Sunday: The Mastery of Sex
WEEK 15
SUNDAY
THE MASTERY OF SEX
2 Timothy 2:20-22
We have been looking at the cleansing by the Holy Spirit of the first driving urge in the subconscious—the self urge. We must now look at the mastery of the second—the sex urge.
We are astonished to find in the Acts not one reference to sex. Women are there, naturally and normally; but there is no emphasis on their sex relationships. Acts is the least sex-conscious book dealing with men and women ever written. Women are there receiving the Holy Spirit, prophesying like the men, being raised from the dead, holding prayer meetings in their homes as with Mary, receiving Paul and his company as guests as with Lydia, becoming converts as with the prominent women in Thessalonica; but not one sex question is raised. Paul takes up the question of sex in the local churches such as Corinth in his epistles, but in the Acts there is a strange silence. This is the more strange since Paul spent a great deal of time at Corinth, which in an age notoriously loose in sex was especially loose, for the saying of the time, “he lives like a Corinthian” revealed the condition. Then why didn’t sex creep into the Acts?
The fact is Jesus said little about sex. Only four references to it are in the four Gospels: “Every man who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart” (Matt 5:28). “Whoever divorces his wife except for sexual unfaithfulness forces her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matt 5:32). “It’s from the inside, from the human heart, that evil thoughts come: sexual sins, . . . adultery, . . . unrestrained immorality” (Mark 7:21-22). And the woman taken in adultery (John 8:1-11). The Acts omits it altogether. Why? Was sex taboo? No, for Paul deals with it plainly in his epistles. Was it suppressed? Apparently not, for the relationships between men and women were natural and normal.
Apparently this had happened: the men and women in the Acts had become so preoccupied with the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s work within them and around them that sex was relegated to the margin.
They were released from sex tensions by Spirit attention.
O Spirit Divine, become so real in me and around me that you occupy the center of attention. Then all else will fall into its place, subordinate, and I shall be free. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall master sex attention by Spirit attention.