On “having sex”

At a seminar I attended a few years back, Peter J Williams, Principal of Tyndale House, Cambridge, gave an enlightening comment on the expression “having sex”. He said the expression was not used before the late 1950’s. When you think about the way these words are formulated, you can compare them with similar expressions such as, “having a great holiday”, of “having a good breakfast”; on the negative side you could talk about “having a bad night out”, or having a headache. Think about that way of formulating those words: the word “having” – whether something enjoyable or distressing – underlines essentially the self-centredness of one’s assessment.

Now when it comes to sexual union, selfishness should, ideally, have no place; in former times it was modestly referred to as “the act of love”. To speak self-centredly of “having sex” is a very degrading way of referring to the highest and purest experience of love between a man and his wife at the most intimate level. It debases that which is to be highly honoured into the satisfying of a rather base appetite.

I believe God made humans as sexual beings. It’s right there on page 1 of the Bible. But why, you may ask, did God give us humans such a powerful sexual appetite? Why did he link sex with such deep pleasure? Was he not putting a potent temptation in the human heart?

When you refer to page 1 of Genesis, you read God’s strong encouragement to the man and the woman he had made, to “have sex”. He didn’t use those words, of course; he said, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Genesis 1.28). In other words, have children! (That would evidently involve sexual union). We may conclude that God gave humans the pleasurable sexual instinct so that they may be motivated to have families. God’s plan for maximum sexual happiness is spelt out in those first three chapters of Genesis. God instituted marriage by creating Eve when Adam was all alone; God brought her to him, expounding his first principle of marriage: “the man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall be one flesh” (i.e. be united sexually).

When Jesus was teaching on this theme, he added “they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19.6). This is why adultery is condemned in the Ten Commandments and throughout the Bible. “Marriage should be honoured by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral” (Hebrews 13.4). 

This is the Master plan for “good sex” – sex without guilt. Those who are conscious of having sinned in the area of sex often suffer the psychological pain of deep, repressed guilt: however, they can know that God is able both to forgive and wipe away all the transgressions of the past, sexual as well as others. God can renew the heart and mind of repentant believers in Christ so that as they commit to honour God’s guidelines, they can overcome temptation in this area.

Those who follow biblical wisdom experience the very best way to fulfilment in the area of sex. The Christian perspective also shows the way to deeper, more spiritual pleasures: to do the will of God in all areas of our lives, not just the sexual, is the way to true human fulfilment. The profound spiritual joy of maintaining a cleansed well-taught conscience is priceless! By the grace of God, I can testify to this myself.

Clive Every-Clayton