6 Sex: The Big Picture
Jim was thirteen years old, and something had been awakened in him. He was not sure what it was, but he liked it. He liked it a lot. It happened to him when he looked at pictures of women in magazines. It happened to him as he walked by those lingerie stores at the mall. It happened when he quietly surfed his way onto certain websites. He felt the buzz, and he liked it. And all he knew was that it felt good, and he wanted more.
– – –
Aaron didn’t really care about how comfortable his wife was. He didn’t really think much about what was good and enjoyable for her. He didn’t really think about the gentle, tender, relational aspect of intimacy. Aaron thought this way: “I’m married, and sex is my right, no holds barred.” He felt that Ginger should be ready any time he requested sex and that she should do whatever it was that brought him pleasure. If he came home in the middle of the day and was ready, then it was her responsibility to be willing.
But Ginger felt like an object, a plaything for Aaron’s pleasure. She felt put upon and demanded of. Sex was for her increasingly less often an act of mutual love. It had become a daily obligation, one she frequently dreaded. And to make matters worse, she was uncomfortable with the things Aaron was asking her to do, not to mention afraid that he seemed increasingly obsessed with sex. She had tried to get Aaron to talk with her about their sexual life, but he told her he thought everything was cool. She had tried to share her feelings with him, but he didn’t seem to listen. She had tried refusing his advances at points, but he only got angry and accused her of being selfish. Aaron was demanding what Ginger dreaded, and she just didn’t know what to do.
– – –
Mandy was in college, and she loved every minute of the experience. For the first time in her life she felt independent and attractive. She loved the attention she was getting from the guys in her dorm and in her classes. Her first two years had been a whirlwind of classes, dating, and short-term romances. She was maintaining her grades and occasionally thought about her future, but that’s not what kept her going; the social scene was. Her weekends began on Thursday night and didn’t end until very late on Sunday. On Monday the plan for the next weekend was already forming.
Mandy loved the fact that she didn’t feel awkward anymore. She liked the way her body had developed, and she liked the fact that her looks got her lots of male attention. She felt alive and appreciated. Although she was uncomfortable with some of the things her romantic partners wanted her to do, she loved that she was so attractive that guys were always after her.
In ways that Mandy was not conscious of, she dressed not so much to cover or adorn her body as to expose and draw attention to it. Mandy was not scared about being thought of as a slut. What really scared her was being thought of as a prude by any of the guys. With makeup too heavy and clothes too tight she would begin each day expecting and reveling in the attention she got as she made her way around the campus. Her way of responding to the guys around her was flirtatious and seductive, but she would deny it when confronted. She saw herself as a normal twenty-year-old girlie girl getting in touch with her emotions and her body. If asked about her lifestyle she would say, “Lots of fun, little harm.”
– – –
Gerrard had made the decision, and for him there was no turning back. He told himself that he was simply being true to his feeling, true to the way he had been put together. He knew his parents would be upset, but he was tired of living in the shadows and covering his tracks. He wasn’t going to do it anymore. He knew what turned him on and what didn’t. He knew whom he was attracted to and whom he wasn’t. He knew the kind of life he wanted and the kind he wanted to avoid. With his decision made, he felt quite liberated.
Gerrard was attracted to men. He told himself that he had always been that way. He had come to see denying it as stupid and immature. He thought the people around him had no right to question it. And he was convinced it was a colossal waste of time to fight it. This weekend, while with his parents, he was going to declare his sexual orientation and his love for David. He didn’t want to needlessly hurt his parents, but they would just have to come to terms with who he was and how he had decided to live his life. He thought of himself as a Christian, but he had little time for what the Bible had to say about his lifestyle choice. He wasn’t going to bow to the “ancient chauvinism of biblical times.” He said he loved God, and he was content with the kind of person God had made him to be. He didn’t feel the need to change anything.
