#007: Biblical Sexuality Part 1 - Our Bodies Tell God’s Story

Welcome to the Courage Reclaim podcast, where our mission is to help Christian men break free from what holds them back, fall madly in love with Jesus, and become the leaders he's called and created us to be.

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My friends, sex has played a major role in my life, not only because, as the book will dive into today, says, quote, every human being is the end result of thousands upon thousands of indispensable sexual unions. But because sexual brokenness in the form of porn addiction also became the primary area, I cried out to God. I ultimately questioned his character. I derived my value based on my addiction. It was sexual brokenness that almost cost me my marriage, my life, and possibly my salvation. Yet nothing is beyond God's ability to redeem. Healing from sexual brokenness is now something that draws me more intimately close to God. It's drawn me and my wife closer than we ever would have been without the struggle. And it's formed the basis for most of my deep relationships in life. Where I once saw selfishness, shame, and guilt associated with sex, I now see God's design, his goodness, and his character. I want to give this gift to you. Today we'll begin a series on biblical sexuality based on Christopher West's book Our Bodies Tell God's Story Discovering the Divine Plan for love, sex, and gender.

Let's dive right in.

Christopher West starts by sharing that our bodies, created by God are good and intentional.

He says, "The body is not only biological since we're made in the image of God as male and female. The body is also theological. It tells an astounding divine story, and it does so precisely through the mystery of sexual difference and the call for the two to become one flesh. That means that when we get the body and sex wrong, we get the divine story wrong as well."

God designed sex, and by extension, marriage as two distinct entities uniting as one. When Ephesians five talks about marriage being a representative for Christ and the church, Paul is conveying that just as the woman's body is designed to receive a man's, so the church is called and designed to receive Christ. That is the essence of the marriage supper of the lamb, which we'll get into more later on. But this isn't always how the church acts, nor how we behave. Satan seeks at all times to distract us and fill us with desires outside of how God designed.

Christopher West goes on to say, "But the devil is a creature, not a creator, and this means the devil does not have his own clay. All he can do is take God's clay, which is always very good, and twist it, distort it. That is what evil is the twisting or distortion of good. Redemption, therefore, involves the untwisting of what sin and evil have twisted, so we can recover the true good."

God created sex and marriage to reflect his passionate love for his people. Satan may try to convince us that our sinful desires are part of our identity, but God is a God who can and will redeem if we submit our desires to him.

To summarize in quoting Christopher West, "The incarnation of Jesus affirms the body's original goodness. The death of Jesus reminds us of its need for redemption, and the resurrection of Jesus gives us hope for its restoration."

Growing up, I saw Christians lack of engagement in discussion about sex to imply that Christians didn't find it important. Culture, on the other hand, discussed it endlessly. A quote from chapter one that had a significant impact on my perspective on this is, "The problem with the sexual revolution was not that it overvalued sex, but that it failed to see how astoundingly valuable it really is."

This completely changed my perspective, because just because society may engage with sex and sexual things more often doesn't actually convey that it has more value. It could be argued that they treat it more like animals as impulsive actions, as opposed to engaging in the deeper meaning that God has created behind it. So where does this value actually come from, if not from frequency in engaging from it?

Christopher West says, "The Bible tells a marital story. It begins in Genesis with the marriage of the first man and woman, and it ends in revelation with the marriage of Christ and the church. And these spousal bookends provide the key to understanding all that lies between. Indeed, we can summarize all of Sacred Scripture with five simple yet astounding words. God wants to marry us."

I never heard the gospel conveyed so shortly and succinctly. "God wants to marry us", his broken and rebellious people. What about the erotic love poetry?

Christopher West says "The greatest saints in history have understood the erotic love poetry of Song of Songs to be erotic love poetry, which expresses the very essence of biblical faith. Not only does God love us, he loves us so utterly that he has wed himself to us forever in Jesus Christ. The Bible calls it the wedding of the lamb", as is seen in revelation 19:7. 

God doesn't just kinda like you. He loves you desperately and passionately. He literally died so he could marry you. And that is what erotic sex is meant to convey. My friends, this has been in the works since the beginning. Genesis 224 says, that is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife that they may become one flesh.

Christopher West dives into this by saying, "How does Genesis 2:24 refer to Christ and the church? Christ, the new Adam left his father in heaven. He also left the home of his mother on earth (by being born of her). Why? To give up his own body for his bride, who is the church, so that she might enter into Holy Communion with him."

Holy communion meaning deep intimate relationship. All of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation is all about Christ's passionate, undying, reckless love for you, His church. I'm going to close out this episode by sharing a couple of direct quotes, one after another before closing out.

Christopher West says, "Make no mistake. When all the smoke is cleared and all the distortions are untwisted, the deepest meaning and purpose of human sexuality is to point us to the wedding supper of the lamb. In other words, God created us, male and female, right from the beginning to live in a Holy Communion that foreshadows the Holy Communion of Christ and the church. And this is precisely why questions of marriage and sexuality place us right in the center of the situation in which the powers of good and evil fight against each other."

And he goes on to say, "Ponder this for a moment. If the union of the sexes is the original sign in this world of our call to union with God, and if there is an enemy who wants to separate us from God, where do you think he's going to aim his most poisonous arrows? If we want to know what is most sacred in this world, all we need to do is look for where is most violently profaned."

He then says, "As the source of the family and life itself, the union of the sexes is placed at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love."

He goes on, "When sexual union is oriented toward love and life, it builds families and in turn, cultures that live the truth of love and life. When it is oriented against love and life, sexual behavior breeds death. What we can grimly yet accurately describe as a culture of death."

He then closes by saying, "When pleasure is the main goal of sex people become the means and babies become the obstacle. So we can take our pleasure and we kill our offspring. This is not some dire prediction of an apocalyptic future. This is the culture we live in. A culture of death."

My friend, if you are burdened by sexual brokenness, please know your ultimate enemy is the devil himself who is twisted. God's good gift, meant to show you his intimate love as a means of driving you far from God. He is capable of healing and redeeming, and desperately longs to draw you ever closer to himself