8 If Sex Is about Relationship, Then It Can’t Be Just about You
He had little desire or motivation. If honest, he would have told you that he found her irritating in many ways. He had managed to forge out a schedule and a set of relational rules that meant he could be married but pretty much live on his own, even though they were in the same house. He did all he could to tolerate a civil back-and-forth conversation at the dinner table, but he found most of what she talked about to be incredibly boring. He didn’t like her friends and tried to excuse himself from as many of her activities as he could get away with. He controlled their finances and purchases and had the only voice as to how the family was run. He worked hard and provided well, but beyond that, there was little loving in his relationship with his wife.
But despite all the distance and disregard, there was one way he demanded that they connect every day, which was to have sex every evening before sleep. He said it was both his right and God’s will. Night after night they had unrelational, unloving sex. Night after night she did what she was told, even if she found it uncomfortable or embarrassing. Night after night he went to sleep sexually satisfied, and she went to sleep sad and confused and feeling powerless. Night after night she hoped he would fall asleep before demanding sex or just give her one night’s break, but it never happened. After giving herself in the most intimate of human activities, he would prepare for work and leave the next morning without even acknowledging her existence. Day after day she dreaded his homecoming because she knew the cycle would begin all over again.
So, what is your response to the sex life of this couple? What would you say to this man? What would you say to his wife? How close is their sexual life to God’s intention?
There is something deeply disturbing about the sex life of that couple: it isn’t really the sex life of a couple; it is the sex life of a man forced upon a woman. At a profound level, though this couple is married, their sex life is a violation of what God designed sex to be. Their sex life is yet another example of the individualization of sex. Sex for this man is not an act of love. It is not an act of worshiping God; it is a lifestyle of the pursuit of personal pleasure at the expense of the service and dignity of his wife.
Sex by God’s design is meant to occur in the context of two communities of love. Love for God and neighbor is the only location where sex can live according to God’s plan. Let me give you the bottom line of this chapter right now: a living commitment to community protects sex and purifies it from the sin of individualization. In other words, sex lives with beauty and health only when it grows out of the soil of the two great commands. God, who is himself a community, ordained sex to be an act of community, and when it isn’t, it loses its shelter from danger and destruction. Sex outside of community cannot work as God intended and becomes another example of the insanity that results from the selfishness of sin. You can’t be committed just to having sex; you also need commitment to the only context in which this thing you desire was created for. Let’s examine the “commitment to community” context in which God-honoring sex must live.
This may sound a bit weird, but it is true nonetheless: one of the principal ways human beings love God is in their sexual life. Since you and I were created to be sexual beings, with sexual desire and sexual organs, dealing with sex in some way is inescapable. And since we’re created to love God above everything else that exists, dealing with God in some way is also inescapable. So it is impossible for these two things not to come together in your life. You will express your sexuality in some way, and you will relate to God in some way. If you acknowledge that there is no higher, holier call in all your life than loving God, then you will want everything in your sexual life to be an expression of that love.
Sex is dangerous when it is motivated only by love of you. Sex is dangerous when it is motivated only by love for another person. Sex is dangerous when it is motivated only by love for pleasure. Sex is dangerous when it is motivated only by love for comfort. Sex is dangerous when it is motivated only by love for control. Sex is dangerous when it is motivated only by love for sex. Sex is only ever purified and protected when it is motivated in thought, desire, and action by a living, submissive, joyful, willing, street-level love for God. Sexual sin always has a lack of love for God at its core. Or, in other words, in illicit sex we replace the love we should have for God with love for something else.
It is always my relationship with God (or lack of it) that shapes and determines my relationship with you. If I love God as I should, I will want to relate to you in ways that please and honor him. My love for him will mean that his pleasure trumps my pleasure. It will mean that I have a greater joy in doing his will than in getting my own way. And there will be a joy and a willingness in all this. Perhaps the core character quality of true love is willingness. Love loves to love. Love doesn’t see love as a burden or a hassle. Love doesn’t love begrudgingly. Love doesn’t love kicking and screaming. Love doesn’t look for ways of avoiding the call to love. Love doesn’t search for ways of escape. Love isn’t two-faced and devious. Love is willing and ready to love.
Jesus said it this way: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). There is the willingness. Jesus is saying, “If you love me, then you will not see my commands as burdensome. You will not chafe against them. You will willingly and joyfully do what I have told you to do.” For most of us, this is very humbling because it requires us to admit what we don’t really want to admit. When we are involved in sexual sin (sex outside of God’s clear boundaries), we do it because we do not love God as we should. And when God is not in his rightful place, we invariably put ourselves in his position, and we make it all about us. At that point we become self-sovereigns who seek to rule the world for our own pleasure and take as our possession things that do not belong to us.
