If you are not comfortable with the topics of sex and Scripture being talked about together, be warned that I am about to do that quite a bit. With that being said, let's begin!
There are a few concepts in Hebrew thought that carry through the centuries to today. One of those is that whatever comes first defines everything after. I think that I have put off this topic long enough and it is time to talk about intimacy and how it relates to our relationship with God. To find the first mention of such an idea, we, again, have to go to Genesis (the first mention of a great many things in the Bible). We all know the story of Man and Woman, or Adam and Eve as they were later called. To be sure that we are all on the same page, let's define intimacy. The best way that I have heard it described is two parties being fully known to each other, and at the same time fully accepted by the one that fully knows them. With that being the established definition, we can say that Adam and Eve had complete intimacy with God while in the garden of Eden. In fact, they were so aware of God that they did not know that they were naked. That is the kind of relationship that He desires to have with us.
Do we have to be naked to have a relationship with God? Of course not, well not physically naked anyway. Remember, that clothing was invented in prototype form by Adam and Eve with fig leaves and then perfected by God with animal skin. What I am trying to say is that God, even though He asks Adam where he was after he had eaten the forbidden fruit, knew where Adam was. I whole-heartedly believe that God knew EXACTLY what Adam had done. Adam and Eve had perfect intimacy with their Creator and traded it for a chance to be like Him (Genesis 3:5). Wait a minute. Weren't they made in the image and the LIKEness of Him already? Selah!
When God gave us all these things to do, He had a grand design behind it all. You can read about the connection of bathing and nakedness to our relationship with Him by clicking here. There are things in our life that directly connect to His desired relationship with us. If you look at a satellite view of the fields of the Midwest agricultural fields, you will strangely enough see plowed circles inside of square fields. This practice in farming ties directly to Leviticus 19:9. Do not reap to the corners of your field. Leave that for the poor an the foreigner in your land. I'm sure that, whether they are a believer in God or not, if they reaped the entire field, then their crop would not be as plentiful. It is not that they are a bad farmer or anything, but God set out guidelines to follow so that we would have the best kind of life. The point is that there is a reason for His commands. We have a job to do to, not only show the world what life with God would look like lived out, but to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.
How do we do that? What action could we carry out that would allow us to multiply? That is the action that is commonly known as sex. The part that is very commonly looked over is that it is also called being INTIMATE. I put that word in all caps because it is very important to our subject matter. When a man and a woman decide to engage in sexual intercourse with one another, there is no other action on planet earth that they could do that will bring them closer to one another, physically speaking. Not to mention, there should be none other closer to someone than their spouse. Why do you think that the best way is to have only one?
The same goes with our relationship with God. None other should be closer to you than Him, including your spouse. In turn you should be closer to no one else than to Him. Your spouse can be the closest person on the planet to you and know everything that can be known about you, but even your Creator knows things about you that not even you know, and yet he loves you anyway. To put it in the words of Kim Walker-Smith, intimacy with God is like a sloppy wet kiss. It is messy, but both parties are into it and loving it!
Moving on, let's consider one of the most popular lines in all of scripture about intimacy, marriage, etc. That is in Exodus 20:14: You shall not commit adultery. I have written about this topic very little but I think that this is the time and the place to give it some room to run around and smack us all with some knowledge.
To think that this was just about two people's genitalia coming together for a brief period of time is, at best, taking something extremely sacred and treating it as a cheap, replaceable commodity. The concept of sex and intimacy is way too important to treat so cheaply. Sex and intimacy are directly tied to the unity that is holding the entire universe together. To elaborate, we are 3 parts (that is body, soul, and spirit), God is 3 parts (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), everything is multiple parts working in unity to bring about the common good. In Deuteronomy 6, "The Song of Moses", it states that "The Lord our God, The Lord is one". In Hebrew, the word is echad (simply pronounced E-hod). Among other things, that word means unity inside diversity. So God is echad. He is also holding the universe together. When we act in such a way to damage Unity, particularly when it come to our covenant relationship with God, we are acting in such a way that goes against the very thing that is holding our universe together. The act of adultery, or being maritally unfaithful, is tearing our universe apart.
