Sex, God, and Marriage. Johann Arnold Christoph

to repent.

      All of us, whether married or single, need to grasp more deeply the eternally healing words of Jesus: “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). In Jesus there is life, love, and light. In him our lives and our relationships can be purified from all that burdens us and opposes love, and God’s image in us can be restored.

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      Sexuality and the Sensuous Sphere

      For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

      1 Timothy 4:4–5

      The Bible speaks of the heart as the center of a person’s inner life. In the heart, decisions are made and the direction is set as to what kind of person we become (Jer. 17:10). But God also created us as sensuous beings. To the sensuous belongs everything that we perceive with our senses, including sexual attraction. The scent of a flower, the warmth of the sun, or a baby’s first smile brings us joy. God has given us a great gift in our senses, and if we use them to praise and honor him, they can bring us great happiness.

      Yet just as the area of sensuous experience can bring us close to God, it can also mislead us and even plunge us into demonic darkness. All too often we tend toward the superficial and miss the might and power of what God could otherwise give us. In grasping at what we experience with our senses, we forget about God and miss the possibility of experiencing the full depth of his will.

      Lasting joy is found not in our senses, but in God.

      To despise the living senses is to reject God and his handi­work (1 Tim. 4:1–3). The Holy Spirit does not want us to ignore the body or its emotional powers. But we should not forget that Satan seeks to undermine every good thing; he is a twister of the truth and is always waiting to deceive us, especially in this area.

      Admittedly, the soul is drawn to God through the spirit, but it is always joined to the physical through the body. Our physical being is not the real enemy of the spirit, and it must never be rejected. The real enemy is Satan, who continually tries to attack the human soul and sever it from God. God’s will is that every part of life – spirit, soul, and body – be brought under his control for his service (1 Cor. 10:31).

      In and of itself there is nothing wrong with the sphere of the senses. After all, everything we do, whether waking or sleeping, involves a sensory experience at some level. But because we are not mere animals, because we are made in the image of God, far more is expected of us.

      When two people fall in love, the joy they have at first is usually on a sensuous level: they look into each other’s eyes, they hear one another speak, they rejoice in the touch of the other’s hand, or even in the warmth of the other’s closeness. Of course, the experience goes far deeper than seeing, hearing, or feeling, but it still begins as an experience of the senses.

      Yet human love can never remain at this level – it must go much deeper than that. When the sensuous becomes an end in itself, everything seems fleeting and temporary, and we feel compelled to seek our satisfaction in experiences of greater and greater intensity (Eph. 4:17–19). Spending our energies on the intoxication of our senses, we soon exhaust and ruin our ability to experience life’s vital power. And we also lose the capacity for any deep inner experiences. An acquaintance who has been married for over thirty years told me:

      When my wife and I first married, I always wanted her to dress smart and sexy. It was the heyday of the mini-skirt, and I thought she looked great in one. I did not recognize the damage this attitude did to her, to other men, and to myself. I was actually encouraging the lustful glance that Jesus so clearly denounces. Only later, when my wife and I realized this, did we find freedom from an unhealthy emphasis on each other’s physical appearance and the way forward to a more genuine relationship.

      Unless we submit ourselves (including our senses) in reverence to God, we will be unable to experience the things of this world to their fullest. Time and again I have seen how people who focus on gratifying their senses wind up leading shallow, aimless lives. When our senses rule our lives, we become frustrated and confused. But in God we can experience the eternal in the sensuous. In him we can satisfy our heart’s deepest longings for what is genuine and lasting.

      When we surrender our sexuality to God, it becomes a gift.

      As a gift from God, sensuality is a mystery; without God, its mystery is lost and it is desecrated. This is especially true for the whole area of sex. The sexual life has a deep intimacy all its own, which each of us instinctively hides from others. Sex is each person’s secret, something that affects and expresses one’s innermost being. Every disclosure in this area opens up something intimate and personal and lets another person into one’s secret. Therefore the sexual sphere – even though it is one of God’s greatest gifts – is also the sphere of shame. We should feel ashamed to unveil our secret before others. There is a reason for this: just as Adam and Eve were ashamed of their nakedness before God because they knew that they had sinned, all of us know that we are sinful by nature. This recognition is not an unhealthy mental disorder, as many psychologists claim. It is the instinctive response to protect that which is holy and given by God, and it should lead every person to repentance.