Let me give you two examples. Think first of the woman lying in bed early in the morning, fantasizing about sex with someone other than her husband. Consider the godlike posture of her fantasy. She is unhappy with the world that actually exists because she did not create it and does not control it, so the real world does not do her bidding or give her what she wants. So in her bed on this morning, she seeks to raise herself to the throne of God and in her mind creates a world as she wants it to be and then rules that world as its absolute sovereign. Everything in her self-created world is her possession, and everything in her world submits to her pleasure. She is attracted to this world because in it she is creator and lord. So she sets the rules. She uses what she has created as she wants to use it and for whatever pleasure she seeks. And she’ll visit this world again because she finds it way more attractive than the world that really exists.
The man she has taken for her pleasure in her fantasy does not belong to her, and the things she has dreamed of doing with him are not her right to do. She has removed God from her universe, taken his throne, possessed what belongs to him, thrown away his rules, and written a new set. The whole thing is an outrageous violation of the loving community she was created to have with God, which would then shape every thought, desire, choice, and action in her life. Her problem isn’t first that she loves herself too much or fails to love the man she has objectified in her fantasy. The problem is even greater and way more serious than a failure to love God. In her fantasy, even if just for a moment, she has killed God, taken his position, re-created the world as a garden for her own pleasure, and used it as she and she alone wills. What she is doing in her bed is not a little thing. It is a horrible thing, and each time she does it, it will make it harder for her to accept the real world, where she doesn’t have the position of God. In the real world she will be more and more tempted to act as the sovereign that she isn’t and to attempt to possess and experience what does not belong to her. Her fantasy is the portal to greater sexual insanity, but she doesn’t know it. In fact, she prides herself on not acting upon the dreams she has been able to conjure up.
Something beautiful, purifying, and protective is missing in her heart. It is something that God intended to be the core motivator of every person he created. What is it? It is willing, joyful, submissive, and active rubber-meets-the-road love for him. It is the only thing that will ever produce sexual purity. Sexual purity begins in the heart with a love for God that overwhelms all the other loves that battle for the allegiance of the heart.
Or consider this second example. A man is walking home from work and lusting after the woman approaching him on the sidewalk. He slows down his walk to get a longer look, and he turns around and watches as she passes. Think with me again about the godlike posture of the man. First, he is treating this moment as if it belongs to him. It’s as if he is sovereign and she is on the sidewalk according to his will and for his pleasure. He is owning the moment as his own. This location is his location, there to bring him the pleasure he sees as his right. He’s the self-appointed deity of the moment. He thinks of no other God and worships no one but himself. The world has shrunk to the size of his desire, and he rules it for his pleasure. He doesn’t give a rip at that moment about right or wrong, because there is for that moment no higher authority than himself. He will have what he will have, even if it is only the right to stare at body parts and imagine having them for his pleasure.
But there is more. For that moment he is stealing God’s creation and taking it as his own. He has no right to this woman. She does not actually belong to him in any way, but he takes her with his eyes and his mind. He tries to slow down the moment in order to enjoy his sexual thievery for as long as he can. He’s ripped this woman out of the hands of God and claimed her as his own for whatever momentary pleasure he can achieve. She feels his eyes and is uncomfortable. She wants to get away, but she has to walk by. She feels a bit violated, but it’s not the first time. She’s walked by this guy and other guys like him before.
In that moment this man is the fool. He has denied God’s existence. He has set himself up as God. He has robbed God of his creation. He has thrown God off his throne. He has a much deeper problem than his wandering eyes and fickle affections. He has become comfortable dethroning God and possessing what does not belong to him, and if he continues to do it with his mind, he will begin to do it with his hands. Remember, lust does not lust for more lust. Lust lusts for the actual thing, the real experience. He is in danger because his heart has become comfortable with what by God’s design is a horrible, unnatural thing—a life-shaping, danger-exposing lack of love for God.
Recognition of and living for the community with God for which I was created keeps my sexual life pure. There is simply no other way. Heart-controlling love for God protects my heart from wandering to all the places it could wander in this sexually insane world.
As you read this, what are you thinking? I’ll tell you what I have been thinking. I have had to face the sad truth that I dethrone God all the time. I view the world as mine again and again. It is the tragedy of remaining sin. There are ways in which I still want God’s throne, and desire to claim as mine what belongs to him. Perhaps it is in a moment of lust on the street, or an impatient word to someone who’s made me wait, or envying what someone else has. As I have written, I have been forced to acknowledge that I am not free from the struggles about which I am writing. I am still capable of being that God-denying fool. To my grief I must confess that there are times when I think I am smarter than God, that my rule would be better than his. To my grief I must face the fact that this never, ever leads anywhere good.
