The Truth About Sex (Part 2)
This week we are going to pick up where we left off a few weeks ago when we looked at what God has to say about sex from 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. While 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 deals more with how God defines sexual immorality, 1 Corinthians 7:1-7 gives us a positive vision of God’s design for sex.
The church at Corinth had written to Paul with some specific questions that Paul spends 1 Corinthians 7 answering. The first question regarded sex within marriage. From what we can gather, there was some element in Corinth that believed that celibacy in marriage was what God desired. Paul refutes this view and teaches that married sex is actually a gift from God.
First, married sex is a gift to help us avoid sexual immorality. He says: “Because of immoralities each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. The “having” here describes sex within marriage. Don’t make this verse teach something it isn’t. The Bible is not suggesting that marriage is the solution to sexual immorality. That’s an absurd conclusion. Sexual immorality is a matter of the heart and no marriage can fix a sinful heart. This verse does remind us of God's design for sex in marriage. To fully understand this we should go back to Genesis 2:24-25. Sex and marriage are God’s invention, which He declares “very good.” God designed sex to express physically the oneness of the marriage relationship.
Second, married sex is a gift that God designed for us to serve our spouse. In 1 Corinthians 7:3-4, the Bible teaches the responsibility of both husband and wives to serve our spouse. Neither spouse is to think of their bodies as belonging to them but rather to their spouse. Marriage is not about selfishly fulfilling our desires but about selflessly meeting the needs of our husband or wife.
A healthy view of sex within marriage would go a long way to show our culture that God’s design for sex is better than what our culture offers. Satan is alive and well and is working hard to pervert and corrupt sex and divorce it from marriage altogether. Each husband and wife who takes God’s Word seriously, living out God’s design for marriage and family, is a witness to the watching world of the goodness of God and His plan.