About 14 minutes to read
This page sets out what Scripture teaches about sex, for young and old, single and married. Some readers need one part first. If someone forced you, or did something to you when you were a child, read the part for you, and if you are not safe now, go to If You Are Not Safe. If sexual sin weighs on your conscience, read the part for you. If shame has you thinking of ending your life, call 988 or text 988 now.
God’s Good Gift
Before there was any sin, God made man male and female and blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply (Genesis 1:28). Sex was God’s idea, and it is not dirty. God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good (Genesis 1:31).
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
Genesis 2:24-25 (KJV)
A man leaves his parents and cleaves, which means holds fast, to his wife, and the two become one flesh. Two whole lives are joined, and the bodily union of husband and wife seals it. Jesus added, What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder (Matthew 19:6). So the gift belongs inside marriage, one man and one woman for life (WCF 24.1). Outside that place it is the misuse of something holy.
Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
Proverbs 5:18 (KJV)
A father tells his son to drink waters out of his own well (5:15). The well and the fountain are pictures of married love, and the delight they picture is real. God tells a husband to be ravished always with his wife’s love (5:19), which in the old English means carried away with joy.
Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
Hebrews 13:4 (KJV)
Whoremongers are those who use sex outside marriage. In one verse God honors the gift and guards it.
The Song of Solomon
In the Song of Solomon a bride and her beloved delight in each other. My beloved is mine, and I am his (Song of Solomon 2:16). Read plainly, it celebrates married love, and it shows that God is not embarrassed by the love he made.
Many Reformed teachers, James Durham among them, have also read the Song as a picture of Christ and his church, since Scripture elsewhere calls God’s people his bride (Isaiah 62:5). Others read it first as a song of husband and wife that points beyond itself to Christ. Faithful men differ on which reading leads, and neither reading takes Christ out of it.
The Song speaks to the young as well. Three times the bride says this.
I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.
Song of Solomon 2:7 (KJV)
Many read this to mean, do not wake desire before its time. There is a right time, and it is worth waiting for. For more on marriage itself, read What the Bible Says About Marriage.
Tenderness in the Marriage Bed
Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.
1 Corinthians 7:3-4 (KJV)
Due benevolence is the kindness that is owed. Every word to the husband is also a word to the wife. So he says, Defraud ye not one the other (7:5), which means do not cheat each other. The marriage bed is not to be withheld as a punishment or used to win an argument. A season apart is for prayer, by consent, and only for a while.
But this passage gives no one a right to take. A husband is to nourish and cherish his wife, even as the Lord the church (Ephesians 5:29), and to dwell with her according to knowledge, giving her honour (1 Peter 3:7). Forcing or pressuring a husband or wife is not marriage as God made it. It is abuse. If that is happening to you, it is not your fault, and you may get safe. Read If someone is hurting you.
When illness, pain, grief, or old wounds make the bed hard, love is patient. Talk honestly, see a doctor, and ask your pastor for help.
What the Seventh Commandment Requires and Forbids
God said, Thou shalt not commit adultery (Exodus 20:14). Jesus showed how far that reaches.
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
Matthew 5:28 (KJV)
Seeing that someone is beautiful is not lust. Looking in order to want, and going back to look again, is. The Larger Catechism first says what the command requires.
The duties required in the seventh commandment are, chastity in body, mind, affections, words, and behavior; and the preservation of it in ourselves and others; watchfulness over the eyes and all the senses; temperance, keeping of chaste company, modesty in apparel; marriage by those that have not the gift of continency, conjugal love, and cohabitation; diligent labor in our callings; shunning all occasions of uncleanness, and resisting temptations thereunto.
Westminster Larger Catechism Q&A 138
Chastity is purity, in the single life and in marriage alike. The gift of continency is the gift of living single without burning desire (1 Corinthians 7:7-9). Conjugal love and cohabitation mean that husband and wife love each other and live together. Here is part of what it forbids.
adultery, fornication, rape, incest, sodomy, and all unnatural lusts; all unclean imaginations, thoughts, purposes, and affections; all corrupt or filthy communications, or listening thereunto; wanton looks, impudent or light behavior, immodest apparel
Westminster Larger Catechism Q&A 139
Fornication is sex between people who are not married to each other. Adultery is sex with someone other than your husband or wife. The catechism goes on to forbid lascivious songs, books, and pictures (WLC 139). Lascivious means made to stir up lust. That is what pornography is. It feeds lust in the heart and uses real people made in God’s image as things. On the catechism’s words about unnatural lusts, read What the Bible Says About Homosexuality and Gender.
Why the Body Matters
Some in Corinth thought what they did with the body did not touch the soul. Paul answered that the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and God will raise it up (1 Corinthians 6:13-14). Flee fornication, he said (6:18).
What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (KJV)
Sexual sin joins your whole self to another in a way God made for marriage alone (6:16). The temple is a picture, and what it pictures is real. The Holy Spirit lives in every believer, and Christ paid for your body with his blood.
Paul also wrote, this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Each is to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour (4:4). Many take the vessel to be one’s own body, others a man’s wife, but either way the call is self-control with honor. And no man is to defraud his brother in this (4:6). Sexual sin always wrongs someone, often a future husband or wife who is not even in the room.
When It Was Done to You
If someone forced you, or pressured you past your no, or touched you when you were a child, what was done to you is not your sin. You do not need to repent of it, and you are not unclean in God’s eyes because of it.
