Explaining God’s Gift of Sex
by Drenda Keesee
Following are some of the discussions I shared with my children and encourage you to have about God’s gift of sex with your youth. By the way, abstaining from premarital sex is not just for girls, but God gives His Word to young men for their best, too.
The marriage act is awesome and beautiful. God made sex. He is not a prude, and He is not trying to hurt you or keep you from fun by telling you to save sex only for marriage. There are important reasons to keep sex for marriage. Sex is so much more than two people sharing an act. Sex is a gift from a loving God who made us male and female. He gave us this gift, and we give it to our future spouse.
He gave us the opportunity to share in the creation of a child, which is also the highest purpose for marriage according to Malachi 2:15, “Why did God make the two one because he sought a godly seed.” Having sex with multiple people is an attack on God’s plan for children and family life, as is evidenced by the brokenness in our culture today.
When two people have sex together, they are becoming “one” physically, but also one in a spiritual union as well. Sex is a spiritual act as well as a physical act. The act of sex creates a phenomenal bond to be shared at the highest level of closeness and intimacy with one person for a lifetime. It is an act of gift-giving to each other. Sex is not just for the pleasure of one person or the other, but it should be a mutually enjoyable exchange for both male and female.
When people share this bond with several people…
…it makes the act become common. It damages the intimacy a person is able to experience by hardening a person’s heart. It hurts each person and creates wounds so deep in the heart that no psychologist can unravel the pain (God can, however). People who have multiple sex partners wrestle to stay in lifelong marriages. Statistically, those who have multiple sex partners or premarital sex have a much greater incidence of divorce. If a person struggles to honor marriage by exercising personal restraint before marriage, they will most likely struggle to stay committed and exercise personal restraint once married.
Both single persons and married persons have to exercise self-control and discipline to remain faithful. Being married doesn’t mean you will not have temptations to be unfaithful after marriage, so start learning self-control by God’s Spirit now as a single person.
Sex is the seal of a marriage covenant. Covenants are not contracts. A contract is easily torn up or broken, but covenants are not. In a contract, two people agree to be in the relationship until the other person does something they don’t like, but in a covenant, both parties agree to hold up their end whether or not the other party does. God made a covenant with us when He sent Jesus to save us from our sin. When we accept Him as our Savior, we enter into a blood covenant. His blood covers our sin.
Marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman that God joins together. Jesus said, “What God has joined together, let no man separate.” God is the witness to the covenant commitment between couples on their wedding day. The Bible says that God acts as a witness between you and your covenant partner.
Sex is the consummation or the physical oath to that covenant, which is a lot more serious than a one-night stand or the casual attitude our world has about sex! Regardless of how a person chooses to change this view or definition does not change God’s view.
God says that marriage is a mystery or allegory that models the relationship between Christ and the Church. Jesus made a covenant with His blood, shedding it to lay His life down for us, to redeem us, to make us holy. We received His perfect record, and He bore our mistakes and our less-than-perfect record by giving Himself up for us on the cross. This is how a man should love his wife, laying his life down to protect and provide for her, and the wife should respond with her respect and honor.
This makes the instruction to couples clearer from Ephesians 5:25–33 ESV:
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Sex is a holy act to God, and therefore should be to us as well. It is a celebration of marriage and a gift of joy. When a man gives himself to his wife and she gives herself to him sexually, the penis penetrates her hymen (in the vagina) and causes a small shedding of blood. Many believe that this shedding of blood is yet another symbolic portrayal of Christ shedding His blood, giving Himself for the church. Jesus was willing to die for His church, and a husband is to love his wife with this same kind of giving, covenant love.
This may help us understand in a greater way why there’s so much attack to dishonor the plan of marriage and to desecrate the holy beauty of sex. A Focus on the Family post, “Reflecting Our Relationship with God” by David Kyle Foster11, has this to say:
And so we see why Satan is so intent in defacing and destroying human sexuality and marriage. He is trying to mock God. He is trying to mar the very image of God expressed on this earth through the marital bond, sexual and otherwise. He is trying to rob God of His deepest and most passionate intention—that of marital union with man—because if he can destroy the beauty of the earthly bond, he can destroy in us any desire for the heavenly bond.