This next bit is quite difficult for me to talk about because it was my addiction for many years. It has quite a lot to do with intimacy and even the health of the person that is ensnared by it. That subject is that of pornography. I have heard many people ask the question, "What's the big deal. It's not like I'm sleeping with the person in the magazine/video!" Physically speaking, that is true. However, in reference to Scripture, Jesus said that If you even look at a woman in lust, you have already committed adultery. I, personally, take that to mean that you are damaging your own unity, whether you are married or not. If you have done this, do not feel like I am condemning you, because that is the last thing that I wish to do in anything that I ever say or write. I am only giving you a warning to keep yourself in check in such situations. There is a way that you can look at someone that you might desire and begin to formulate in your mind a way to talk to that person to establish a relationship. That is a healthy thing to do and is part of life. There are definitely some boundaries that need to be respected in that event.
I spent years trying to find fulfillment by what I was able to see on the screen. It never once worked. The damage that such things do to your relationships not withstanding, the damage that it does to you is never worth it. When you are in a marriage relationship, you will also begin noticing how the relationship begins to be strained. That is because there is a tear in the unity between the two of you, the intimacy is fading because someone else is getting the attention that you used to give to your spouse. Let me be perfectly clear, it is never "just pornography" or "some images on a screen/page". It is a slippery slope that will slide you right into a world of misery. There are people that I know that do not read magazines, even own a television, and avoid certain stores because they are avoiding that temptation that will lead them down a very dark path that will destroy the unity that they have fought so hard to maintain. Also, if you search natural ways to increase testosterone in men, one suggestion that repeats in nearly every list is, "stop watching pornography". So, yeah. There's that.
Now to tackle the most unpopular part of this subject. If you are unmarried, but still having sex, I would caution you. No, God is not going to strike you down for having pre-marital sex, but you could reap the fruit of decisions that it would behoove you not to make. There is a concept in modern dating relationships that "you have to test drive the car before you buy it". This statement was formulated from a place of selfishness and lust. Your potential spouse is not a car. Do we really think that the quality of a sex in a relationship is enough to call the whole thing off? Are we getting in relationships just so that we can have sex? A relationship that is intended to lead to marriage should be formed with the intent of developing intimacy, not just getting to have sex.
I have news for you. When you engage in sexual intercourse, you are making a covenant with that person whether you know/like it or not. When you violate that covenant, it does almost irreparable damage to yourself as well as that person. It is never "just sex". In fact, that phrase is one of the most damaging collection of words that humanity has come up with. First of all, saying that it is "just sex" cheapens the value of the bond that you are making with a person. Having casual sex with someone damages the unity in yourself and the person that you engage in it with. In an effort to restate an earlier thought, you are making a soul tie that you have no intention of keeping. That soul tie knot is not able to be untied. The only way to undo it is to rip it apart, damaging each other in the process. Why do you think that the concept of marriage is looked upon with such discontent? Marriage, in large part, is looked at as simply a legal ceremony to avoid paying taxes, something that you have to do because it is what you are supposed to do, or any number of other ways to cheapen it.
Millions of people in the United States alone are using sex in every way except for what it was meant for. It is being used to make money, ruin people's lives, coerce others into doing something that they do not want to just for the chance to have sex with someone. Disrespecting the intimacy that we were designed to obtain through marriage and sexual intercourse has led to fatherless homes. Cheapening sex into something that you do on the weekends just for fun has led to children going unloved because they were the result of their parent's poor decision making and resenting the child because they are a constant reminder of said decision.
I have spoken a lot about sex in this post, but you can have intimacy without sex coming into the equation. You can have a close friend that you share very...intimate details about your life with. Those kinds of friends know more about you than most people. These days, intimacy is not treated as sacred when it comes to a simple friendship. People turn on their best friends of decades sometimes for the dumbest of reasons.
I sincerely hope and pray that the Lord makes this make sense to anyone who reads it. It is by no means exhaustive, but I feel as though this is what Jesus wanted me to write. It is my heart and mission to help people to better understand intimacy and how it effects our daily lives depending on how we handle it. I hope you know that God created the universe and everything in it just so that He could have relationship with us. He put flesh on just so that He could be as intimate with us as possible. He even gave us insights into what such a relationship is supposed to look like. It is up to us to use this sacred concept of intimacy and use it to love one another in the proper way to show all the nations of the world what relationship with God and true intimacy look like so that they will want what we have.
Grace and Peace
Brian
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