– – –
Teddy hated old age, and he hated being alone. He hated not having a companion to share his life with, but if he were willing to be honest, what he really hated was the loss of his sexual life. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. It made no sense to him, and it made him bitter. He was fully alive and virile but had no sex in his future. It made no sense that God would design him with this kind of body and these kinds of desires but forbid him to express them simply because his wife had died and he was alone. What was he supposed to do with his feelings and urges? “Yes, I’m old, but I’m not dead,” he would say to himself.
He envied the young couples at church and fantasized about their sex life. He looked at the younger women and wondered if any would ever be attracted to him. He felt that his life at this point was a sick joke or maybe a divine punishment of some kind. He couldn’t imagine continuing to live like this. He’d rather be dead.
– – –
Heather had no sexual attraction to her husband whatsoever. Since they had gotten married he had put on about thirty-five pounds. The athletic body of the man she’d married had given way to this pudgy guy who spent most of his time at home sitting in warmups, watching the sports he no longer had the energy to play. When Heather saw his body, she was turned off. When they attempted to have sex, all she could think of was the size of his belly. She would occasionally succumb to his advances, but it was all she could do to fake her way through and make sure he was satisfied enough to leave her alone for a few days.
Heather fantasized about being married to a fit and handsome man. She dreamed about having sex and feeling muscles rather than flab. She was unhappy, and she felt trapped. It all made her angry. She couldn’t imagine living the rest of her life this way. She had sexual desires that needed to be satisfied, but not by Lumpy (the rather cruel nickname Heather had given her husband). In fact, when she had sex with her husband, Heather would often get through it by fantasizing that she was with someone else. She found herself absorbing more of the romance novels that seemed to be everywhere. She built a vicarious sexual life, living in worlds of attraction and seduction that didn’t exist but that took her away from the prison she had gotten herself into.
There was no self-conscious, point-in-time decision, but Heather began to plan her escape. She thought about what she would say to her husband and how she would break the news to her family. She wondered how she would support herself and where she would live. She worried about whether there would be a big battle for the kids. She wanted to feel attractive again, and she wanted to be attracted to someone. She wanted sex where she could really give herself rather than just pretend. She was tired of doing things that revolted her with someone who repulsed her. And Heather just couldn’t imagine that this was how God wanted her to live. She didn’t know how, and she hadn’t yet considered when, but she knew that somehow, someway she was getting out.
Little-Picture Sex
All the people about whom I have just written are suffering from the same thing. It is more powerful than they know; it has made sex to be something that it isn’t and has created deep dissatisfaction in all of them. What shapes, controls, and ultimately distorts their sexuality, making a beautiful thing a dark and painful thing, is little-picture sex.
Sex is not a thing unto itself that can exist by itself. Sex, by design, is meant to be connected. It is meant to be tied to and understood in relation to big things of huge and consequential proportion. Big-picture sex is understood as being part of how life was designed and what it is meant to be. Little-picture sex, because it is isolated, gets kidnapped by desires and agendas that rob it of its original purpose. Big-picture sex acknowledges that there is something bigger than personal physical pleasure. Little-picture sex exists in the small confines of what will give me pleasure at this point in my life. Big-picture sex serves something bigger. Little-picture sex is owned by the individual and is entitled and demanding. Big-picture sex willingly submits to rules. Little-picture sex writes its own rules. Big-picture sex is driven by a commitment to others. Little-picture sex is dominated by the pleasures of self. Big-picture sex is patient and kind. Little-picture sex makes impatient demands and punishes people when they don’t come through. Big-picture sex is viewed as a part of life. Little-picture sex tends to take over your life. Big-picture sex contributes to deeper love and worship. Little-picture sex leads to relational hurt and vertical rebellion. God designed sex to be inextricably connected to things of consequence. It doesn’t work any other way.
Our Sex Problems Aren’t First Physical
My wife, Luella, and I love art museums. We love post-war abstraction. We love what shape, color, texture, and light can communicate when juxtaposed in an interesting, provocative, or beautiful way.
