Sex is portrayed differently by culture and some churches than how God intends it. God designed sex for marriage to reflect Christ's self-giving love, promote oneness between spouses, and overcome sin through faith and contentment, not primarily for pleasure or self-improvement. Sex points beyond the physical to greater spiritual realities.

1. Marriage ( 7 )
Sex
Slides by: Timothy Chan, based on
John Piper’s “This Momentary Marriage”
& Tim Keller’s “The Meaning of Marriage”

2. Sex According To Our Culture
❖ Our culture tells us that sex is important.
❖ Both Freud and Maslow says that sex is a need that’s
essential to our human flourishing.
❖ It’s said that sex was once surrounded by taboos, but
now we realize sex is like eating or any unavoidable
natural appetite. Forbidding or limiting the
satisfaction of any natural appetite is unhealthy.
❖ “They tell you sex has become a mess
because it was hushed up. But for the
last twenty years it has not been. It
has been chattered about all day long.
Yet, it is still in a mess.” (C. S. Lewis)

3. Sex According To Our Culture
❖ Our culture tells us that sex is a private
matter. One person’s sexual behavior is
not anyone else’s concern.
❖ Because of that, our culture says that
there’s no right or wrong sexual behavior,
and it encourages us to fulfill our sexual
desires because sex makes us whole.
❖ Using food as an analogy: “There is nothing to be
ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be
everything to be ashamed of if half the world made
food the main interest of their lives.” (C. S. Lewis)

4. Sex According To Our Culture
❖ “What we do with our bodies, what we
do sexually, shapes our persons. ...
Because sex forms us, sex is a
community matter.” (Lauren Winner)
❖ (Gal 5:25-6:1) If we live by the Spirit, let
us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let
us not become conceited, provoking one
another, envying one another. Brothers,
if anyone is caught in any transgression,
you who are spiritual should restore him
in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on
yourself, lest you too be tempted.

5. Sex According To Our Culture
❖ Ironically, our culture also communicates that sex is
meaningless. It is just like any recreational activity.
❖ In an episode of “Friends”:
Monica: So, we can be friends who
sleep together.
Richard: Absolutely, this’ll just be
something we do, like racquetball.
❖ “Great sex, which once was assumed to occur by
definition only in marriage, is now understood as
something that’s threatened by marriage” (Lauren
Winner)

6. Sex According To Our Culture
❖ (Q) Do you think that sex has become a mess in our
culture? Why?

7. Cookie Jar Theology is Inadequate
❖ Much of today’s Christian teaching
on sex is “cookie jar theology”:
❖ The cookies are good, but you
should wait until after dinner
❖ In other words, sex is good, but
don’t do it until you’re married and
only do it with your spouse
❖ But “True Love Waits” was a failure
❖ Advocates could only tout that virgins who took
the pledge were likely to abstain from sex for 18
months longer than those who didn’t. (source)

8. Cookie Jar Theology is Inadequate
❖ The two main problems with “cookie
jar theology” are:
❖ Even though the cookie jar is
closed, people are still obsessed
with the cookies inside of it.
❖ It does not tell us why sex is good,
nor what it means to have a healthy
view (and practice) of sexuality.
❖ (Q) In what way does God intend sex to be good?
❖ Unfortunately, many Christian leaders gave
misleading answers to why “sex is good”......

9. Misleading Teachings About Sex
❖ Goodness of sex = sexual pleasure?
❖ The book “Intended For Pleasure” equates the
goodness of sex with sexual pleasure.
❖ In a controversial chapter entitled “Can We?” in a
recent book on sex and marriage, it instructed
readers in graphical details to practice a variety of
sex acts to satisfy their “sexual needs.” (source)
❖ “The loud arguments within evangelicalism that
pleasure is good border on defensive shouting,
‘Hey, we’ve got pleasure too!’ in a world that cares
about little else ... [but] we are closer to treating
sexual pleasure as an idol” (Matt Lee Anderson)

10. Misleading Teachings About Sex
❖ Goodness of sex = marriage improvement?
❖ The book “His Needs, Her Needs” suggests that a
way to prevent extramarital affairs is for the wife
to satisfy the husband’s “sexual need.”
❖ A megachurch pastor wrote a book challenging
couples to a “sexperiment” of making love for 7
straight days to improve their marriage.
❖ A common thread to all of these misleading teaching
is that sexual desire is something natural and
uncontrollable -- not too different from our culture’s
message about sex.

11. Purpose of Sex
❖ (Q) Why does God invent sex for marriage? What is
the purpose of sex?
❖ Just as marriage is a temporary gift, sex is also a
temporary gift.
❖ And just as earthly marriage points to our future
heavenly marriage with God, sex should be meant to
point toward something greater.
❖ Purposes of Sex:
1. Sex reflects a Christ-shaped self-giving love
2. Sex leads to oneness and exclusivity
3. Sex defeats sin and leads to faith and contentment

12. 1. Sex → Christ-shaped Self-giving Love
❖ It is love that marks Christian sexuality, and our
model of love is Christ’s sacrificial love on the cross.
❖ (1 John 3:16) By this we know love, that he laid
down his life for us
❖ He laid down His life willingly, not out of duty.
❖ (John 10:18) No one takes it from me,
but I lay it down of my own accord. I
have authority to lay it down, and I
have authority to take it up again.
❖ Sex should be one of our most profound
examples of gospel-centered love and
service.

