Restoring the Godly Virtue of Sex
Introduction
Australian media has been awash with multiple allegations of rape in federal parliament. Numerous investigations have been launched. Unquestionably, alcohol, naked ambition, and the gross lack of respect characteristic of our political scene is a heady mixture makes such things virtually inevitable. (Locals have a chuckle over the “bonk ban” on federal ministers having sex with their staff. This followed a senior “family values” MP (Barnaby Joyce) impregnating a staffer, and multiple allegations of misconduct by other men. Then there was a Greens senator successfully suing a Liberal Democrat politician for telling her to “stop shagging men”.) Canberra’s moral morass reflects the sexual immorality prevalent in our nation. Let’s appropriate what evangelist Peter Pollock says of South Africa, “Fornication is our most popular sport.” What has this got to do with the Church? We must confess our cultural negativity about politicians and our general failure to pray daily for our political leaders; unless they threaten our religious freedoms! Much more deeply, I sense the Spirit speaking to the Church about a matter of her intimate essential identity.
A Holy Vocation
Paul rebuked the Corinthians, a congregation noted for sexual sin (1 Cor 5-6), “I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure/chaste virgin to Christ. 3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” (2 Cor 11:2-3). The Church is the only group in the ancient world called a “virgin” (parthenos). The key to this remarkable fact, and its connection with sex, is found in the amazing teaching of Ephesians. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” (Eph 5:31-32). In quoting the foundational text in Genesis about marriage, and intercourse within it (Gen 2:24), Paul teaches that the true endpoint/goal to which marital sex points is the eternal intimacy between Jesus as Bridegroom and the Church as Bride (Rev 19:6-10). Few Christian teachers today seem to have been grasped by what this means spiritually.
The prophet Malachi illuminates us. In the most exalted language, the Lord speaks about marriage, “you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union?…So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.” (2:15). Such covenantal language means there is always “three in the bed” (Kevin Smith).
Seeing the Eternal
Divine covenants, of which marriage is the first established on the horizontal level, involve a relationship that is total, permanent, and exclusive mediated by the Spirit of holiness. If Adam and Eve had sex in Eden before they sinned and lost the glory of God (Rom 3:23) they would have enjoyed immediate spiritual insight into the eternal realm, they would have “seen” in the Spirit the eternal bliss of the marital union of the Bridegroom and Bride. Sex wasn’t God’s plan for Eden, because we need to put our trust in the Word of the Lord (Gen 2:17) over any intense experience, however mystical or pleasurable. The implications of all this for Christian marriages are huge. The bedroom is where undefiled spiritual virgins come together in a sacred embrace that symbolises and shares in the ideal consummation of the eternal marriage of the Lamb of God. This powerful vision of a call to holiness is fiercely opposed.
Sex Without Virtue
Personal morality in the West is now seen as entirely a matter of sovereign subjective personal choice. Virginity, once called a “virtue” to be retained until marriage, is now seen as a negative (https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/sex-sexuality-and-romance/201705/has-virginity-lost-its-virtue). In a void of spiritual discernment (1 Cor 2:14) the notion of sex as holy is completely intelligible. The loss of a covenantal framework means our community cannot see an endpoint/goal for sex beyond immediate pleasure. With no social taboos in place anymore, the spirit of the age mediated by educated elites and experts makes sexual immorality virtually inevitable. How did early Christianity manage to flip the promiscuousness of Roman times? What should we be praying for inside the Church if we would see a true sexual revolution of holiness in our times?
Bridegroom of Blood
The wounded heart of the Lord of the covenant sees the unfaithfulness of idolatry spiritual “adultery” (Judges 2:17; 8:27; 1 Chron 5:25; Ps 106:39; Jer 3:1; Ezek 6:9; 16:15ff; Hos 4:12; James 4:4). This is how we must discern the grievousness of all sexual sin (1 Cor 6:18). We must move beyond categories of sin as law-breaking to see into the invisible spiritual world. We must sense in the Spirit that sexual sin is a violation of the spirit of a divine covenant. When, for example, Christian counsellors commend masturbation as a remedy for sexual frustration leading to fornication, they fail to ground their wisdom in the eternal trinitarian community in which all sex belongs. (Autoeroticism, turning inwards to enjoy oneself, grieves the Holy Spirit (Eph 4:30).) No wonder, with such ignorance, we have a pandemic of pornography in the Church. If pornography really is adultery (Matt 5:28), we need a major visitation of holiness from heaven to heal so many trapped in sexual brokenness. We need a gospel recovery because the only thing powerful enough to heal a broken covenant is a more powerful covenant, one formed through blood. Only the covenant in the blood of the Lamb of God can bring total cleansing and forgiveness (Matt 2:28; Heb 13:20) and renewed sexuality. Only the holiness making power of the blood of God’s Son (Acts 20:28) can create a community that lives as a “chaste virgin”. Despite all external appearances, there is a clear way ahead.
Conclusion
First, we should see the public rising up of celibate gay Christians (Wesley Hill, Sam Allberry, Rhys Bezzant etc.) as a prophetic sign of the power of the gospel against the idolatrous social myth that sex is essential to real living (Jesus, Paul, John!). Secondly, we must affirm that “The essence of chastity is not the suppression of lust, but the total orientation of one’s life towards a goal.” (Bonhoeffer). This goal is the consummation of God’s eternal plan for the universe, the marriage supper of the Lamb. All who follow Jesus will share in his marital bliss forever! Seeing this will inspire in us a “divine jealousy” (2 Cor 11:1) that the Marriage of Jesus be all that it could ever be. When the Church in evangelistic bridal passion regains her vocation as “salt and light” (Matt 5:14-16) then many of the “sexually immoral” will be saved from the lake of fire (Rev 21:8; 22:5) to enjoy Jesus with us all in eternity. Who will understand or heed this call today? Perhaps if in the wisdom of God advocating celibacy becomes a prosecutable offence (G. Preece), some will listen.