I had seen a detail of a work we wanted to see, and I hadn’t been impressed. (A detail is a section of a painting used for announcement and advertising purposes.) The artist was one of the greats, so I was willing to go check out the exhibit anyway. When I saw the painting from which they had taken the detail, I was blown away. I couldn’t stop looking at it. The detail had melted into the painting—it wasn’t the thing that stood out—but the painting would not have looked the same without it.
So it is with sex. When it exists as an isolated, disconnected part of our lives, it not only loses its contextual beauty but begins to be known and understood as something it’s not. Here’s why human sexuality must be understood and experienced from the vantage point of the big picture. You and I simply need to humbly admit that the things that make sex gorgeous, exciting, and fulfilling as per God’s design are not natural and intuitive to us. It’s intuitive to be self-oriented, entitled, and demanding. It’s natural to want to write our own rules. It’s normal to act as if our bodies belong to us. It’s intuitive to think that the goal of life is to experience our personal definition of happiness and pleasure. It’s natural to see others as a means of our own happiness. It’s normal to think of life in physical and material terms. It’s intuitive to live for the moment. It’s intuitive to practically forget God’s existence and to live a life dominated by horizontal concerns. It’s natural to try to work the people around us into a willingness to deliver to us what would make us happy. It’s comfortable to think more in terms of “I want” than “I should.” I remind you that what distorts sex, what has the power to make it hurtful and dark, is not first the physical demands we make on one another or the way we physically use one another. What puts sex on a pathway that it was never meant to travel is something deeply spiritual. Our biggest sex problems lurk inside us; they’re not the result of a culture that has gone sexually insane. The culture has become sexually insane because of what lurks inside us.
Now, I know that this will be a struggle for some of you to get on board with. I know it will make some of you angry, and some of you will read with hurt feelings, but what I’m about to say needs to be said. What I just described are the normal characteristics of little-picture sex. They are also the very things that twist and distort the beautiful creation of God and press it into something it was never intended to be. Yes, little-picture sex is still sex, but it is carnival-mirror, distorted sex. So here’s the humbling admission: apart from God’s grace rescuing us from us, the things that are natural and intuitive are the very things that rust and ruin sex. None of us comes to sex with a neutral heart. None of us approaches sex free of the me-ism of the sinful nature. None of us comes to sex morally pure. None of us is free from the temptation to insert ourselves in the middle of our world, making it all about us. None of us. You can’t just run with what is natural, because what is natural to you as a sinner will invariably start you in a different direction from what the Creator designed as good.
Sex exposes our hearts, and in exposing our hearts, it reminds us of our deep and comprehensive need for God’s forgiving, transforming, and ultimately delivering grace. In his grace God has entered our struggle with sex and done two things for us. First, he has given us the big picture. It’s that thirty-thousand-foot view of life that is the grand sweep of Scripture. In this way the Bible doesn’t simply define the religious domain of our life; it redefines and reorients every single thing in our life, including our sexuality. But God has done more than just that, as important as his Word is. He gave us Jesus, who entered our struggle, lived as we couldn’t live, died the death we should have died, and rose, defeating death, so that we would have everything we need to live as God intended—yes, live as God intended, even in our sexual lives.
So What Does Big-Picture Sex Look Like?
As I stated before, big-picture sex is connected sex. And what is it connected to? It is connected to the things that God lovingly reveals in his Word as being vital and important. If you don’t look at sex (or anything else in your life) through the lens of these things, then whatever you’re looking at, you haven’t seen correctly. If your way of thinking about your own sexuality, or if your sexual desires or your definition of good sex, doesn’t include these things, then your thinking will be inherently wrong at some point or at some level. Let’s consider these things.
