The first page of the Bible gives us much key information, vital for our personal self-understanding. A lot of unnecessary stress and confusion results from the inability to grasp the biblical basis for our identity and reality.

Some of that confusion has to do with our sexuality. Abandoning the sound basis of the Creator’s wisdom and guidelines leads human sexuality into all sorts of distortion, immorality, abuse, and perversion. Without the Bible’s light, human efforts have proved to be totally unable to invent better moral guidelines for their sexual behaviour.

The Bible’s foundational truth that God made humans “male and female” is no banal statement: it is one of immense importance. It means, to begin with, that men are not women. That was obvious all along, of course, but now it has scientific basis: God created the two sexes with different chromosomes that distinguish them from each other. There is an essential biological difference between the sexes. 

When God designed the human body, he made a distinction between the male and the female body. The woman’s body is unique in its capacity for giving birth to babies; the male body has the unique capacity of impregnating the female. God’s design is blatantly obvious in the way the sexual organs of the two sexes complement each other in sexual union. It is in this way that God planned for new human beings to come into existence. Indeed, his words of encouragement and blessing, right from the start in Genesis 1.28, indicate his plan for his human creatures to enjoy an intimate sexual relationship with a partner of the opposite sex, with a view to having children. That is not the only reason for sexual intimacy in marriage: it is also blessed as a means of expressing love between the couple.

The Creator and Designer of sex had a wise purpose in view – so his creatures would enjoy the blessing of his gift of sexuality as they follow his instructions.

Unsurprisingly, throughout the Bible, sins like adultery, homosexuality, prostitution, fornication, and other forms of sexual immorality are proscribed. These acts deviate from God’s will and purpose for his creatures, and they bring upon those who practice them a lot of dysfunction physically, emotionally, and psychologically. They also separate offenders spiritually from God’s blessing and cut them off from the highest human fulfilment God wants for them.

  How blessed, by contrast, are those who, following the Maker’s instructions, remain chaste before marriage and faithful within marriage! This is how sex was supposed to be enjoyed – free from all the fearful and harmful hang-ups that come from immoral behaviour.

Sexual temptations, the seductions of our uncontrolled desire, the weakness of our resistance to sin, and the pressures of an immoral society, are such that many fall into sexual misconduct and find sex to be a source of suffering. The number of cases of gonorrhoea has never been so high in the UK since statistics were first kept. Other sexually transmitted diseases cause people serious harm. Those abused and mistreated become bolder to go public with their sad stories. Too many broken marriages bring desolation and psychological stress to too many children. Couples just living together enjoy less peaceful trust that their relationship shall endure. And all who in any way fall into immorality have to manage somehow the guilt feelings that cause profound psychological distress, sometimes so deep in their subconscious they are scarcely discerned.

While God can forgive sexual sin, he would rather spare them from such agony, if only they paid heed to his instructions.

Clive Every-Clayton