You and I, and every believer, were created to live in marital union with God, both now and in the age to come. Everything about a healthy marital union on this earthly plane has been designed by God to be a reflection of the interaction that we are meant to have with God Himself:
- the covenant that is struck to bind us together eternally;
- the signs and symbols of that covenant that are a public declaration of that bond;
- the keeping pure of oneself for the other;
- the wedding party, with a host of invited guests looking on, rejoicing in the display of our mutual love and affection;
- intimate moments of sharing our deepest self with the other, resulting in new life being born and a oneness of body, soul, and spirit;
- over time, the development of a oneness of heart that produces a unity of thinking, and even, appearance (Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18; 1 John 3:2—“when He appears, we shall be like Him”).
The parallels are endless.
In sharing this concept of purity with youth, it is important to share that the same blood that Christ shed for our sins can cleanse us of any impurities and sins we may have committed in the area of sexual immorality. If you or your young person has messed up in this area or another, it is in no way God’s desire for you to feel condemned. We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s best in one way or another. The only thing that can cleanse and restore us is God’s love and Jesus’ sacrifice for our lives. Receive His transformational love and power in your life, marriage, and relationships. Let God restore what Satan has attempted to steal in your life or that of your child. Always extend love and mercy to your child. God’s love is greater than any error. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
As parents, our greatest desire is to spare our children pain and to aid them in making good decisions before they would fall into a well-laid trap of the culture that is attempting to drive an agenda using children as pawns. Even the strongest of families struggle to be watchful over the sexually charged deluge of messages, and some families have fallen into unsuspecting error. These errors can occur if we present life and sexual intimacy from a legalistic standpoint, creating rebellion in the strong-willed or fear in the timid. Your intent should never be to incite fear in a child, but instead to create a vision for something greater. A child can more easily say yes to eating broccoli if they know dessert is coming! The law of sin and death brings death, but the law of life in Christ Jesus brings freedom.
Give your children a picture of the gift of marriage and the why to save sexual intimacy for their future mate. I do believe this also includes an understanding of honoring God and His design. That vision should start in our own homes and how we treat our marriage.
~Drenda
ps…Are you looking for a good church? Be sure and listen on Saturday evening or catch the 3 services on Sunday for Faith Life Church!
*Excerpt from “The New Vintage Family” by Drenda Keesee
Drenda Keesee’s contagious zeal and humorous personal experiences help make her ministry of spiritual, emotional, and relational wholeness one that will bless your life and spark a new fire in your spirit.
A wife of over 30 years and a mother of five children, Drenda has ministered at churches, seminars, and conferences, and through the mediums of television and radio, for more than 20 years.
Her books, The New Vintage Family, Better Than You Think, and She Gets It are available wherever books are sold. In these heartfelt books, Drenda shares her personal journey and the life lessons that have brought her to where she is today, as well as practical answers that all people need to live a joyful life.
Drenda and her husband Gary founded Faith Life Now, a ministry designed to spread the message of freedom in the areas of finances, faith, marriage, and family. Tune in for their weekly messages here. Faith Life Now hosts conferences worldwide and sponsors both Fixing the Money Thing, which Drenda co-hosts with her husband Gary and Drenda.
Through their own life experiences, the Keesee’s have found the principles from God’s Word to be powerful and effective. At one point, Drenda was a young, suicidal feminist with no hope of ever being “good enough” for her own standards of perfection. She never wanted the “inconvenience” of a husband or children, and she was on her own path to success. But the stress of trying to achieve perfection and perform for love left her broken and used. She had success, but it was nothing compared to the pain and loneliness it had also brought.
That’s when God got a hold of her heart. It was there—at her lowest point—that she found the One who accepted and loved her, faults and all. Since that transformation, Drenda has had a passion to reach women who find themselves where she once was.
She married Gary after attending college, and there she found herself in a personal boot camp of sorts. She says, “I cried and told God, ‘I can do anything but be a wife and mother.’” She committed to learning how to do it God’s way. Through the many years of raising their children and struggling to make ends meet, Drenda learned from their mistakes. “I didn’t know how to be a wife and mother, but God saved our marriage, taught us how to parent our children for success, showed us how to have financial success, and then the irony of all ironies, He called us to ministry.” It’s truly because of these life experiences that Drenda can now share so many insightful principles for people who are now going through the same struggles.