Does this mean that I am without hope? How could it be, with all I know and all I’ve experienced as God’s child, that these struggles still exist? Sure, there are times when I get it right and my heart is filled with love and gratitude for God, but not always. In the face of the acknowledgment of my fickle heart, my hope still remains firm and secure. Why? Because my security has never been in the degree of my love for God but in the unshakable and eternal character of his love for me. And as I come to him in poverty of spirit, not only will he not turn me away; he will greet me with open arms and the lavish provision of his right-here, right-now grace. His transforming love remains faithful even when mine doesn’t. He will not abandon the promises of his grace, even when I don’t value them as I should. He will not quit being my Lord in those moments when I would rather be my own lord. He will not fold up his kingdom and go home when I would rather construct a kingdom of my own that does my bidding. Yes, he will chasten me with his hands of fatherly grace, but he will not throw me out of his family and abandon the work in me and for me that he has begun.
So I run to him and confess that sex isn’t my problem; vertical love is. I confess that sex is where my ongoing temptation to dethrone God is revealed, controls my world, and writes my own rules for my selfish purpose and pleasure. Again, I kneel before him, confessing the disloyalty of my heart, seeking the grace that is my only hope of purity of heart and hands. I pray again that he would give me the heart to love willingly and consistently until the struggle to love is no more. And I pray that this living and active love for him would overwhelm any love I have for something in the creation that battles for the affection of my heart.
These prayers are significant not only for me but for you too, because the struggle for sexual purity is really a struggle to keep God in his rightful place in your heart—at the center of your affections and motivations.
Sex is also purified and protected by a second community of love, love for your neighbor. Illicit sex never treats another as an object of affection. Illicit sex is never motivated and shaped by self-sacrificing love for another. Illicit sex never wants what is good for another. Illicit sex doesn’t willingly submit to another’s needs. Illicit sex doesn’t answer the higher call to be part of what God is doing in another’s life. Illicit sex always replaces relational love with entitled, demanding, selfish, personal pleasure. Illicit sex is all about me to the detriment of you. Illicit sex objectifies and dehumanizes another. You become to me less than God’s image bearer. You are reduced to little more than an object for my momentary sexual pleasure. Illicit sex denies the Second Great Commandment, uproots sex from its God-intended community and plants it in the world of individual pleasure, where it was never meant to germinate and grow.
One of the horrific things about pornography is the way in which it is fundamentally antirelational. Sex is reduced to graphic fantasies, sexual activities, and sexual climax. There is not even a consideration of relationship, let alone committed marital love. The man and the woman are together not as an expression of anything remotely relational but because they want sexual pleasure. So rather than expressing affection of any kind, the sex they engage in is just a personal pursuit of sex. The man uses the body of the woman, and the woman uses the body of the man. It’s sex for sex’s sake or sex for money’s sake, but it is not sex for love’s sake, because there is no love needed when all you are trying to do is use the body of the other to reach physical sexual climax. Pornographic videos tend not to be love stories.
One of the horrible things about sex in advertising is that it is fundamentally antirelational. The body of a woman is used to sell an automobile, for instance. Now, think about this. The advertiser intentionally plays to the sexual desires of male consumers, using the sexuality of the woman to attract the attention of the potential buyer. He tries to create a connection between the sex appeal of the woman and the sex appeal of the car. He doesn’t care if the man buys the car as a “sex” decision rather than as a sound financial decision as long as he buys the car. The woman in the ad is reduced to something less than human. She is not respected for her mind, her character, and her gifts. She is not esteemed and loved. It is her sexuality that you notice, her body that you desire. Sadly, in the ad, the woman, who is made in the image of God, is reduced to the level of the car—a sexy object designed to bring you pleasure. The intentionality and methodology of the commercial is a denial of the Second Great Commandment. Illicit sex always denies this command because it is not interested in relationship. It’s interested only in personal sexual pleasure.
God’s design is that sex would only ever take place in the context of a committed, lifelong relationship between a man and a woman in marriage. Sex is protected and purified by this commitment to tender, faithful, self-sacrificing, other-serving love. In this context I am not after my own pleasure and using you to get it. In this context, even in my most intimate, physical, and exciting connection to you, I am loving you and looking out for your welfare. The way I relate to you and touch you and the things we do in sex are all then guided and directed by relational love, not just sexual excitement.
Now, I think this helps us understand why there is so much sexual dysfunction even in the lives of married couples. I am convinced that usually the problem isn’t that couples are ignorant of the structure and function of their bodies. As I’ve written before, I don’t think we need a bunch of new Christian “body part” books. Look, most of us know where stuff is on the body, and we know how things were made to function. Little of this dysfunction is the result of ignorance. Here’s what the problem is: you will always drag the character and quality of your marriage relationship into the marriage bed because sex is fundamentally relational.
