point? God loves relationships and what occurs within the context of married relationships.
Back to the beginning.
Genesis 1 tells the story of creation. Genesis 2 zeroes in on a garden called the Garden of Eden. Do you know what the word “Eden” actually means? It means, “delight.” After God created Adam and Eve, He placed them in the “Garden of Delight.”
Genesis 2 gives us our first glimpse of marriage, sex and intimacy. The indication of all of this is that sex is a gift given by a good gift giver! God Himself created and designed sex and sexuality.
It’s important to point out that He did this before sin ever entered the world. In fact, take a few moments to think about this next statement.
You were SEXUAL before you were SINFUL!
Read those words again slowly.
Okay, let’s go back to the story in Genesis. After checking out every aspect of His creation and declaring it “good,” in Genesis 2:18 God looked at Adam and made this statement,
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.” —Gen 2:18
First of all notice, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” This is not an indication that every person needs to be married, but it is an indication that every individual was created for community.
Second, notice God’s response to man’s alone-ness. He said, “I will make a helper…” That’s an important phrase.
God then brought all sorts of animals before Adam so that he could name them. Adam noticed something interesting. All of the animals came in pairs: male and female. But he was all alone! Then, Adam remembered that God had said, “I’m going to make a helper suitable for Him.”
Adam probably thought, “Hmmmm… I second that motion! I like it!” But he must have walked away wondering, “What is a suitable helper? Will I even know one when I see one?”
Further, let’s talk for a moment about the word “help.”
Kathy Keller in her portion of she and Tim’s book, The Meaning of Marriage writes:
“…the Hebrew word ’ezer…is almost always used in the Bible to describe God himself. Other times it is used to describe military help, such as reinforcements, without which a battle would be lost. To ‘help’ someone, then, is to make up what is lacking in him with your strength. Woman was made to be a ‘strong helper.’” —Kathy Keller [1]
“Woman was made to be a ‘strong helper.’”
—Kathy Keller
Kathy’s point? Eve wasn’t in any way weak or inferior to Adam. God didn’t create Eve to help Adam with getting his chores done in the garden. Eve was Adam’s peer. They were equally indispensable to God’s purpose and plan. They were given equal dignity and status. They were both given dominion over God’s creation. To use Kathy’s words, Eve was given to Adam to “make up what was lacking in him with her strength.”
In the opening chapters of Genesis, Adam and Eve were partners. They were equally responsible for dominion over creation — which correlates to our work life. They were also both responsible for community – which corresponds to marriage and family life. This was God’s original design.
Back to the Garden.
Can you imagine what was going on in Adam’s head after hearing God’s promise and then naming the animals? Up walked a goat, aardvark, and a camel… Adam may have looked at God as if to say, “That’s not the suitable helper, right?”
Sigh. “Thank goodness. Oh, I meant, Thank God. Uh, I mean, Thank YOU!”
Then we read these amazing words:
21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man.
—Genesis 2:21-22 NLT
Once again, imagine what it must have been like when Adam woke up from a deep sleep, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and looked over and saw Eve for the first time. We don’t know what Eve looked like, but compared to the options, she was amazing!
This was the first sexual awakening in recorded history. One thing I can guarantee you that Adam didn’t say when he woke up and saw Eve lying next to him completely naked. He didn’t say, “I bet she has a wonderful personality!”
Keep in mind: we were sexual before we were sinful! By the way, the first command wasn’t, “Don’t do it!” The first command was actually, “Be fruitful and multiply! Making a world starts with making babies. Get busy!” (Gen 1:28)
The first command wasn’t, “Don’t do it!” The first command was actually, “Be fruitful and multiply! Making a world starts with making babies. Get busy!” (Gen 1:28)
Genesis 2:23 records Adam’s initial response! I love the way the Living Bible reads here:
“This is it!” Adam exclaimed. “She is part of my own bone and flesh! Her name is ‘woman’ because she was taken out of a man.” —Genesis 2:23 LB
The New Living Translation renders the verse as follows:
23 “At last!” the man exclaimed. “This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh! She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken from ‘man.”
—Genesis 2:23 NLT
When Adam woke up and looked at Eve the whole literary form changed. The Bible instantly shifts from prose to poetry, from words spoken to a song that literally filled the garden.
According to some scholars, the Hebrew in Verse 23 is actually poetry. In other words, you could say, the first time that Adam saw Even he actually broke into a song! He went all “Etta James” before there even was an Etta James.
“At last,
My love has come along.
My lonely days are over.