1. Sex is connected to God’s existence.
Since God created both you and sex, it is impossible to properly understand sex and participate in it appropriately if you are practically ignoring God and his existence. By means of creation you are his, and your sex life is his. This means that you do not have a natural right to do with your life and your body as you please. You are not entitled to an autonomous pursuit of happiness. In fact, you don’t have autonomy. Your life came from him and belongs to him. Sex connects you to God, whether or not you recognize it. The way you express your sexuality will either recognize God’s existence and honor him or deny his existence and rebel against his authority. If the latter, then sex will reveal that you think you have liberty you do not have, rights you have never been given, and authority that only ever belongs to the Creator.
Sex that recognizes God’s existence becomes the beautiful, intimate, relational act of worship that it was intended to be. In the midst of all its physical delights, it does not forget God. It remembers that everything enlivened and enjoyed in sex belongs to him. It rests in his control and celebrates his care in the midst of the most intimate of human connections. I will say much more about this in chapters to come.
2. Sex is connected to God’s glory.
Creation isn’t ultimate. The joys of creation were designed by God to be enjoyable, but that joy wasn’t designed to be ultimate. All the joys of creation are meant to direct you toward greater joy. All the glories of the created world are meant to produce in you a hunger for greater glory and to point you to where that glory can be found. All the intimate physical and emotional glories of sex are meant to point you to the one glory for which you were created to live and through which your heart will be fulfilled.
Now, this immediately tells you two very practical things. First, sex cannot and will not ever satisfy your heart. The purpose of sex is not to bring you to a point of spiritual satisfaction. Maybe you’re thinking, “Paul, what in the world are you talking about? Nobody hopes sex will do that.” In fact, I am convinced that many, many people do. They look for sex to do something that it was never designed to do. I counseled a woman who said she had had sex with at least a hundred men, and she told me that she would do anything (sexual) to hear a man whisper in her ear, “I love you.” Do you see what she was doing? She was hoping to get identity, value, and that inner sense of peace through sex. Sex couldn’t do for her what she wanted it to do, so she had to go back again and again, each time getting further from her goal. Sex would never deliver what she was asking; only the God who created sex could, and sex was created to point to him.
But something foundational must be understood here. In our sexual life we must be propelled by a greater glory than our own. Sex is glorious, and it makes us feel powerful, connected, and alive. But we must not own these glories for ourselves alone. We were created to live in the most intimate and personal places of our lives for a glory bigger than our own, the glory of God. You may be thinking, “Like, how in the world do you do that in the middle of foreplay or intercourse?” Keep reading; the chapters that follow will unpack this even more practically.
3. Sex is connected to God’s purpose.
You and I do not live by instinct. We are purpose-oriented beings by God’s design. Everything you do, you do for a reason, whether or not you are aware of that. In sex you are always motivated by purpose. Perhaps your only purpose is personal erotic pleasure. Perhaps your purpose is mutual erotic satisfaction. Perhaps your purpose is more frequent sexual intercourse. None of these things is evil in itself if it is connected to and protected by the larger purpose of God. As we said earlier, everything made by God’s hands was made for a purpose. So in sex, as in everything else, you must ask, “What is God’s purpose for this compelling, intimate human relationship?”
One reason that sex gets distorted and becomes something God never intended and ends up being hurtful, dark, and dangerous is that in this fallen world, it is most often motivated by no larger purpose than the pleasure of the individual. So selfish teenage boys coerce their girlfriends into oral sex. Materialistic women see pornography as a way of making a lot of money quickly. Married men use their wife for their pleasure with little regard for her feeling loved and cared for. Single women use their sexuality to get attention and acceptance. Unmarried people surf the Internet for sexual pleasure. Middle school boys spend secret time in the locker room making rude and immature sex jokes. Advertisers use sex to sell just about anything. Powerful men use their power to get what belongs to someone else.
Sex is only ever safe when everything we think, desire, say, and do in our sexual lives is directed and protected by the clear purpose of God as revealed in his Word, which leads us to our next point.