To deny that sex is a relationship is just insanity. If I have nourished you and cherished you, if I have been willing to serve you, if I have been giving, forgiving, forbearing, kind, gentle, patient, and respectful of you in our everyday relationship, then in this moment where there is no protection, where you are literally naked next to me in the most vulnerable of human moments, you will know that you can trust me to love you, and you can relax, naked in my arms. But if I have been critical, entitled, and demanding, if I have been unforgiving and bitter, if I have been impatient, rude, selfish, and unkind, in this moment where you are naked next to me, you will not feel safe. You will fear that the unkind things you have experienced with me relationally, you will now experience also in sex. You will fear being used and criticized rather than loved and nurtured. And because you are afraid, you’ll find it hard to give yourself in the way you must in order for sex to work as God intended.
Most sexually dysfunctional couples don’t need sex education as much as they need relational confession and reconciliation. Because God designed sex to be experienced in the context of relationship and as an expression of that relationship, you can’t escape the nature of your relationship to your husband or wife when you are having sex. It simply isn’t possible. These dysfunctional couples are trying to find sexual pleasure outside of a commitment to the kind of relationship God has called them to have. And even though they are having marital sex, they have little commitment to the relationship of love that is meant to be the context for this intimate act, and therefore, at the level of their hearts, they are in violation of God’s plan. Unloving, demanding sex experienced apart from the context of living, active, relational love simply isn’t God-honoring sex.
Let me take this discussion further. I understand why so many men struggle with Internet pornography. If sex, for you, has not been an act of relational love, if you have essentially used the body of your wife for your own selfish sexual pleasure, if your wife has been reduced to a means of your getting off, then it makes sense that you would be very tempted to replace her with digital images and selfish fantasies that accomplish the same thing. There are marriages in which men are sexually unkind to their wife, sexually demanding, sexually selfish, and sexually critical. They are much more interested in their wife’s sexually performing for them than they are committed to loving their wife sexually. They have little interest in the comfort and pleasure of their wife. They demand things that make their wife uncomfortable and instill guilt in the face of their wife’s protests. The sex in their marriage doesn’t look like love. It looks like the self-sovereign, my-pleasure-first individualization of sex that is everywhere in the surrounding culture. Shockingly, they use the wife’s marriage vows as a tool to get her to submit to whatever selfish sexual demands they make, all the while claiming that it is their right. Perhaps without understanding what they are doing, they have denigrated marital sex, bringing it down to a level just above masturbation, and they have reduced their wife to a machine for their own pleasure. This kind of sex life meets none of the requirements to love God or to love neighbor and is therefore horrible in the eyes of God.
Because the marital sex life of these men has been more masturbatory than relational, it makes sense that they have little defense against the readily available pornography that offers them the selfish pleasure they seek without the burden of having to relate to another in the process. They easily matriculate from one kind of antirelational sex to another with none of the love commitments of heart that would protect them and reveal pornography as the horror it actually is. It is sad that so much of this is going on in the church and maybe even sadder that no one is talking about it.
Sex in marriage isn’t made holy simply because it’s in marriage, anymore than talk in marriage is made holy because it’s in marriage. Both sex and talk are made holy by the intentions of your heart, and the intentions are holy when by powerful transforming grace you love God above all else and your neighbor as yourself.
Part of the insanity of human culture when it comes to sex is our ability to philosophically or practically deny its God-ordained relational context. You can do this inside or outside of marriage. Yes, according to God’s design only married couples are free to have sex, but just because you’re married, it doesn’t necessarily follow that your sex life is an expression of the two Great Commandments.
This is why Jesus willingly went to the cross, so that “those who live might no longer live for themselves” (2 Cor. 5:15), no longer for divine dethronement. Jesus died to dethrone you and to enthrone God in your heart. Now in that there is hope, not only for your sex life but for everything else in your life as well.
Review and Reflect
1. Explain why Paul Tripp writes that “a living commitment to community protects sex and purifies it from the sin of individualization” (p. 120).
2. Describe what makes sex dangerous.
3. In what ways is illicit sex antithetical to real love? How does our society mask this reality?
4. What impact does illicit sex have on marital relationships? Conversely, how does a biblically grounded sex life enable a marriage to flourish?
5. Paul Tripp has found hope in personal failure because he roots his security not in his love for God but in “the unshakable and eternal character” of God’s love for him (pp. 125–26). Reread that entire section of chapter 8 and then determine where and how you might apply it to yourself.
Heart Reset
John 14:15–17
2 Corinthians 5:14–15