What does it mean to have a holy sex life? (If you missed part one of this conversation you can find it here.)
In the first part of this post I talked a lot about the design of our sexuality, its brokenness and its redemption. My dear friend Maggie rightly suggested that my second conversation really needed to be about the day to day details of a holy sex life. Here is her suggestion from Facebook.
I rec you do post #2 and talk about the practical aspect of living out a holy sex life. Lots of people have know idea what that means. How about navigating the mundane, the ups, the downs, the with-holding, the failure, the over-weight, the over-worked, the tired, the can’t get enough…blah, blah, blah. Give the details. People need them…not personally, but seriously how are we expected to live in such a way? People do not really know. Oh, porn too. Talk about porn, drinking and flirting w/ the neighbors wife/husband. If you want…just a suggestion. I think it would be helpful for many.
Maggie is right on with some of the really practical aspects of figuring out what a redeemed sex life looks like. Let’s just start with the baseline thought that most of us have no idea what one looks like. We haven’t experienced much redemption in this area, had much instruction or had positive examples to imitate. I would include myself in that statement. But this is something that I have thought a lot about (insert joke here about me justifying thinking about sex a lot by adding a redemptive element to it) what this looks like and I have some practical suggestions. Just a warning, this is going to be honest and straight forward.
Finding the Balance in a Marriage
One of the most important things for any marriage is finding a critical balance for your sex life. The balance is between realizing how important it is as a glue for marriage when it is healthy and builds one another up and never letting it become too important in our lives. Paul speaks about this in some practical ways when he says in 1 Corinthians 7…
Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7
Paul’s words here are important because he is addressing sexuality of a husband and wife in a culture where sexual sin is pervasive and destructive. Paul recognizes the role sex plays in helping to insulate a marriage from the sexual sin of the world outside. As a practical matter, when a husband and wife are able to find their sexual satisfaction within each other, it helps to strengthen their resolve to fight against temptations outside of marriage.
This is where sex should be a building blocks of our marriages. It works to unite us together in desire and purpose and reinforce our commitments to seek our desires within marriage and not outside of marriage. So there is a good case to be made here for an intentionally regular sex life as an act of mutual edification in marriage. Having sex frequently is most likely a very good thing for your marriage. (As if I were going to write anything else) On the other side of that, however, is the reality of jobs, kids, time, stress, and energy. This is where the balance comes in. It is important enough that you need to carve out time to make sure it happens and builds up your marriage, but it can’t be so important as to be a distraction when the realities of life prevent it from happening. If we overvalue sex then our kids, our jobs, and our spouse can be objections of contention for us as they prevent us from being satisfied. When we reach that point we need to ask God to fill our lives with a lot more grace. Where grace abounds sex isn’t a source of anger or frustration. Instead it is simply a blessing.
So very practically speaking this means that both spouses need to make it an intentional priority to have sex and make sure that they have tremendous grace in navigating the difficult seasons of life which make it less frequent. Using sex as a weapon, a bargaining chip, or a source of power for one spouse over the other is simply sinful and manipulative. It doesn’t build up either person or work towards a healthy marriage.
Having sex with your spouse can still be sinful
This is where the practical sides of this issue really come about. As a man one of the most important things someone told, I believe in premarital counseling, was that just because you are having sex doesn’t mean you won’t be tempted by lust. This is where the redemptive side of sexuality has to come in. Even within our married sex lives, lust and sexual sin still reign. Just because we are having sex with our spouse doesn’t mean we are doing it in an God honoring way. (Resisting the urge to make jokes about that line..)
If sex is an idol, something we worship and give ourselves over too or allow to become too important to us, then it becomes solely about self gratification and not mutual edification. Sex with our spouse can help to build up our resistance to the temptations of the world or it can be a reinforcement of those struggles. The most glaring example of this is porn. Porn absolutely can’t have a place in a holy sex life. By definition it is irredeemable. The medium prohibits it from being a positive and mutually building up part of any sex life. Porn is all about self gratification, fantasy, and self indulgence without responsibility, commitment or edification. It is the bastardization of sexuality.
But this goes beyond porn. With the prevalence of sexuality throughout our culture this unhealthy dynamic sexual gratification can come from anywhere. It can come from TV/Movies, it can come from flirting with coworkers or neighbors, it can come simply from how we look at and respond to those we see each day. When our sexuality is primarily about us and our pleasure then it works against God’s designs. Sex is as much about giving oneself to another as it is making ourselves feel good. Our culture tells us that it is all about us and what we want and what we feel. That is a load of crap. Sex focused on ones own self and desires misses the point.
This isn’t just about having sex with someone other than our spouse or feeding images into our minds. This goes to where we seek out the fulfillment of our needs and desires. When our spouse is inattentive and we allow the attentiveness of someone else to fill that gap we are sinning. When our spouse turns down our sexual advances and we turn to other stimulus to meet our need that is sinful. When we comb through old Facebook friends thinking about old relationships and fantasizing about past partners that is sinful. All of these actions weaken the bonds of marriage instead of strengthening them.
Ok, once again that ended up being a pretty long post. I still have some more thoughts and practical suggestions, so I guess those will be in part three. I would love to hear your comments and thoughts.
December 13, 2011 at 3:44 pm
Good job.
I wish I had more comments, but, honey, honestly, I am just too tired.
Ha!
December 13, 2011 at 7:20 pm
Excellent post (and excellent restraint!)
December 13, 2011 at 7:33 pm
I would say that your title, “holy sex life” is right on the point. Our sex life can work to sanctify us. For example, it is in our sex life that we really do have to learn to love others, not for our gratification but for true love of the other person. It teaches patience and mutual understanding, and serves to show us the areas in our hearts that have yet to be purified. I agree that there are not enough good examples of a holy sex life, and that there is so much confusion in this area. It is true that God can redeem our sex lives, and that not only in couples who have no problems in this area, but also in broken people due to the effect of sin ( either their own or someone else’s). The truth is, there is guilt, pain, fear, self, etc to get past. For some, this area is not only about keeping it holy, it’s about become whole.
December 13, 2011 at 9:13 pm
Just stumbled upon your blog again. These are good posts. The taboo of talking about sex is such a barrier in the Christian world. Oddly enough, Gretchen and you have shaped our marriage and sex life, thank you both for being holy examples….is that weird?. I am thankful that I was blessed to have Gretchen to speak into my life so early in my faith and in my marriage and I am sure you did the same for my husband.
blessings as you continue to write.
December 14, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Cathy,
Thanks for the comment. That is probably the best comment I have gotten in a while. You guys have been just as much of a blessing to us.
December 15, 2011 at 8:28 am
Thought of another topic you may want to touch…scripture being abused to hold women in violent relationships, rape, submission power play stuff. There is lots of mis-use women by men in the sex arena that people back up w/ scripture. I am beginning to learn much from a crisis center in Durham…lots of their cases involve women who are part of a church congregation. BLAH.
December 15, 2011 at 8:29 am
Oh, and then there is the clergy mis-use of power and their preying on females in the church. Creepy sex stuff. Go there…if not u…then who?