Moses’ law said that when a man forced a betrothed young woman, the man only that lay with her shall die (Deuteronomy 22:25).
But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter:
Deuteronomy 22:26 (KJV)
God put all the guilt on the man. When a son of King David forced his sister Tamar, she cried, whither shall I cause my shame to go? (2 Samuel 13:13). Scripture records her grief and calls his act what it was. It never calls her the guilty one.
The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart (Psalm 34:18). Christ himself was stripped and shamed by men who had power over him (Matthew 27:28). He knows that wound.
If it is still happening, get safe first with If You Are Not Safe. If you are young, tell a parent, a teacher, or a school counselor today. If someone is asking you for pictures or threatening to share them, that is being done to you too, and this part of A Greater Affection tells you what to do.
Washed, Sanctified, Justified
Perhaps you are the one who sinned, and you feel ruined. Paul warned that neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers would inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). No one who goes on in these sins and will not turn will be there. Then he wrote this.
And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
1 Corinthians 6:11 (KJV)
They had been fornicators and adulterers, and now they were washed, set apart for God, and declared righteous. That is not a second-class pardon. It is the pardon every saint has.
It rests on Christ alone. He lived a pure life in your place, bore God’s wrath for sin on the cross, and rose from the dead. If you turn from your sin and trust him, his blood washes all of it away. If you have never come to him, read The Gospel, and come today.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Psalm 51:7 (KJV)
David prayed this after he took another man’s wife and had the man killed. Nathan told him, The Lord also hath put away thy sin (2 Samuel 12:13). Whiter than snow is a picture, and the cleanness it pictures is real. God does not see a forgiven sinner as spoiled goods. He sees him in his Son.
Your Bible also tells of a woman taken in adultery and brought to Jesus (John 8:3-11). Many of the oldest manuscripts do not have this passage, and faithful teachers differ over whether John wrote it, so we do not rest on it alone. But what it shows is taught all through Scripture. Jesus said to her, Neither do I condemn thee, and then, go, and sin no more (8:11). Pardon comes first, then a new life. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).
If you have been unfaithful in marriage, read I have been unfaithful. If guilt keeps returning after you have confessed, read What I did is too great to forgive.
The Fight Against Sexual Sin
A forgiven believer still has a fight, and Scripture says to flee. Joseph left his garment in her hand, and fled (Genesis 39:12). Paul told young Timothy, Flee also youthful lusts (2 Timothy 2:22).
For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
Romans 8:13 (KJV)
To mortify is to put to death. You do it through the Spirit, not by willpower alone, setting Christ before you as better than the sin. Job said, I made a covenant with mine eyes (Job 31:1). So remove what you reach for in weak hours, and tell someone who will ask how it is going.
When you fall, do not hide or wait to feel worthy before you come back. Christ was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin, so come boldly to his throne for mercy (Hebrews 4:15-16). If thoughts come that you hate and never chose, that is a different trouble, with its own help in Doubts and Unwanted Thoughts. For pornography, read I cannot stop looking at what I should not. For adults, Mortify is a free daily help in this fight.
A Picture of Christ and His Church
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
Ephesians 5:31-32 (KJV)
Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it (5:25). He holds fast to his people and will present them without spot (5:27). The faithful, lifelong love of a husband and wife is a living picture of that, and the union it pictures is real. That is why sexual sin is so serious. It tells a lie about Christ. Faithful married love tells the truth about him.
It is also why no one is left out. In the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage (Matthew 22:30), for the picture gives way to the thing itself. Paul told a whole church, I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ (2 Corinthians 11:2). Every believer, single or married, belongs to that bride. The single believer who stays pure is not missing the point of sex. He is living toward what it was always meant to show.
What to Do This Week
If You Are Single or Young
The desire for marriage is not sin. God made it, and it is a good thing to bring to him. Lust is something else, wanting what God has not given. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word (Psalm 119:9).
- Decide now, before the moment comes. Settle what you will not do, and what places and screens you will not go near.
- Keep your love life in the light. If you are dating, do it where others can see, and do not be alone behind closed doors.
- Never send pictures you would be ashamed of. If someone asks for them, say no, and tell a parent or another adult you trust.
- Singleness is not second best. Christ was never married, and Paul called his single life a gift (1 Corinthians 7:7). If you long to marry, pray for it and take honest steps toward it. See Singleness as a Gift and a Calling.
- If you have fallen, start again today. Remember not the sins of my youth (Psalm 25:7) is a prayer God hears.
If You Are Married
- Give yourself gladly. Pursue your husband or wife with kindness, and never use the bed as a weapon.
- Guard the door. Keep no secret friendships or hidden screens. If you are hiding something, bring it into the light with your pastor’s help.
- Pray together. You are heirs together of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7).
If You Are a Parent
- Be the first to tell them. Teach your children plainly, a little at a time, as they can bear it. If you are silent, the world will not be.
- Teach the gift before the warnings. Let them hear from you that God made this good and worth waiting for.
- Teach them to guard their bodies. Tell them no one may touch them in private places or ask them to keep such a secret, and that they can always tell you. If a child tells you of abuse, believe them, and read If a child is being hurt at once.
- Watch the screens. Keep devices out of bedrooms at night, use filters, and talk about what they see.
- When they fail, show them Christ. Answer a confession not with disgust, but the way your Father answered you, with truth and mercy.