And life is like a song…” —Etta James, At Last
You could even say that Genesis 2 contains the first musical in recorded history: God, Adam + Eve in the Garden of Delight. (Actually, that sounds more like the title of a romance novel than a musical, but you get the point. )
Adam woke up, looked at Eve and said, “Wow! This is it! At last!”
“This is it! At last!”
In the original Hebrew there is some interesting wordplay that takes place in this passage. Genesis 2:23-24 actually contains a pun in the original language.
The Hebrew word for man is pronounced “ish.” The Hebrew word for woman is pronounced “ish-ah.”
Adam woke up and saw this beautiful, curvaceous, completely naked woman lying next to him and did his best “Tarzan / Jane” type imitation. He pointed at himself and said, “Ish.” He pointed at Eve and saw someone like him and yet, different and completely unique from him, and said, “Ish…aah.”
The English equivalent would be something like: “Whoa! Yeah, that’s it! Whoa…man! She’s like me, but she’s different from me!”
This was an expression of delight and discovery!
I hope you’re starting to get a glimpse of the points I’m attempting to drive home:
Sexual identity and intimacy were God’s idea!
We were sexual before we were sinful!
Sex is a gift.
When people fail to understand these principles, all kinds of tragic consequences occur.
The next words in the story are staggering to me. Some believe that these words may have actually been spoken by God Himself. Imagine that.
Again, how important is marriage to God? He may have basically served as the very first best man. He evidently gave away the bride. And, according to this text, He actually officiated at the first wedding ceremony.
24 This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.
25 Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.
—Genesis 2:24-25 NLT
Genesis 2 is critical when it comes to developing a God-centered, biblically based view of marriage and human sexuality. It paints a picture of the way God designed and imagined sex and sexuality to begin with. According to Genesis 2, God’s view of sex could be described as follows:
God created sex as a gift to be shared between a man and a woman in the context of marriage.
Read those words again carefully. They’re packed with meaning.
By the way, this is the way Christians from all kinds of backgrounds and denominations have viewed sex for centuries.
God’s standard has always been that sex isn’t for “in love” people. Sex isn’t for “just about to get married” people. It isn’t for “used to be married” people. It isn’t for, “Well, I’ve never felt this way before” people. It isn’t for, “We need to make certain we’re compatible” people.
God’s standard is that sex is a gift to be shared between a man and a woman in the context of marriage. By the way, that’s God’s standard! Not mine. It may be inconvenient. We may not like it. We may consider it old-fashioned. But it is God’s standard!
Tim Keller in his excellent book, The Meaning of Marriage describes it like this:
“Sex is God’s appointed way for two people to reciprocally say to one another, ‘I belong completely, permanently, and exclusively to you.’ You must not use sex to say anything less.” —Tim Keller [2]
The Bible celebrates our sexuality and the gift of sex. It indicates that God created sexuality and gave the first man and the first woman to each other as a gift.
God didn’t finish creation, decide to go out and grab a cup of coffee, walk back into the garden an hour later, find Adam and Eve having a party and say to Himself, “Oh, my goodness. What are they doing? I never thought they would come up with something like that… If I’d only known, I would have redesigned their plumbing.”
Absolutely not! Sex and sexuality were God’s idea. It’s part of His design! Furthermore, God didn’t put Adam and Eve on the 44 day plan (See Part 3 in this series)! Sex was God’s idea and He said it was GOOD.
Sex and sexuality were God’s idea!
Verse 25 is so important.
25 Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.
—Gen 2:25 NLT
What’s going on with that statement? Why does God bother to include that piece of information? Why, at this point in the history of humanity, were Adam and Eve “shameless”?
Here’s a hint: It doesn’t have anything to do with them working out a lot or having a really low percentage of body fat. This wasn’t a statement about physical appearance.
God is describing one of the deepest longings and desires we carry. It’s the desire to “know and be fully known.” It’s the need and craving we carry to be completely understood. It’s our craving for intimacy.
Adam and Eve were “…naked, and they felt no shame…” They were naked physically, but they were also naked emotionally, relationally and spiritually before God and one another. They were completely unguarded and totally vulnerable. They were fully known, completely accepted and absolutely loved!
Get this: Intimacy is what we were meant for.
This is what we were made for.
This is what we crave.
Before closing out this post, let’s go back to our guiding principle.
A Guiding Principle: What we believe about sex is a reflection of what we believe about God.
SEX is a GIFT.
If that’s true, and everything else we said about sex is true, and sex really is a gift, that theology leads to three life-changing decisions we all need to make. We’ll cover those decisions in the next post.
[1] Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (p. 165). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
[2] Keller, Timothy (2011-11-01). The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (pp. 215-216). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.