Trusting God’s Design
Our culture is saturated with sexual messages and imagery. It’s impossible to escape it. Even G-rated cartoons make “wink wink, nudge nudge” jokes intended to entertain the adults watching with their children. It’s really no surprise that believers seem to struggle with following God’s plan for sex within the sanctity of marriage as much as the rest of the world. Whether this passage refers simply to premarital sex, or also to homosexuality and adultery (there is some debate about this), Christians are far from immune to this struggle.
While some find it controversial, I have found the book “Sex God,” by Rob Bell very insightful. It explores the “endless connections between sexuality and spirituality” in ways that really made sense to me. One point that Bell makes is that sex is never just about sex…”It’s always about something else…THIS is always about THAT.”
So a verse that seems so simple and straightforward at first glance, suddenly becomes quite the passage to process. If God really wants us to be pure (before marriage, and after), then it must be possible, right? Although our culture seems to have shrugged its shoulders in resignation, I don’t believe that we Jesus followers can or should. We must dig deeper. We must look beyond the law, the WHAT, and answer the WHY.
Why are sexual immorality, impurity, and greed improper for us? Because, as John Piper has said, they dethrone God. They are driven by a deep, discontented craving that makes us go against the will of God. When we make a choice to explore sex outside of marriage, we are telling God that He will not suffice. We focus on what we are being denied, rather than trusting that God’s plan is for our benefit, our emotional health, our spiritual well-being.
Greed is just a distant cousin to the first two warnings. It’s still about not being content with what we have, or what God has designed for us. It stems from the same tendency Adam and Eve had – to question if God really knows best.
I have been reading a book about Muslim women’s experiences in the Middle East. In trying to please Allah, and to obey the Qur’an, these woman are completely repressed. They must cover nearly every bit of their bodies so that they don’t lead men into sinful thoughts. But, it doesn’t get much better for them after marriage. Sex is mandatory (at the husband’s will), often undesirable, and sometimes, in the case of very young girls in arranged marriages, what we would plainly call rape.
The pendulum swings the other direction in the West. Secular humanism offers freedom of choice and promises of endless pleasure with romantic intimacy. But it has completely eliminated the special, sacred aspects that God intended. I recently sat at a dinner party where an elderly man jokingly implied that it would be better to have a child experimenting with sex as a teen than to still be a virgin in their 20s. I don’t know why I was so stunned to hear that..it is commonly accepted thought in our culture.
In both cases, Satan has distorted and twisted something God made inherently good into something harmful. As Bell says, “we are neither angels nor animals.” Our sexuality is God-given. It is not meant to be flaunted carelessly, or abused outside of the covenant of marriage. Neither is it to be ignored, denied, or shut down in unhealthy ways. God designed it to connect a married couple in a beautiful way, without the ramifications of heartbreak, disease, even death.
Understanding the WHY of Ephesians 5:3 makes it much easier to honor. We can trust God’s heart.
you are a very good writer. thanks, megan.
Greed, or covetousness, is the same as idolatry (Colossians 3:5) and it is set beside sexual impurity, fornication, impurity and adultery – they all are pretty much one in the same sin.
You nailed it Megan! And thanks for the book recommendation (it WAS a recommendation, wasn’t it?).
Asking God “why the craving” or “what was the craving designed for” changes the discussion completely. The world system would prefer not to think about design or purpose.