“We believe that God wonderfully and immutably creates each person as male or female. Together they reflect the image and nature of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman as delineated in Scripture (Genesis 2:18-25; Matthew 19:5-6). It is intended to be a covenant by which they unite themselves for life in a single, exclusive union, ordered toward the well-being of the spouses and designed to be the environment for the procreation and upbringing of children.”
* * * * *
“If we are made in the image of God as male and female, and if joining and one flesh as a profound mystery that refers to Christ and the church, then our understanding of the body, gender, and sexuality has a direct impact on our understanding of God, Christ, and the church. The body is not only biological. The body is also theological, because it tells a Divine Story. It does so precisely through the mystery of sexual difference and the call of the two to become one flesh. This means that when we get the body and sex wrong, we get the Divine Story wrong as well.”[1]
Here’s the Divine Story as it unfolds from Genesis to Revelation:
· The Bible opens with a Trinitarian God acting as Creator, “maker of heaven and earth.” In Genesis, God is a generative God who is an “infinite communion of person.”
He creates the imago dei who are told to be in communion (“common union”)(Genesis 1:27; 2:24).[2]
Throughout the Old Testament, God compares his relationship with Israel to a marriage. “As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you. (Isaiah 62:5) “I’m going to marry you, and this time it’ll be forever in righteousness and justice. Our covenant will reflect a loyal love and great mercy; our marriage will be honest and truthful, and you’ll understand who I really am—the Eternal One.” (Hosea 2:19-20)
Jesus, the new Adam, leaves the home of his father in Heaven and the home of his mother on Earth for the sake of his bride, the church (Ephesians 5), with whom he will become one (Romans 6:5) and through whom we will become one with others[3] as we fill the earth and make disciples
The Book of Revelation describes the final wedding Feast of God and his people, the lamb and his bride. [4]
If the Divine Story of the Bible uses marriage as an analogy, it seems important to understand not only how marriage, but how sex (male and female) and the act of sex all contribute to this story. We are going to dive into this with the following foundation:
God intends sex to be an act of covenantal initiation and renewal in a ‘dualitarian’ unionthat points us toward the nature of God and Jesus’ love for the church.
Christians are essentialists. Let me explain.
As imago dei, we are "male" and "female," which together point toward who God is and what God is like – “let us make male and female in our image,” says Genesis.[5]
Because the God of Genesis is generative, it should be no surprise that his imago dei are essentially gendered; how we will “generate life” is built into our genitals and our genes and passed down in our geneology ever since Genesis.[6]
The means by which we have the inherent capacity to generate life reveals our essential nature; together, men and women reflect on the essence and nature of the God who made us.[7]
We experience “common union” during sex. We aren’t just animals. “Animals are able to mate, but they're not able to enter communion. Only persons are capable of the gift of self that establishes a ‘common union’”….[8] Two become one as a finite communion of persons, an echo of triune infinite communion of persons. .
Look at the “common union” of Adam and Eve.[9] When Eve arrives on the scene, the imagery is that of Adam's flesh and bone being divided and separated “according to the opposite of him” so that they are suitable and matching.[10]
When Genesis notes that a husband and wife "become one" in marriage, the Hebrew word for that oneness is echad, which is also used in the most famous Jewish prayer, the Shemah: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is echad." The linguistic connection is not accidental.[11] To quote Tim and Kathy Keller at length from The Meaning Of Marriage:
“There is a hint that the relationship between male and female is a reflection of the relationships within the Godhead itself – the Trinity. Although all people, men and women, are bearers of God’s image, resembling him as his children, reflecting his glory, and representing him as stewards over nature, it requires the unique union of male and female within the one flesh of marriage to reflect the relationship of life within the triune God.
As Genesis says, male and female are “like-opposite” each other – both radically different and yet incomplete without each other. God’s plan for married couples involves two people of different sexes making the commitment and sacrifice that is involved in embracing the Other and performing different roles in the act of creation, which brings about deep unity because of the profound complementarity between the sexes. [This] tells us something of the relationships between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
There may even be echoes of the church here[12] – one body with many parts, one “corpus” comprised of two, uh, corpuses (?) Corpi (?).[13]
“This is why the two become one flesh: to reveal, proclaim, and anticipate the eternal union of Christ and the church. There will be no marriage in heaven not because it will be deleted but because it will be eternally completed...”[14]
Koinania is an overlooked work in the New Testament. According to the NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon, it means “fellowship, association, community, communion, joint participation, intercourse; intimacy.”
