Written by Yana Conner
Are We Asking the Right Questions About Sex?
In Christian circles, questions like these often become primary in conversations about sex:
- Who can we have sex with? Can it be with someone of the same sex, or does it have to be heterosexual?
- When can we have it? Isn’t waiting until marriage kind of barbaric, patriarchal, and outdated?
- Also, what is sex? When do I know that I’ve gone too far? Does oral sex or sexting count?
While these are all questions worth answering, are they the best starting point for a conversation with your kid about sex, or is there a better one?
For a Christian who believes that God is the creator of all things, including sex, it seems like a better question would be: Why did God create sex? What was His creational intent behind its beautiful creation? The Christian’s interest needs to move beyond the “who, what, and when” questions to ask questions that seek to discern God’s design and desire for sex. He could’ve created a world without it. So, why did He choose to create one with it?
Why Did God Create Sex?
At the beginning of the greatest story ever told, we are informed that God created the heavens, the earth, and everything in it (Gen. 1:1): light (1:3), sky (1:6-7), land and sea (1:9-10), vegetation (1:11-12), stars (1:14-18), fish and livestock (1:20-25), humankind (1:26-27). With each addition to His living and breathing mosaic, God declared over His creation these three words: “It is good.” And upon its completion, He proclaimed it to be very good.
However, as Albert Wolters points out in his book Creation Regained, when God proclaims the goodness of His creation, He isn’t merely speaking about the aesthetics of its material parts, but also about the way in which those material parts are ordered.
For example, on each day of creation we observe God making and ordering His creation. On the first day, He makes light. Then, He orders it, separating it from darkness and referring to it with the title “day” and the darkness “night” (1:5). He orders day and night further on the fourth day. He makes lights to govern over the sky, but he doesn’t leave them to figure out how to function on their own. He orders them, commanding the sun to rule over the day and the moon the night, making known to us how these two lights bring order to what we have come to understand as days, seasons, and years (1:14-18). As we continue to read through the creation narrative, we observe that God takes this same approach of making and ordering with all of creation. After making trees, God embeds within them (or orders) a way of growing and multiplying. They are to bear fruit after their own kind (1:12). After making humanity in His image, He orders them by giving them the role of serving as cultivating rulers over the earth.
When we acknowledge that the scope of God’s creational activity involves both making and ordering, it reveals to us that God not only created with power, but also with a great deal of wisdom. In His call for light’s existence, He demonstrates His power. In His call for light to govern the day, He demonstrates His wisdom. (Can you imagine if we had to work, play, run errands, and rear children in the dark?)
God exercises this same kind of power and wisdom when He created sex. And just as we gaze upon the stars with wonder and humility, trying to understand the creative mind of God, we would do well to consider sex and sexuality with the same sense of awe and humility, asking, “God, why did You create sex?”
When asking questions related to God’s creational intent, it is always best to return to Genesis 1-2 for answers. Let’s return to two key passages that give us insight on God’s creational intent for sex and human sexuality, Genesis 1:26-28 and Genesis 2:23-24:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” – Genesis 1:26-28
The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. – Genesis 2:23-34
From these verses, we can discern the following three reasons why God created sex:
Procreation
God’s first command to the first male and female was to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. As Sam Allberry explains in his book, Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With?:
This command is not arbitrary. If people are made in His image, God wants his image to fill the earth—for the whole world to perfectly reflect who he is. His image-bearers are therefore told to reproduce his image so that it can be spread across the globe and God’s presence and loving rule perfectly represented through His people.
Oneness
God desires for the first male and female not only to utilize sex to propagate the human race, but also to cultivate a bond that resulted in them becoming one flesh. “In other words,” as Allberry explains, “sex is part of the process by which the two become one. It is intended to have a profoundly unifying effect on two people.” However, this physical oneness is not merely for their enjoyment. It is to mirror the oneness of the triune God, who called them to be a reflection of His image, saying, “Let us make humanity in our image” (1:28).
Intimacy
Additionally, God desired this physical oneness between the first male and female to be filled with the kind of intimacy and love that allowed them to safely stand in each other’s presence without feelings of fear or shame. This kind of safety requires the development of emotional and mental intimacy in addition to physical intimacy.
