Biblical Foundations: Redeemed Sexuality
Sin is not the final answer. God began his work of redemption by revealing to his people his will for their lives. God gave these commands and decrees to us for our own good (Deuteronomy 10:13), specifically for two purposes. First, God’s rules served as an objective measure showing us that our lives are warped and diagnosing our sinfulness in order to drive us to seek mercy. Through the forgiveness of our sins through Jesus, we experience new life with and in Christ.
Second, these commands for living serve to guide us toward goodness and flourishing. In 1 Timothy 4:1-5, Paul teaches that we are to sanctify our sexuality, to make it pure and clean. How? By receiving forgiveness for wrong we have done and reclaiming the good gift of our sexuality with thanksgiving. We are to dedicate our lives, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to becoming more Christlike, more of the people God means us to be, including in the sexual dimension.
This work of redemption requires twofold action on our part: turning away from sin and turning our lives over to God. We are to “flee from sexual immorality” but also to recognize that our bodies are the “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:18-19). We are to “glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20). God wants us to offer our sexuality to him for his redemptive work.
Our sex as male and female, our sexual natures, and even sexual intercourse itself are gifts from God. Each is an aspect of what it means to be made in God’s image. These gifts are to be used as part of God’s grand purposes in redeeming the world. These gifts also are a source of great joy and blessing in our lives. But perhaps the bigger news is that love is real; we have the capacity, though imperfect, to love—really love—as God loves. The more we understand about what our sexuality means, the more beautiful we understand this gift to be.
Some content taken from HOW AND WHEN TO TELL YOUR KIDS ABOUT SEX, by Stan and Brenna Jones. Copyright © 1993, 2007, 2019. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. To purchase books in the GOD’S DESIGN FOR SEX book series, go to www.navpress.com.