4. Sex is connected to God’s revelation.
The God who created this world and acts to hold it together not only acts, but he speaks. He has spoken in his Word. This revelation of him, his plan, and his purpose for the world is meant to be the ultimate, overarching interpreter of life. In God’s Word I come to know who he is, who I am, and what in the world life is about. In God’s Word I learn about what sex is and who it is for. In God’s Word I learn the attitudes, choices, and actions that cause sex to be the holy thing God created it to be. And in God’s Word I learn how sin distorts sex, what God forbids, and the temptations that must be avoided in submission to God and for the protection of self.
You could argue that the Bible is a manual on sex. To the degree that it lays out God’s original purpose for sex, details how sin redirects the thoughts and motives of my heart, details what God has commanded and forbidden, offers me case studies, and points to the necessary rescue of grace—to that degree it gives me all the essential heart and life information I need to be what I am supposed to be and do what I am supposed to do in this critical area of human life.
Sex is dangerous when it is pursued outside of the critical information that you can get only through divine revelation. You cannot get it by means of individual experience or collective research. After all, God made you; he is not surprised that you are a sexual being. So as in other critical areas of your life, he has spoken to you about sex with words of wisdom and grace that you will hear nowhere else.
5. Sex is connected to God’s redemption.
Sex takes place between the already and the not yet. Already Jesus has come, already the Word has been given, already the Spirit has been sent, but not yet has the world been restored, not yet has sin been eradicated, and not yet have you and I been finally delivered from sin. So our lives as sexual beings are lived out in the middle of a dramatically broken world that cries out for redemption. Until this world is fully restored by its Savior Creator to the condition for which it was created, seductive temptations, deceit, destruction, and death will live. Your world of sexuality will be one of temptation, where deceitful voices make promises that they cannot deliver, wooing you outside the boundaries of God’s wise purpose and plan.
In this world of temptation you will see things that you were not meant to lay your eyes on. You will be told things that simply are not true. You will be offered things that you must not accept. You will be exposed to sex being used in ways God never intended. What is dangerous will be presented to you as healthy and right, and what is wrong in the eyes of God will be held before you as right and good. What you learn about sex will be full of inaccuracies and distortions. You will barely be able to live a single day without having your morals assaulted or challenged in some way.
But there is another fundamental reality between the already and the not yet. It is that sin still lives with power inside you. Your problem is not just that you live in a broken world where temptation lurks all around you; your problem is that you are susceptible to that temptation because of the moral iniquity that still exists in your heart. I have said this before, but it bears repeating here: it is only ever the evil inside us that hooks us to the evil outside us. That is what the Bible means when it says that to the pure all things are pure (Titus 1:15).
But I am not pure. By God’s grace I am growing in purity, but I’m not there yet, so I carry around in me a vulnerability to temptation. I am capable of longing for things that I should immediately resist. I am susceptible to desiring things that I should actually hate. I am tempted to look intently at what I should close my eyes to. And with all of this, I am able to swindle myself into thinking that I am okay, that what I have desired or done is not that bad after all.
Sex really does expose the deep and sinful selfishness of our hearts. It really does show us that at the intersection of hunger and temptation we are quite capable of being disloyal and rebellious. It does reveal that our pleasures are often more valuable to us than God’s purposes. Sex does expose that desires for autonomy and self-sovereignty are still inside of us. Sex does demonstrate that I don’t always love my neighbor as myself, that, in fact, I am still willing at points to use another human being for my own purposes and pleasures. Sex shows how easy it is to function as a God-amnesiac, even though in my theology I recognize his existence.
All this means that sex immediately connects me to my own and the world’s need for redemption. The hope for sex in human culture is not more prevalent sex education and better contraception. The hope for sex in human culture is not a thing; it is a person, and his name is Jesus. Sex groans for redemption and, in groaning for redemption, reaches out for the Savior. And human sexuality will only ever fully be what it was intended to be when he has finally made all things new.