1. “They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to koinania,to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” (Acts 2:42)
2. “Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a koinania in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a koinania in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16)
3. “ And do not neglect doing good and koinania, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.” (Hebrews 13:16)
4. “What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have koinania with us; and indeed our koinania is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ….but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have koinania with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:3,7)
The church, I believe, is meant to offer another place of communion – “common union” – that anticipates eternal communion with God and God’s people.[15] By immersing ourselves in the life and calling of the church, we intertwine our body (in a very practical sense) with the spiritual church body in a way that points toward future eternal koinania with the saints in the presence of Christ.
In fact, we can all be spiritually fruitful - generative - by making disciples[16]. There is still room to image God’s creative and procreative nature outside of marriage (though the procreation is of a different kind).[17]
This, too, is part of the Divine Story: there is a koinania community (the church) in need of both male and female image bearers; there is a spiritually covenantal marriage with God (through salvation) that anticipates our eternal marriage; there is a fruitfulness that follows (disciple-making).
* * * * *
God intends sex to be an act of covenantal initiation and renewal in a ‘dualitarian’ union that points us toward the nature of God and Jesus’ love for the church.
In biblical times, a covenant was a strong bond in which two people would pledge mutual faithfulness and commitment, often at the cost of their life. Covenants were complex, serious, and deeply binding. God is a covenant-making God. The Bible cannot be understood without the concept of covenant.[18] When Adam and Eve “cleave,” that’s a covenant word (Genesis 2:22-25).[19]
I am going to quote Tim Keller and his wife extensively here from The Meaning Of Marriagebecause they explain this better than I can.
“The covenant brings every aspect of two person’s lives together. They essentially merge into a single legal, social, economic unit… they donate themselves wholly to the other… Sex is understood as both a sign of the personal, legal union and a means to accomplish it. The Bible says don’t unite with someone physically unless you are also willing to unite with the person emotionally, personally, socially, economically, and legally. Don’t become physically naked and vulnerable to the other person without becoming vulnerable in every other way, because you have given up your freedom and bound yourself in marriage.
Then, once you have given yourself in marriage, sex is a way of maintaining and deepening that union as the years go by.. Sex is perhaps the most powerful God-created way to help you give your entire self to another human being. Sex is God’s appointed way for two people to reciprocally say to one another, ‘I belong completely, permanently, and exclusively to you.’ You must not use sex to say anything less.
So, according to the Bible, a covenant is necessary for sex. It creates a place of security for vulnerability and intimacy. But though a marriage covenant is necessary for sex, sex is also necessary for the maintenance of the covenant. It is your covenant renewal service.”
In the biblical narrative, sex is an act intended by God to initiate and renew covenant – marriage - that is meant to be indissoluble. [20] It’s not as if covenants dissolve if a married couple can’t have sex. Age, illness, circumstances – these can all get in the way of sexual covenant renewal. This is also not suggesting that nothing else renews, sustains, or deepens covenant. I’m just making a point about sex: it is intended by God to be experienced as an act of covenant initiation and renewal.
I Corinthians 6:17, which is often quoted in reference to this binding nature inherent to sex, makes it clear. Paul notes,
“Do you not know that a person who is united in intimacy with a prostitute is one body with her? For it is said, ‘The two shall become one flesh.’”
Paul wasn’t just saying, “Do you know if you combine bodies you will combine bodies?” That’s pretty obvious. Paul is simply referring back to Genesis 2:24 (and Jesus’ affirmation of it in Matthew 19) where a husband and wife ‘cleave’ together, reminding his readers that every sex act is an act that brings about a “oneness” whether we want it to be or not.
I suspect that’s why Paul says that sexual sins are unique (1 Corinthians 6:18). There is no other act that by its very nature is intended by God to initiate or affirm a covenant. [21] This was as radical of an idea then as it is now.[22]
* * * * *
God intends sex to be an act of covenantal initiation and renewal in a ‘dualitarian’ union that points us toward the nature of God and Jesus’ love for the church.
The New Testament writers add another theological layer to marriage by claiming that the sacrificial love of a husband for his wife is supposed to image the love of God (the groom) for His church (the bride). [23] So, to the Christian, marriage and sex have always been about far more than a skin-on-skin act or a social contract. John Paul II described the body and sexual union as ‘prophetic’. Prophets speak for God, revealing mysteries God has given to them. Marriage and even marital sex is a prophetic proclamation of God’s love for the church.[24]
This idea of sex as covenantal would have entirely changed the dynamic of sex for a husband and wife. To a Christian, sex is a way of saying, “You are the one with whom I wish to bind my life. I have committed to you, I have pledged to give myself wholly to you. We are bound together in every way and on every level. We have no secrets; we are naked and unashamed; we are a covenanted union of service, sacrifice and love.”[25]
This brings us back to where we started:
God intends sex to be an act of covenantal initiation and renewal in a ‘dualitarian’ union that points us toward the nature of God and Jesus’ love for the church.
