What Does the Bible Say About Sex and Marriage?

Two failures are common here, and they are opposite.

One is to say nothing, because the subject is awkward.

The other is to say it with contempt.

Scripture does neither.

Sex is God's idea, and He is not embarrassed by it.

It was not a concession or an accident.

It appears in the account of creation, before anything has gone wrong, and it is called good.

An entire book of the Bible is love poetry between a husband and wife.

Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.

Honourable, and undefiled. That is Scripture's own vocabulary for it.

Any presentation of Christianity that treats sex as dirty has contradicted the text it claims to follow.

The design is one man and one woman, for life.

Genesis states it before any law is given.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Three things are packed into that sentence: leaving, a public and permanent joining, and becoming one flesh.

The physical union is the last of the three, not the first, and it is placed inside the other two.

Jesus went back to Genesis when He was asked.

He was questioned about divorce, and He answered by quoting the design.

Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female… Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

He did not treat marriage as a social arrangement that each generation reworks.

He treated it as something built into creation.

Everything outside that, Scripture puts outside the design.

This is where the honest reading gets uncomfortable, and softening it would be dishonest.

Scripture names sex before marriage, adultery, and homosexual practice as sin. It also names greed, drunkenness, slander, theft, and swindling in the very same list.

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers… Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

Notice the company that list keeps. Nobody reads it and walks away innocent.

It is not a list of other people.

Why Scripture treats this as its own kind of serious.

Paul makes a distinction here that he makes nowhere else.

Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

The reason follows immediately, and it is not about shame.

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

Bought with a price. The argument is not that your body is disgusting. It is that it is not yours, and that it is holy ground.

And such were some of you.

This is the sentence that must not be left off, because Paul did not leave it off.

Immediately after that list, he writes this.

And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

Were.

He is writing to a church in a city famous for exactly these things, and telling them the past tense is real.

There is no sexual history that puts a person beyond Christ. None.

So what does the Bible say about sex and marriage?

That God made it, gave it a setting, and meant the setting.

One man, one woman, publicly joined, for life.

That everything outside that is a departure — said plainly, and said about a list that indicts everybody.

And that the door is open to anyone who wants to come home.

A high standard and an open door. Scripture holds both, and so should anyone quoting it.