When we consider these three reasons for why God created sex, it becomes easier to answer the “who, what, and when” questions proposed earlier. Let’s revisit them:
1. Who can we have sex with? Can it be with someone of the same sex, or must it only be heterosexual?
It’s tempting for some people to think that the Bible is picking on people with same-sex attraction, so let’s start by talking about something completely different. In Genesis 6:1-6, arguably one of the strangest passages of the Bible, we read that God was so grieved by the sins of humanity that He was filled with regret for creating them. In the verses prior, we find that one of the main sources of God’s grief was that the daughters of humanity were procreating with a group whom the text refers to as “the sons of God,” instead of with the sons of humanity. Although there has been some debate about what exactly these “sons of God” were (many commentators believe that they were spiritual beings of some sort), we can note that, although the gender (male and female) and even the context (marriage) was right, God was still displeased. Why? Because again, His command was for humanity to be fruitful and multiply, not for the sons of God and the daughters of humanity to do so.
The restriction of sex to men and women is not arbitrary; it is part of what allows humanity to procreate and flourish. As Rachel Joy Welcher explains in her book, Talking Back to Purity Culture, “the possibility of procreation… is unique to heterosexual sex.” If one of God’s primary goals for sex is the procreation of humanity, this clarifies that He purposed for sex to be between a man and a woman. God’s desire is to fill the Earth with His image-bearers, and any other kind of sex that doesn’t do that is a deviation from God’s creational intent.
2. When can we have it? Isn’t waiting until marriage kind of barbaric, patriarchal, and outdated?
God designed sex to be a unifying act between two people that cultivates intimacy and oneness.
If intimacy and oneness is a part of God’s design for sex, then casual non-committal sex is a deviation from God’s creational intent. If the goal of sex is to cultivate intimacy and oneness, then it necessitates the kind of fidelity and commitment that is expressed through marriage. The author of Genesis affirms marriage as God’s desired context for sex by explaining, in Genesis 2:23-24, that a man leaves his father and mother to bond and become one with his wife through sex. In Moses’ understanding, this bonding is only appropriate through marriage.
Many have deemed God’s design for marriage as unreasonable, outdated, or unnecessary, concluding that monogamy is not humanly possible or that marriage is an oppressive patriarchal construct from which humanity needs to be liberated. Some have even looked at the divorce rate as a reason not to get married, saying it’s what’s in our hearts that matters most. While we can agree that marriage does not always work out the way God intended, this does not affect His original intention.
God is eternal. He sits outside of time. When He set the world in motion, making and ordering His creation, He knew the multiplicity of ways humans would deviate from His design and disorder His creation. However, He still set His commands for sex and all of life forth in the best interest of all of humanity. While these commands may create hardship and call for us to deny ourselves, His commands are still qualitatively good and for our good. A lifelong commitment between a man and a woman, formalized through the vows of marriage, is not unreasonable, barbaric, or outdated.
3. What counts as sex? When do I know that I’ve gone too far? Does oral sex or sexting count?
There can be a lot of confusion around these questions. However, what generally lies behind these questions for someone concerned with sin is, “How far can I go without being in sin?” But as previously stated, God created sex for the purpose of reproducing His image in the world, which is another way of saying that God created sex for His glory.
If this is true, sex is less about our pleasure and more about God’s glory. And, we glorify Him most when we use His good gift of sex in the way that He intended. For the Christian, the question should not be “How close can I get to the darkness of sin without being in the dark?” but rather “How can I live more fully in God’s light?” When the latter question guides the Christian’s heart, their desire will be to heed Paul’s word to not let there be even a hint of sexual immorality among them (Ephesians 5:3). Any activity or thought process that doesn’t contribute to God’s glory is outside of God’s original plan for sex.
What is Good?
Regarding sex, the “why” question is the most important, even if this question opens up further, deeper questions: “What is good? Who gets to define it? Is it God, or is it me?” Even though we can look at Scripture and conclude that God designed sex to be enjoyed within the context of a heterosexual marriage, we still have to decide whether or not we agree that God’s design is good.
This question—what is good?—is at the forefront of the war in our hearts, and it has been from the beginning. In Genesis 3, the serpent tempts Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. While God had given Adam and Eve the freedom to eat from every other tree in the garden, including the tree of life, God instructed Adam and Eve to not eat from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Satan tempts Eve by convincing her that God is withholding something good from her. Eve considers Satan’s argument, looks at the tree and determines in her mind and heart that it is “good for food” (Genesis 3:6). She, in essence, rejects God’s definition of good and creates her own.
For many in the rising generation, this question—what is good?—is where the battle starts and ends. In your conversations with your children, you must move from the who, what, and when questions—to the question, “Why did God create sex?”—and to the questions about what makes something good. Even if they can understand why God created sex, the answer will matter very little to them if they haven’t concluded that ultimately God is the definer of what is good, and not us.