Roosevelt Institute - A Biblical View of Sexuality November 4, 2012

Roosevelt Institute 

A Biblical View of Sexuality (Video and Notes)

November 4, 2012
Roosevelt Institute Class - "A Biblical View of Sexuality" - Vermon Pierre - Part 1/2 from Roosevelt Church on Vimeo.

Mark Regnerus, University of Texas sociologists, “Few people have had sex by age 13; most have had sex before the age of 20. 50% of Americans have had sex for the first time between ages 16-18.”

Several studies indicate 90% of people have had sex before they were married. Among evangelicals between age of 21-45, 69% of unmarried said they have had sex with at least one partner in the past year.

sexuality – i.e. we are sexual beings, male and female with different sexual identities. We are distinctly able to express our sexuality in the physical act of sex.

“the physical act of sex” – Not just intercourse, but intercourse and sexual activities that are often connected to intercourse

But of course sex is not just physical! It involves interaction on mutual levels.

biblical sexuality – that we operate best as sexual beings (emphasis on beings – i.e. as whole creatures), with God’s goodness being fully realized, when a man and woman engage in sexual activity with one another in the context of marriage.

Creation:

1. Sex is good! It is a good gift from God.

Sex is for us:

- procreation – sex moving outward (note: we can serve God through children)

- love

- pleasure

- companionship/relationship

2. Sex isn’t about us, it’s about God.

We are meant to honor God. So sex should be mutually beneficial, mutually satisfying, mutually serving, mutually committed.

The Trinity is communion of love. We image that communion of love in our sexuality.

3. Marriage is the place for sex and sexual activity in general.  And sex and sexual activity are most beneficial to us in the context of marriage.

Fall:

Before the fall, there was oneness and nakedness with no shame. After the fall, there is awareness of ourselves as individual selves apart from each other (i.e. individual wants)

As result, sex and sexuality becomes distorted.

1. Sexuality can be expressed in whatever and however way you want.

The loss of a notion that it is sin.

We parcel out sex.

We redefine sexuality.

2. Sex is a commodity. To be consumed, sold, traded for. “Sex sells.”

3. Sex is a god to be worshiped.

Consequences

1. We dehumanize ourselves (when we remove sex from its natural habitat)

“Our society is filled with people for whom the sexual relationship is one where body meets body but where person fails to meet person; where the immediate need for sexual gratification is satisfied but where the deeper need for companionship and understanding is left untouched. The result is that the relationship leads not to fulfillment but to a half-conscious sense of incompleteness, of inner loneliness, which is so much the sickness of our time. The desire to know another’s nakedness is really the desire to know the other fully as a person. It is the desire to know and to be known, not just sexually but as a total human being. It is the desire for a relationship where each gives no just of his [her] body but of his [her] self, body and spirit both, for the other’s gladness.”

– Frederick Buechner, Listen to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner

2. We undermine the kingdom of God.

God and his kingdom is about committed, covenant faithfulness.

C.S. Lewis, Sex without marriage is like tasting without swallowing and ingesting.

Redemption:

1. We must trust in God. We must believe that he is a good, gift giving God who knows best for us and seeks best for us.

By this we then “de-god” sex. For sex is not the ultimate, God is the ultimate! For what’s best for us is a relationship with him!

“A Christian apologetic for marriage is settling for second best if it says to people, ‘Join us and live our way because you’ll probably be happier that way (and have better sex into the bargain).’ They may or may not be happier in the shallow sense of having better sex. They may have no sex at all: Jesus didn’t. Instead, what Christians say to people is, ‘Learn that the glory and honor of God is far more important than your personal satisfaction and the fulfillment of your longings and desires. And learn to center your life on his glory and purposes so that nothing so fills your heart with joy as seeing his purposes fulfilled. Then you will have the deepest personal satisfaction and joy in the world, as you rejoice in the glory of God.’”

– Christopher Ash, Christianity and Sex

2. The way back to God is found through Jesus. Through Jesus by the power of the Spirit there is repentance and transformation of the heart, the things that are necessary to redeem our sexual beings.

The love of God in Christ for man – we now image this love (and enter back into Trinitarian love) through our redeemed sexuality. Ultimately this points ahead to an even greater experience of intimacy and love between us and God. (Sex is good but finite.)

A shift from thinking, “How far can I go before breaking the law?” to “How can I be set free to experience the fullness of God through sex?”

Sexual activity before or outside of marriage

- “making out”

- “petting”

- mutual simulation

- oral sex (half of all teens have engaged in oral sex)

- anal sex

- masturbation

- adulterous sex

- cyber sex

- pornography

“What are the lies you have believed? What are the counterfeits you have bought into? Behind them all is your authentic thirst for love. Sexual sin is a quest to satisfy that thirst with a tonic that never can. Christ meets us right there without condemnation. As he said to one sexual sinner, ‘If you knew the gift of God…you would have asked him and he would have given you living water’ (John 4:10). Sin denies the gift. Faith opens to receive it and is satisfied.”

- Christopher West, A Theology of the Body for Beginners

Sexual activity within marriage

- “making out”

- “petting”

- mutual simulation

- oral sex

- anal sex

- masturbation

- sex toys

- role playing

Note: In marriage it is not just having sex, it is making love (that terminology change is important and should help guide our thinking). There are emotional, relational, loving aspects to “making love.” Carl Trueman, “ A man can have sex with a prostitute; he can only make love to one to whom he is emotionally connected.”

1 Corinthians 7:2–5 - ² But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. ³ The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. ⁴ 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. 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.

Proverbs 5:18–19 - ¹⁸ Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, ¹⁹ a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.

Ephesians 4:17–24 - ¹⁷ Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. ¹⁸ They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. ¹⁹ They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. ²⁰ But that is not the way you learned Christ! — ²¹ assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, ²² to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, ²³ and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, ²⁴ and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

1 Thessalonians 4:3–5 - ³ For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; ⁴ that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, ⁵ not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;

Alternative sexual activity

- incest

- pedophilia

- bestiality

- polygamy

- homosexuality