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"In our backyard we have fruit trees and grape vines. Waiting for the fruit to ripen on the branch or the vine is hard during the late days of summer and early days of fall. However, the tartness of a not quite ripe grape is usually enough to keep me from picking the fruit before its time. I cannot tell you how many times I have gazed longingly upon a plum-colored grape, bursting with juice and thought, “Now it’s time,” and picked it, only to spit it out in disgust because it just wasn’t ready to be harvested. We manage to do the same thing with sex. There it is, hanging on the vine, just ready to be plucked off and enjoyed. Our greedy fingers grab hold of it, consume it, and then spew it onto the ground, ruining the sweetness of what we might have known had we only waited. We rob ourselves of the sweetness that comes from the rush of that first kiss or the nerve-tingling excitement of that first embrace. Physical intimacy before marriage deprives us of the ultimate pleasure of that first bite.
God wants us to enjoy the intimacies
of sex within the protective walls of a covenant relationship. Instead, we have
traded the perfect for the passing pleasure of the moment and are suffering the
consequences. Sex binds people in a way that nothing else can, and it also has
the power to break people when it is abused.
That is why God is so clear about sexual immorality and marriage. There are no gray areas. This is not one of those “disputable”
matters. God has a plan, and the purpose
of that plan is to protect marriages and His covenant relationship with
believers.
Many times throughout the Bible, the relationship between the church (believers) and Christ is compared to a marriage. Isaiah 62:5b says, “as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.” In Matthew 25, Jesus told the parable of the ten virgins, comparing His return to the bridegroom. Again, in Mark 2, Jesus refers to Himself as the bridegroom, and one of the clearest descriptions of the church as the bride of Christ is given in Revelation 19.
Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:22-23,
that the relationship between Christ and the church is a “profound
mystery.” However, through the covenant
of marriage, we can begin to understand that union. Marriage teaches us how to love
unconditionally and how to sacrifice self for the sake of another. It teaches us respect and commitment. Through marriage we can begin to understand
true intimacy, an internal knowledge, a oneness that can only be experienced
within the union of marriage. By
understanding this bond, we can better appreciate the connection we have with
Christ and how He sacrificed Himself to bring us into the beautiful
relationship we have with our God. Jesus
Christ was the unblemished sacrifice—the only offering pure enough to die in
our place and cover us with His righteousness.
The blood of the purest Lamb brought us into covenant relationship. He
committed one hundred percent. We were
His only love. He never courted any
other. He waited until the perfect time,
and then He gave all He had to give.
That is to be our model of marriage.
Ask yourself this, what would Jesus’
sacrifice upon the cross mean had He been defiled in any way? What if He had entered into the covenant
relationship with a past full of lust-filled fantasies and sexual
impurity? I am not saying that Jesus
wasn’t fully man. He was, and as a man,
He was a sexual being. He appreciated a
beautiful woman just as much as any man does.
However, He never desired a woman in an unhealthy, ungodly fashion. He never lusted. If He had given in to any temptation,
including impure thoughts, it would have disqualified Him to be the Messiah,
the Lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice suitable to die in our place and cover
our sins. Do you see how coming into a
covenant relationship defiled can fracture a bond before it is even made?
Satan knows how damaging premarital
sex and impurity in thought and action are, more so than we will ever
know. He knows that if marriages lose
their value, our relationship with God loses its value. He knows that if he can attack the first
union established by God, all others will fall apart too, including the most
important one we have—that with God. We
no longer value purity, holiness, what it means to be consecrated for God’s
use; in fact, we really do not even know what these words mean anymore. They have been redefined and
secularized. Even the word “marriage”
has been reinterpreted by our society so many times that we are no longer clear
as to what it stands for. And the attack
continues to this day. Sexual impurity
is Satan’s ace in the hole. He
understands what this means; he gets the significance. Why can’t we?
Premarital sex and impure sexual
desires cheapen sex inside of marriage.
The beauty of what God has in store is stolen. God created sex and the way He planned it is
far better than any cheap, X-rated film—better than even the most romantic
movie Hollywood can imagine. It is more
pleasurable than the lust-driven, heat-of-the-moment romps portrayed in every
soap opera with the perfectly chiseled male and exquisitely beautiful,
well-proportioned blonde. It is finer
than the photo shopped, airbrushed images in a magazine. It is even more exciting than forbidden love
because it is not associated with guilt.
There is no bitter aftertaste that stays with you robbing you of the sweetness
of true sexual pleasure that satisfies with tenderness rather than
tension. That is how God designed
it. Why are we letting our sex-saturated
culture snatch this away from us with its cheap, counterfeit version? And we wonder why our marriages lack intimacy
and are falling apart at record rates?
We have bought into a terrible lie.
The world’s offering to engage in sexual sin has turned physical
intimacy into a form of self-indulgent, pleasure seeking entertainment. The value of love-making has been lost.
The reason our marriages lack physical
intimacy is because sex shouldn’t be an act of self-gratification and intense
passion the way it is portrayed on television and on the big screen. It should be a moment of considerate, tender
love-making. There should only be two
people involved and not a host of memories clouding the moment and stealing the
heart. When you have had physical
encounters with people other than your spouse, it can be difficult to keep your
mind in the moment and not fantasize about what it was like when you were
single and sex was thrilling.
Love-making may not be “thrilling;” it may be quite comfortable. There should be a familiarity and ease about
it. It has a different sort of
“excitement”; an excitement that is healthy and causes our affections to grow
stronger and more sensitive to the needs of our spouse. That is how God designed it. And there is something delightful about the
lack of intensity."
