The Sacred Symbol of Sex

 

As a Christian young man, I was taught that God's plan for sex was for it to only be between a man and woman in marriage, but I was never taught why.  I wanted to get married if for nothing else than to satisfy my cravings for sex without sinning.  While that is not necessarily a bad reason to get married, it is certainly at the lowest level of aspirations we can have when it comes to marriage.  It is like buying a car so that I can enjoy the AC because it is really hot outside.  There is certainly nothing wrong with enjoying the AC, but a car was meant for so much more than that.

One of the purposes I have had with this blog lately has been to dig into this idea of "why."  Why is it that sex is supposed to only be between one man and woman?  Why is it important that we keep ourselves pure until we are married, and while we are married, keep our marriage bed pure?  God has a great and glorious vision for our sexuality that has been blurred and corrupted by the world.  My hope is that we can come to understand that vision that God has revealed in Scripture.

As much as sex and marriage is about a man and woman coming together in a covenant of love and bringing new life into the world, it is meant to tell a much larger, more eternal story than that.

Paul hits on this in Ephesians 5:31-33, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.  Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband."  Paul, as we often have done in this blog, goes back to Genesis and the Creation narrative to defend a sacred view of marriage.  Then we find this interesting phrase, "This is a great mystery."  The idea of "mystery" is used in the New Testament on a few occasions, and it is usually used to describe something that at one point was unknown but has since been revealed.

It is like watching a detective TV show, at the beginning we are presented with a mystery, and by the end of the hour, our heroes have solved the case.  What Paul is saying, is that there was something covered up about marriage, but now, it is being made known to us.  He is also saying that while there are new things being revealed about marriage, there are aspects of it that will continue to be unknown until we get to Heaven.

What is this mystery that Paul is talking about?  Some of this we have already discussed in previous posts, that is, that marriage is a running theme throughout Scripture and is symbolic of how God relates to his chosen people, either in the people of Israel or in the church.  Marriage is a message, revealing something of the nature of God and how he relates to his people.

Paul is teaching that the key purpose of men and women coming together in holy matrimony is to reflect the relationship between Christ and the church, and how God relates to the church shows us how our marriages should work.

It is something like a blueprint.  We can understand a great deal about a building looking at a blueprint, and looking at a building helps us understand the meaning of the blueprint.

Marriage is not just about the relationship between a man and woman.  It is an image of something much larger.

The ritual of the Lord's Supper, or Communion, functions in a similar fashion.  The bread represents the body of Christ, and the wine represents his blood.  As we partake, we are remembering his death, burial, and resurrection.  It is a sacred and holy practice and rightfully practiced brings us closer to God and allows us to better serve him.  There is a spiritual reality that is revealed through the Lord's Supper, something divine is transmitted into us and through us.  When we practice the Lord's Supper, we are re-enacting the Gospel with our bodies.

Marriage serves a similar function, it is a holy, sacred, and symbolic thing.  It is meant to showcase something much more than we typically think.  When we discuss marriage, we are treading on holy ground, and we should be careful.

It is good to keep in mind that when we consider marriage, we are looking at it from the traditional perspective, between a biological male and a biological female.  Just as the bread and the wine both symbolize specific things in the Lord's Supper, our bodies in their unique genders play a vital role in the symbolism God has in mind and we cannot do away with the genders without doing away with this symbol. 

Our bodies as uniquely male and female, when joined together in the marital union are symbolic of the eternal, sacrificial, faithful love Christ has expressed for the church in his death, burial, and resurrection.  When a husband and wife become one flesh, this images the union the believer shares with Christ.  Christ's love is a sacred, covenantal love, and so should the love be within a marriage.  Just as the Lord's Supper is practiced regularly in order to honor and remember the Crucifixion, the sexual union becomes a renewal ceremony, honoring the sacred, covenantal love of the Lord for the church.  Making love is not just about the passion a man and woman share with each other, it is a symbol of the passionate love God has for the church.  Sex and marriage are meant to declare the eternal truth of the Gospel.

God invites us to find sexual gratification in the arms of our husbands and wives and this is a good thing.  But more than that, sex is about eternity.  It is about declaring the faithful, covenantal love that God has for us.  This is why purity is so important.  This is why we need to stay faithful to our spouses.  Every time a man and woman become one flesh, they are performing a sacred ritual that is symbolic of God's infinite love.