Let's look briefly at God's plan for sex in the beginning to try to gain insights into this controversy. In the first three chapters of Genesis, we see that God created the Heavens and Earth. In His creation of the vast animal kingdom, God included a means of procreation. Most of these species procreate by some means of sexual union. He surveyed His creation, including the procreation process, and declared it to be good. Adam was the only created being that had no mate and no way to reproduce. In a later event, God created Eve to be Adam's companion.It seems that one reason God made this a separate event was to emphasize the fact that human sexuality is different, more special, from that of the rest of creation. The creatures of the animal kingdom were driven by instinct to mate for reproductive purposes, however human sexuality is sacred and is to be practiced carefully.
In the Biblical account, Genesis 2:22-24 says..."Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man...For this reason, a man will leave his Mother and Father and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were naked and felt no shame." The most glaring observation here is that God created them as sexual beings with the capacity for emotional connection, attraction, and made them with a capacity to derive great pleasure from their sexual interaction. Their sexuality was not merely instinct driven for the purpose of reproduction. Human sexuality was created to be so much more...a mysterious intermingling of bodies and souls...oneness.
In the law God gave Moses(Deuteronomy 22), He made it plain that sexual activity was to be restricted to the marriage relationship. The popular, modern idea is that this command was put in place to restrict the fun and adventure of humans. However, this is far from the truth. God put this restriction in place to protect mankind from the consequences of the misuse of sex such as: devastating rejection, insecurity, fear found in lack of commitment, abandonment, unwanted pregnancies, abortion, infanticide, disease, incest, rape, and a host of other destructive things that are rooted in the misuse of sex. Today in America, our prisons are full of angry, confused young men who carry the wounds of an absent or abusive Father and a promiscuous Mother and our welfare rolls are filled with desperate young women who thought they could find fulfillment in the arms of an uncommitted man. God's standards were not to steal the fun from sex, but rather to protect the fun He intended it to be by shielding men and women from the devastating consequences of sex outside of marriage. The negative outflow of effects in our culture that have been produced by the abandonment of Biblical standards concerning marriage, sex, and family vividly illustrate the importance of returning to Biblical standards regarding these issues.
My point is that God created human sexuality to bring emotional, mental, relational, and physical pleasure to the relationship between a husband and wife that will last a lifetime. There is nothing dirty or shameful about it in that context. Married couples should make this aspect of their relationship a priority, especially during times of difficulty. This is a great gift carefully planned and created by God to be enjoyed by all married couples. If you have this on the back burner in your relationship, why not start bringing it to the front burner?
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