Throughout middle and high school, I was taught about sex through sermons and lectures. I knew what God had to say about it. Sex belongs exclusively in the bounds of marriage between a man and a woman. Deviation from this pattern will be met with the anger and disappointment of God. This created an air of fear around sex. The idea of slipping and losing my purity terrified me. I thought that God wouldn’t forgive me if I messed up, and maybe if I kept my purity, that meant God loved me more than he would if I had sex. I was keeping my purity out of fear and selfish ambition not a love and desire to serve God.
Is that God’s desire? For us to keep our purity because we are afraid He won’t love us anymore?
Absolutely not.
So what does God think about sex? How can we investigate His inspired Word and understand how we are to view and treat sex?
God has good reason for us to wait.
You may be asking, what is the point of waiting for marriage? In Biblical times, marriage was different. People got married way younger, so obviously the Bible is out of touch with current society.
The Bible isn’t out of touch. You must understand that it doesn’t matter how old the Bible is: God has not aged since he inspired it. At the time he inspired these sexual guidelines, he knew that right now in 2019, the marriage age would be later than it was back in Bible times. He knew that generations would be bombarded with sexual images and encouragement. He knew that as a 20 year old, I would want to have sex. He deemed that this was still His good and perfect plan. He designed it for our good.
Sex creates intimacy. It bonds man and woman together physically and emotionally. In Song of Solomon, there are countless verses where Solomon and his bride describe each other in beautiful and aching detail. For instance, Solomon 2:16, “My beloved is mine and I am his; he browses among the lilies.” There is equal intimacy and love. There is also protection here, within the bounds of marriage. I am his, and he is mine. God is protecting your beloved heart (Prov. 4:23) because he knows how easily it can be harmed. He knows that the commitment attached to marriage protects you, his precious creation, from being harmed by frivolous and lustful desires. Even in committed dating, this level of biblical unity is not present. It is reserved specifically for marriage. God gave us marriage as a layer of protection and as a picture of salvation. Just as a man and woman are joined together in marriage and sex, so will Jesus wed his bride, the Church.
Additionally, your body is not your own. Even now, unmarried, my body is not my own. My body belongs to Christ, and my body belongs to my future husband, just as his belongs to me. You do not belong to your girlfriend or boyfriend. 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 says, “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” When you have sex outside of marriage, you are sinning against your body. It hurts you. Christ who abides in you, desires your body to remain pure. We were bought with a price. From that, we are called to glorify Christ with our purity and actions.
Sex isn’t dirty to God
Sex isn’t dirty. It is not shameful. It is not sinful. It should not be an avoided topic in church and Christian circles. God created sex pure and wonderful, the pleasurable joining of two people. Sex outside of marriage is sinful. That is the corruption of God’s plan. Young Christians need to stop being taught that sex is something to fear and avoid forever. When we place sex into the “sinful” category, it can be hard to redefine it once you are married.
Once you are married, God has a design for sex between spouses. Again, Song of Solomon gives us the way that God views Christian marriage. Two broken and sinful people are coming together in unity. God placed this book of the Bible in the for us because he knew we needed to know that he desired for marriage to be intimate and passionate. He wants you to “browse among the lilies” of your wife. Within marriage, sex is a good thing—a great thing. God always designed it to be a holy act and within marriage it is.
You are still loved by your Creator.
If you have already stepped over God’s line, you are not an unwrapped present. You are not a used car. You are not a crushed flower.
I have sat in so many sermons and lectures that only address the why you shouldn’t and never - but what happens if I already did? We live in a broken society, plagued by sin. It is everywhere: billboards and shopping malls. It’s plastered across every screen we see, and the fact is that Christians are still sinner who need Christ today just as much as they did yesterday. So many Christians come into faith and are not virgins. You cannot preach purity without preaching redemption. God did not send his only son to die for your sins so that you would live in shame of your mistakes. Rather he sent Him to cleanse us of them.
To understand this, we need to first see the important distinction between shame and guilt.
Shame says, “You as a person as wrong, bad, or unworthy.”
Guilt says, “You did something wrong or bad.”
Why is this so important? Premarital sex is biblically wrong (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5) but not beyond healing and redemption. Guilt is the feeling that accompanies conviction, when we know that the Holy Spirit is telling us our actions don’t align with Christ. It compels us to repent and follow God. That feeling arising in your chest that grips you and tells you that your actions are wrong is conviction.
In contrast, shame alters your identity as a child of God. It tells you that you are no longer worth it as though Christ didn’t die for you at your worst. When the two are swapped, Christians give strength to the lies that the world tells them. They take away from the Holy Spirit’s convicting power.
You are not beyond the restorative power of Christ. Saying we can ruin our salvation and worth in Christ is like saying we earned it in the first place. We just aren’t big enough to ruin God’s plan. Christ died for the sins you don’t know you will commit just as much as he did the ones you have repented for. He promises, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9). Repentance leads to redemption. This applies to sexual sin. The repentance and turning away leads to restoration every time.
God is the creator. He built the world from nothing, and he can rebuild you too. Sexual sin is heartbreaking and painful, but Christ died for those sins. This doesn’t mean that we can live in sexual immorality because Christ already redeemed us; it means that we are free to walk away from our sin without shame, knowing that we are found and restored in Christ.
Just because you made a mistake does not mean God loves you any less, just as keeping the law doesn’t make Him love you anymore. When I was fifteen instead of getting a purity ring, I got a small purity mirror that hangs off a silver chain. It acts as a promise to God that I abstain from sexual sin. Although I haven’t been perfect in this area when I see myself in the reflective glass, it serves a reminder that I am God’s creation, forgiven and worth dying for. And so are you. You are worth dying for. God loves you so much that he designed sex to be a good thing for you, protecting your heart and body. He loves you so much that even when you fail, his love and forgiveness never does.