#009: Biblical Sexuality Part 3 - The Fall & Redemption of Sex

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.

—

We start today talking about "eros", a Greek word for love that denotes pursuit and passion, oftentimes sexual. In Christopher West's book Our Bodies Tell God's Story, he says, "Because of sin, eros is often expressed as a base human impulse that drags us down toward what is false, twisted, and ugly. Christ comes to restore Eros as the upward impulse of the human spirit toward what is good and beautiful."

See, Eros and really all forms of love were preexistent to the fall, and therefore are in essence good. However, as we have discussed in previous episodes, just because God created it to be good doesn't mean that it still is good in all of its manifestations. Because Satan is a master manipulator, he's one to thwart the clay that God has created and called good. And so sexual passion isn't bad. God created it. But living in a broken world, we all feel the effects of sexual brokenness due to original sin, lust, addiction, betrayal, abuse, assault, avoiding sex with spouse, improper views of sex, gender, marriage. In case we think our sin is less bad than others. Jesus says to take the log out of our own eye. We all experience a level of sexual brokenness in this fallen world and approaching the topic of sin with any more assurance than complete humility is utter hypocrisy.

Christopher West says "The homosexual inclination, as one example, is just one in a long list of inclinations that stem from our fallen conditions. While it's true that these inclinations are inherited with our fallen humanity and not chosen, it's equally true that we can choose whether to foster or to fight these inclinations. We're all called to the spiritual battle involved in following Christ. We are all called to the purification and healing of our desires. This entails discipline and self-denial, but it's a discipline that's authentically liberating and constructive, not repressive and destructive."

See, sex is meant to be a celebration of covenant unity with the spouse of the opposite sex, as a picture of the marriage between Christ and His church, as is portrayed in revelation in the Marriage Supper of the lamb. All sexual brokenness in our nature is heartbreaking, but as we'll get into later, those struggling with same sex attraction are not without hope of love and intimacy. And this is one reason that I'm actually grateful for the struggle that I have had with addiction, where I came to the realization at one point that I cannot fix myself, and it gave me a whole nother level of compassion for those who struggle with same sex attraction. Again, just the feeling of hopelessness to escape the desires that we have and desperately wanting for God to change those desires.

Christopher West goes on to say, "By taking proper account of the beginning, the fall, and the redemption, a biblically sound theology of the body saves us from the strong temptation of normalizing our brokenness as if God made us that way. It's okay that we're broken. Everyone is. God loves us right there and comes to meet us right there. But it's not okay to call our brokenness health. So long as we do, we remain closed to God's remedy. Like a sick man who sees no need for a doctor because he refuses to admit that he's ill." God desires to allow us to experience intimate relationship with him, but this can only happen when we fully submit our brokenness to him.

He says, "The passion of lust is one thing and the passion of imaging and expressing divine love is another. The former is like an untrained person banging recklessly on a piano, making meaningless noise. The latter is like a professional musician who sits at the piano and makes music that lifts our souls to the heavens. The former takes zero discipline. The latter takes a lifetime. Everyone is called to love divinely." See, sex is meant to be a celebration of the unity between two people. Just like the celebration of the unity between Christ and His church. If our primary focus is self-serving, it will never be what it could possibly be.

Contrary to what culture says. Christopher West says, "In reality, lust is a reduction of the original fullness God intended for erotic desire. We don't get more when we lust." We get much less. I can tell you from personal experience, lust never satisfies because it's not what we actually long for. We long for being deeply known and loved. We long to be one with another. Marriage and sex are symbols. They're images of Christ's love and unity with his church. As with any symbol, it can easily be turned into an idol. What we actually crave deeper than sexual and marital union with another person, what our soul actually yearns for, whether we know it or not, is this deep, intimate love and unity with Christ. What this means for those called to singleness is that they are not getting short changed. In fact, they can skip the symbolism and can jump straight into the thing the symbol represents. One thing that I found incredibly fascinating and mind blowing from this chapter in Christopher West's book is he talks about how in creation, God gave his breath of life. At the moment they ate Adam and Eve, they spiritually died, no longer having God's Spirit or breath within them. That's why between Genesis three and acts in the New Testament, Scripture says, in different times the spirit came upon so and so. And David pleaded with God not to take his spirit away from him.

See, the natural state of God's Spirit was not indwelling of humanity because that unity had been broken. So the purpose of sex was to image God's unity with people back at creation. But after the fall, they no longer had unity with God. And so lust was born. But come act, we see, after Christ's redemptive work of his people, of his creation, what we see is the outpouring of God's Spirit upon anyone who will accept him as their Lord and Savior, who will accept his redeeming work in their life. And that's why now, this side of Christ's death and resurrection, we can have the Spirit of God living within us. One passage in Scripture I want to direct our attention specifically to is Matthew 5:27, the sermon on the Mount. You have heard it said that you shall not commit adultery. But Jesus says, I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. What's interesting if we break down this verse, the first statement, the commandment is God sharing how he is and therefore what it takes to measure up. Jesus is sharing in the second statement that the problem isn't that they aren't legalistic enough. He's saying the root problem is that you desire this in the first place. My friends, this is why Jesus came to save us from the root problem of our sin nature. This is also why Christ ascended and gave us His Spirit.

He finished the work of paying the price of original sin And sent His spirit that we may enter back into deep, intimate love and unity with God. Christopher West says, "The gospel doesn't give us more rules to follow. The gospel is meant to change our hearts so that we no longer need the rules to the degree that we experience this change of heart. We experience what the Bible calls freedom from the law, not freedom to break the law. Freedom to fulfill it." My friends, I can tell you from first hand experience that the more I've leaned into Christ and His plan for sex and experienced healing, the less I desire or even think about porn addiction that used to ensnare me daily. While at first I needed endless boundaries to keep me from sin, now I need far fewer.

He closes the chapter by saying, "Here's a question we can ask ourselves to determine where our hearts still need to be liberated. What laws do we still need? What laws feel like a burden or imposition? Perhaps the problem is not with the law, but with our own hardness of heart. If this is where we find ourselves, the solution is not to toss out the law. The solution is to surrender our disordered desires to Christ and let him transform them."

This strikes a nerve. Early in recovery, I was not taking my sin seriously. Eventually, to protect herself, my wife needed to impose boundaries on me and I fought them. My heart was remarkably hard. Now I'm the one that's imposing boundaries on myself because I desperately want to walk in integrity.

I'll close with this quote from C.S. Lewis, who correctly states, "Lust is a weak, poor, whimpering, whispering thing compared to the richness and energy and desire which will arise when lust has been killed."

My friends, I know the draw to lust. It is remarkably alluring, but I cannot tell you with enough fervor that the love and intimacy and unity that comes by allowing the Spirit of God to stomp out our lusts as we work together with His Spirit. Oh my goodness, it is absolutely worth it And in case you're wondering as far as okay, Whoa, there. Are we talking about earning our salvation. No, we're not talking about earning our salvation. But we need to remember that grace is not opposed to effort. In Romans, it talks about we are called to partner with God's Spirit in our sanctification process. Grace is not opposed to effort. Grace is only opposed to earning. My friends, wherever you find yourself, whether you feel like you're in the midst of sin and still feel like you're in the fallen state of no hope, or whether you're on your redemptive journey of allowing the Spirit of God to renew your body and mind. Please know that with Christ there is always hope!