6. Sex is connected to God’s eternity.
Finally, sex connects you to eternity and your need for the kingdom to come. Sex cannot be divorced from God’s eternal plan. You and I must not live in this moment in time as if it is all there is. There is more and better to come. So what is this moment of sex about? This moment of sex is not a destination but part of preparing you for the final destination. All the struggles of sexuality are not in the way of God’s plan but part of it. God knew he was leaving us in this fallen world for a period of time. He knew well what we would face here. All the messiness between the already and the not yet is meant, in the hands of God, to be transformational, that we would through difficulty and trial become people ready for the eternity all his redeemed children will spend with him.
But there is more. God has hardwired eternity into all of our hearts. That means there is a desire for paradise in all of us. But you will not experience paradise in the here and now. And if you try to turn this present moment into the paradise you long for, you will be anxious, controlling, disappointed, frustrated, demanding, and ultimately discouraged and bitter. Your husband or wife will never be the perfect lover. You will never experience paradise sex in the here and now. Celebrate the good things God gives you in the here and now, be content, and keep reminding yourself that you are being prepared for the wonderful eternity to come.
– – –
The problem is that nobody connected sex for Hank. His sexual awakening took place one afternoon when he happened upon a secret stash of ’70s-era girlie magazines that his father had hidden for years. He was immediately alive and magnetized. He didn’t understand what had just happened to him, but he wanted more. It was a sad, seductive welcome to the world of little-picture sex. It was pleasure for pleasure’s sake, sex for sex’s sake. Over the next two years, Hank visited that hidden stash almost daily. Before long he was trying to sneak kisses from the girls at school or cop a feel where it seemed possible. He stole porn from the local newsstand and sought out art movies with nudity.
His college years consisted of sexual fantasy and conquest. He probably thought about sex more than about his studies, but he didn’t see himself as in trouble. In his senior year, through a campus ministry, he made a profession of faith. He quickly learned that he could not do the things he had been doing. But his obsession did not go away, and he failed again and again. And despite all the do’s and don’ts he submitted to, his view of sex was still pretty much isolated, little-picture sex. It makes sense that the desire for marriage would grow in Hank. It was the one way that sex was “legal,” although he did not know the extent to which that really motivated him. He also thought that getting married would solve his sex problems by giving him regular satisfaction.
But marriage didn’t solve Hank’s problem. It wasn’t long before his wife felt that she was being used rather than loved, and it didn’t take long for Hank to begin to live a secret life of illicit sex. When Suzy found his Internet stash, she was devastated but not surprised.
Hank then faced the depth of his need—no, not just for a more biblically sexual worldview, but his need for grace. When viewed properly, sex always connects you to the existence and plan of God; it connects you to the fact that you and everything in your life were made for him and that you cannot be what you are supposed to be or do what you are supposed to do without his grace. Now, it may seem weird to some of you and irreverent to others, but it needs to be said: when viewed properly, sex preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ. Sex tells you how broken the world is, and it tells you how weak and rebellious you are. In telling you these things, it points you to your need for a Savior and to the hope that is found not in better education or firmer human resolve but in his forgiving, transforming, empowering, and delivering grace.
Big-picture sex acknowledges God, admits to sin, and celebrates grace and so grows in both purity and contentment. Little-picture sex lives in disconnected denial and never goes anywhere good. Where does your sexuality live?
Review and Reflect
1. List the criteria of both little-picture sex and big-picture sex. Which criteria strike you most forcefully and why?
2. Sex is integrally connected to God in vital ways. Write a summary statement for each of these ways:
God’s existence:
God’s glory:
God’s purpose:
God’s revelation:
God’s redemption:
God’s eternity:
3. How would you define your purpose in life, and how has this definition shaped your sexuality? Identify ways in which your personal pursuits fail to align with God’s purpose for you. How does 1 Corinthians 6:18–20 guide you in getting realigned?
4. What did the apostle Paul mean when he wrote, “To the pure, all things are pure” (Titus 1:15)?
5. How has a longing for paradise impacted your sex life both in the past and in the present?
Heart Reset
1 Corinthians 7:1–5
Titus 1:15