Why should we talk about sex and sexuality? Why would Christian leaders not just sidestep this topic and focus instead on sharing the gospel and talking about Jesus?
For many years the Church and Christians felt that sex was something to avoid talking about. Then we had purity culture with all the opinions and restrictions, all the shame, and a lot of trauma.
Nowadays, God’s people are confused and divided, some holding onto purity culture while others embrace the culture’s sex positivity. More than ever, Christians need to be talking about sexuality.
In this blog, you’ll read a condensed transcript of a conversation Juli had with Dr. Christopher West explaining why we need to care about sex and talk about it as followers of Christ.
Prefer to listen? You can also listen to the full conversation using the player below.
Christopher West (CW):
What does sexuality have to do with Jesus? If we separate the two, we might need to ask ourselves: what team are we playing for? And what do I mean by that? Well, John the Evangelist tells us, if you want to know what team you’re playing for, if you want to know the difference between the good spirits and the bad spirits–the spirits that come from God and the spirits that are of the enemy–it’s very simple. The spirits that recognize Christ come in the flesh are of God. The movement of God’s Spirit is always in the direction of incarnation and of incarnating the spiritual mystery, which is God, which is love, right? That’s what human sexuality is in the divine plan. It’s the incarnation of divine love. We are made in the image and likeness of God, who is love, and we are made in this image as male and female. This is why the enemy is after our sexuality.
So how do we recognize the bad spirits? John the Evangelist tells us the bad spirits are the ones who deny this principle of the spirit manifested in the flesh. They are the ones who deny the incarnation. [The incarnation] is our faith. You cannot talk about Jesus without talking about the incarnation. If we have a disincarnate Jesus, we’re no longer preaching the gospel. And the apostle Paul takes us to the very heart of the matter in Ephesians 5:31-32, where he quotes from the book of Genesis and then he links it with the book of Revelation. He goes back to the first bookend of the Bible in Genesis, the marriage of man and woman, and then he links it with the final bookend of the Bible, the marriage of the lamb in the book of Revelation. In other words, what Paul is doing for us here in Ephesians five, the apostle Paul is presenting to us a summary of the entire biblical message from Genesis to Revelation. Listen to what he says. Again, quoting right out of Genesis:
“For this reason, a man will leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and the two will become one flesh.”
For what reason? It’s like the answer to that question was hanging in the air until the incarnation, right? This is a profound mystery, Paul tells us. And I’m referring specifically to the incarnate Christ and the Church.
This is one of those verses that can kind of just go in one ear and out the other unless we really enter into what he is saying. How does our creation as male and female, how does the call of the two to that intimate embrace in one flesh—how does this refer to Christ and the Church? How does leaving father and mother, how does all that refer to Christ and the Church?
Think about it from this perspective: Christ left his Father in heaven to take on flesh in the womb of his mother. He would later leave the home of his mother to give up that flesh. This is my body given up for you. To give up his body for His bride, the Church, so that we, the Church, the Bride of Christ, might become one flesh with him. We call it Holy Communion.
“This is my body given up for you.” When Jesus says, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you, He might as well have said, unless the bride be in union with the bridegroom, she cannot conceive. See, the whole biblical message from Genesis to Revelation can be summarized with five words: God wants to marry us.
He wanted this eternal marital plan. This is what all the covenants are all about. Whenever you hear God establishing a covenant with his people, just substitute the word “marriage”. That’s what it is. It’s God establishing this marital covenant with His people. God wants to marry His people, and He wanted this eternal marital plan to be so plain to us, so obvious to us, that He chiseled an image of it right in our bodies by making us male and female and calling the two to become one flesh. Here we have a sacred icon of the divine plan to marry us. Not only does God love us, and that’s beautiful and wonderful, thank God He loves us. [But] not only does He love us, He wants to marry us.
The Old Testament begins with the marriage of man and woman. The New Testament begins with the marriage of God and humanity. And the bride is Mary. And she opens her body, her feminine body, to receive this marriage proposal. She says yes to God’s marriage proposal. And not metaphorically; she literally conceives eternal life in her womb. This is the gospel and it’s stamped right in our bodies. Our bodies proclaim the gospel. If we are preaching the gospel without the body, then maybe we have fallen for the lie of the enemy and we’ve disincarnated the message.
The Holy Spirit always moves in the direction of incarnation. Mary says, how’s this going to happen? And the angel says, the Holy Spirit will make it happen. The Holy Spirit is not just leaving things in some spiritual vacuum. The movement of the Holy Spirit is incarnation. To live the life of the Spirit that the scripture calls us to is not to reject our bodies. When Paul says, live by the Spirit, not by the flesh, he’s not saying reject your bodies. He himself says the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. To live life in the Spirit is the very same thing as living, as it says in Romans chapter eight, the redemption of our bodies. That is what Jesus has to do with sexuality. And that’s what sexuality has to do with Jesus. Everything.
If Paul is right, then we don’t understand who Christ is, we don’t understand who the Church is or what the Church is, unless we understand why God made us male and female and caused the two to become one flesh.
This is why human sexuality is under such violent attack in the world today, because the enemy is after the truth about Jesus Christ. If he can scramble the truth of masculinity and femininity and the call of the two to become one flesh, then we’ll no longer know who Jesus is or who the Church is. We’ll no longer know what Christianity offers us. And I want to add this: It’s no coincidence that Ephesians chapter six comes after Ephesians chapter five. Isn’t that profound? Well, what is Ephesians chapter six? Ephesians chapter six, Paul is basically saying, you wanna live what I just told you about the great mystery of human sexuality? You wanna live this out? Get ready for a war. The spiritual battle is fought over the truth of the body. That’s the battle. The battleground, the battleground is the body. GK Chesterton said it so well. He said the very soul of Christianity is the body. This is the incarnation of Jesus. The very soul of Christianity is the body. If we don’t understand that and don’t enter into that, we are fighting on the wrong team here.
How do we win this battle for the body? Paul tells us we got to put on the spiritual armor. And the very first piece of armor he says we have to put on, I’m not making this up, look it up. The very first thing we must do, he says, is that we must gird our loins with the truth. Are our loins girded in the truth? If they are not, we will be taken out. This is how the enemy takes out Christ and His Church. He attacks the sign. He attacks the icon. The main icon is the union of man and woman. Every time God establishes a covenant with his people in the Bible, look it up, you’ll find it. He calls those who are to be the heralds of the covenant, He calls them to be fruitful and multiply because the union of man and woman in one flesh, that fruitfulness as well, is the sign that God Himself wants to establish a life-giving covenant with us in His body and in His blood. This is the new covenant I established with you. This is my body given for you. This is my flesh shed for you.