13. 1. Sex → Christ-shaped Self-giving Love
❖ Husbands and wives are commanded to have sex.
❖ But the Bible does not say, “Stake your claim! Take
your rights!” Rather, “Give your spouse the rights
that belong to him/her!”
❖ (1 Cor 7:3-5a) The husband should give to his wife
her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her
husband. For the wife does not have authority
over her own body, but the husband does.
Likewise the husband does not have authority
over his own body, but the wife does. Do not
deprive one another ...

14. 1. Sex → Christ-shaped Self-giving Love
❖ “Our joy as Christians is not fundamentally driven
by our experience of physical pleasure, but by the
self-giving love that unites us together in the bond
of peace. And that may mean delaying or forestalling
sexual satisfaction in pursuit of the other’s
good.” (Matt Lee Anderson)
❖ (Q) In what practical ways can you express this self-
giving love in the context of marital sex?

15. 2. Sex → Oneness and Exclusivity
❖ Did you know? Humans are one of only a handful of
mammal species to make love face-to-face.
❖ (1 Cor 6:16) Or do you not know that he who is
joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her?
For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.”
❖ Sex with a prostitute is wrong because every sex
act is supposed to be a uniting act.
❖ “One flesh” union in the Bible “says don’t unite
with someone physically unless you are also willing
to unite with the person emotionally, personally,
socially, economically, and legally.” (Tim Keller)

16. 2. Sex → Oneness and Exclusivity
❖ Therefore, there’s no such thing as casual sex,
because sex is so much more than just a physical act.
❖ The Hebrew word dod is used to mean
lovemaking, but it also conveys the meaning of
“intermingling of souls.” In this sense, making love
is not just body-on-body, but also soul-on-soul.

17. 2. Sex → Oneness and Exclusivity
❖ Moreover, sex only works in an exclusive marital
relationship.
❖ (Prov 5:15-18) Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well. Should your
springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in
the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and
not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be
blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth.
❖ Water = sexuality; Prov 5 says that your sexual
passion shouldn’t be let loose outside of your
marriage because your spouse is your full delight.

18. 2. Sex → Oneness and Exclusivity
❖ “Sex is God’s appointed way for two people to
reciprocally say to one another, ‘I belong completely,
permanently, and exclusively to you.’” (Tim Keller)

19. 3. Sex → ✗ Sin, ✓ Faith, ✓ Contentment
❖ (Heb 13:4-5) Let marriage be held in honor among
all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled [by sin],
for God will judge the sexually immoral and
adulterous. Keep your life free from love of money,
and be content with what you have, for he has said,
“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
❖ Love of money is also a sinful desire. (Rom 14:23b)
Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
❖ The cure for sinful desires is contentment.
❖ The basis of our contentment is from God,
because God says “I will never leave you nor
forsake you.” (Heb 13:5b)

20. 3. Sex → ✗ Sin, ✓ Faith, ✓ Contentment
❖ What is contentment in sex?
❖ It does NOT mean the end of all desires.
❖ (Phil 4:12b) I know how to be brought low, and I
know how to abound. In any and every
circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing
plenty and hunger, abundance and need.
❖ “If Paul could learn to be content in hunger, then
we can learn to be content if God chooses not to
give us sexual gratification.” (John Piper)
❖ “If gratification is not denied us but is offered to
us in marriage, we will seek it and enjoy it only in
ways that reflect our faith.” (John Piper)

21. 3. Sex → ✗ Sin, ✓ Faith, ✓ Contentment
❖ (1 Cor 7:5) Do not deprive one another, except
perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you
may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come
together again, so that Satan may not tempt you
because of your lack of self-control.
❖ In other words, you can ward off Satan with sexual
intercourse conducted in faith.
❖ “Sexual relations are a God-ordained means of
overcoming temptation to sin.” (John Piper)
❖ (Q) Why do you think sexual intercourse can be a
way to overcome sin and increase faith?

22. Sex is a Discipline
❖ Sex is a discipline that husbands and wives practice.
❖ “Sexual intimacy and sexual climax get their final
meaning from what they point to. They point to
ecstasies that are unattainable and inconceivable in
this life. Just as the heavens are telling the glory of
God’s power and beauty, so sexual climax is telling
the glory of immeasurable delights that we will have
with Christ in the age to come.” (John Piper)

23. Summary of Study #7
❖ Our culture portrays sex as essential, as a private
matter, yet as meaningless as a recreational activity.
❖ Some church leaders also gave misleading/
incomplete teachings on sex. Sex should not be
primarily about pleasure or marriage improvement.
❖ Like marriage, sex is a temporary gift that points
toward something greater.
❖ Sex reflects a Christ-shaped self-giving love.
❖ Sex leads to oneness and exclusivity.
❖ Sex defeats sin and leads to faith and contentment.

24. Additional References for Study #7
❖ “Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity” by
Lauren Winner
❖ “Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter To Our
Faith” by Matthew Lee Anderson
❖ “Sex: A Gospel Analogy” by Ryan Kwan