Real Marriage_ The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together - Mark Driscoll [59]
God then established a threefold process as the pattern and precedent for marriage that both Jesus and Paul quoted in their teachings. First, a guy needs to grow up by moving out of his parents’ house, paying his own bills, worshipping his God, and taking care of himself. Second, a man is then able to pursue a noble woman in a noble way. The truth is that guys want to have sex, and the Bible teaches that sex is for men and not for boys and calls them to only have sex as husbands with their wives. Third, as husband and wife, a man and woman are to become “one flesh.” In consummating their marriage, a husband and wife become “one” in a way that is akin to God the Father, Son, and Spirit being “one.” Curiously, this threefold process is exactly the opposite of our culture of hook up, shack up, and break up.
The Bible then records sex that is “very good,” saying, “They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”a
Sex was good. God was glorified.
From the opening pages of the Bible, we learn seven sex essentials.
One, God created us male and female in His image and likeness with dignity, equality, value, and worth. Men and women are different and complement one another.
Two, love is more like a song than a math equation. It requires a sense of poetry and passion to be any good at it, which is why people who are stuck in their heads struggle and are frustrated by it, and lovers prefer songs to syllogisms.
Third, marriage is for one man and one woman by God’s design. This is the consistent teaching of the Bible from the table of contents to the appendix and the teaching of Jesus Christ Himself.
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Fourth, God created sex. God made our bodies “very good” with “male and female” parts and pleasures. When our first parents consummated their covenant, God was not shocked or horrified, because He created our bodies for sex. The reason that sex is fun, pleasurable, and wonderful is because it is a reflection of the loving goodness of God, who created it as a gift for us to steward and enjoy.
Fifth, sex outside of marriage is a sin. Sinful sex includes homosexuality, erotica, bestiality, bisexuality, fornication, friends with benefits, adultery, swinging, prostitution, incest, rape, polygamy, polyandry, sinful lust, pornography, and pedophilia. For married people, the following sexual acts with anyone other than your spouse qualify as sin: masturbating someone else, oral sex, anal sex, heavy petting, dry humping, cybersex, and phone sex. In the New Testament, the Greek word porneia (from which we get the word pornography) is translated into English as “sexual immorality” and encompasses all sorts of sexual sins. It is frequently used as a junk drawer in which every sort of perversion is thrown because people are prone to invent new ways of doing evil.
Sixth, sex is to be done in such a way that there is no shame. Many people experience shame in regard to sex. Sometimes shame is a gift from God in response to our sexual sin, sometimes it is the devastating feeling we bear because we have been sexually sinned against, and other times we have not sinned or been sinned against sexually but feel shame because we have wrong thinking and feelings about sex in general, or a sex act in particular.
Seventh, your standard of beauty is your spouse. Of all the principles we have shared with people around the world regarding sex, this is perhaps the one we get the strongest positive response to. And it alone could save many marriages. God made one man and one woman. He did not ask them if they wanted someone tall or short, light or heavy, pale or dark skinned, with long or short hair. In short, He did not permit them to develop a standard of beauty. Instead, He gave them each a spouse as a standard of beauty.
One of our culture’s powerful lies—fueled by pornography, sinful lust, and marketing—is that having a standard of beauty is in