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[1] Our Bodies Tell God’s Story, by Christopher West
[2] Some have argued that because Heaven (masculine in Hebrew) and Earth (feminine) are the first things generated, and they “bring forth” living things – they are fruitful – they might be the first example of this pattern in Scripture.
[3] (Galatians 3:28; 1 Corinthians 12:13),
[4] Revelation 19:7-8.
[5] I suspect this is part of Paul is referring to in Romans 1:20. “The body… has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and us to be a sign of it,” says John Paul II, as quoted in Our Bodies Tell God’s Story.[5] Our creation as male and female is what Christopher West calls a “sacramental reality: a physical sign of something transcendent.” This is the theological reason why the Bible never discusses the marriage covenant as the union between people of the same sex. In the biblical narrative, same-sex couples cannot be the “like-opposite” union of “otherness” that represent the triune image of a complementary and generative God.
[6] “From stem of Latin genus (genitive generis) "race, stock, family; kind, rank, order; species," also "(male or female) sex," from PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups.” – Online Etymology Dictionary
[7] Genesis 1:27: “ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
[8] Our Bodies Tell God’s Story, by Christopher West
[9] The Bible places them in the Divine Story as ‘archetypes’ - real people whose lives are universally significant. Simply the definitions of their names suggest as much: Adam means “man” or “earth” in Hebrew; Eve is “life” or “life-giver.”
[10] The Hebrew expression כְּנֶגְדּוֹ (kÿnegdo) literally means this.
[11] As Nancy Pearcey notes, “Biblical morality is teleological: The purpose of sex is to express the one-flesh covenant bond of marriage.”
[12] Puritans called marriage “the little church within the Church,” a place to test and also develop spiritual character.
[13] Ephesians 5 - marriage reveals the mystery of Christ and the church.
[14] Our Bodies Tell God’s Story, by Christopher West
[15] There will be no marriage or sex in heaven; they are sacraments (a visible expression of an invisible reality) that will pass. Not so, the communion with Christ between saints.
[16] Paul refers to Timothy as his son in the faith (1 Timothy 1:2); he refers to himself as the father of many children in 1 Corinthians 4.
[17] “The New Testament Church conceived of marriage and singleness as alternative locations, each a worthy form of life, the two together comprising the whole Christian witness. The one declared that God had vindicated the order of creation [in Genesis], the other pointed beyond it to its eschatological (“end times”) transformation. In other words, marriage points to Genesis, singleness to Revelation.” – Christopher West
[18] There are three main ways we see this unfold in the Bible: God’s covenant with His people; the covenant of marriage; and the covenant fellowship within the church.
[19] Malachi 2:14 and Proverbs 2:17 also use ‘covenant’ to describe marriage.
[20] “Sexual intercourse in marriage is not merely the satisfaction of individual appetites, as eating is, but it links two persons together – literally and spiritually. It brings about what it symbolizes (the bond of oneness) and symbolizes what it brings about.” Richard Hayes, The Moral Vision Of The New Testament
[21] Think about it: every covenant in the Bible has physical sign: Covenant of Creation (Adam) – Trees of Life and Knowledge (Genesis 2); Noahic Covenant – rainbow (Genesis 9); Abrahamic Covenant – circumcision (Genesis 17); Mosaic Covenant – Sabbath (Exodus 31); New Covenant – baptism (Romans 6) and communion (Luke 22)
What is the physical sign of the marital covenant? Sex.
[22] Martha Nussbaum has written that the ancients were no more concerned with people's gender preference than people today are with others' eating preferences: “Ancient categories of sexual experience differed considerably from our own... The central distinction in sexual morality was the distinction between active and passive roles. The gender of the object... is not in itself morally problematic. Boys and women are very often treated interchangeably as objects of [male] desire. What is socially important is to penetrate rather than to be penetrated. Sex is understood fundamentally not as interaction, but as a doing of some thing to someone...”
[23] “When we scan a menu, we think, what will be the tastiest? What do I fancy right now? And with sex we can instinctively think, what would satisfy me the most? This is a natural way to think. But if this is all that dominates our minds, we risk missing something that's right at the heart of what sex is for: giving. Paul didn't write that each partner is to take their marital rights from the other, but that each is to give to the other what is their right. Sex is not a commodity to be transacted but a means of devotion to the other.” - Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With? Sam Allberry
[24] As Rick Warren has written, “To redefine marriage would destroy the picture that God intends for marriage to portray. It's the picture of Christ in the church.”
[25] There are two times in Song of Solomon that the bride says, “I am my beloved’s and he is mine; he browses among the lilies” (2:16 and 6:3) Have you ever wondered what that means? What does belonging to each other have to do with browsing through a flower garden? In Song of Solomon 4:5, Solomon praises his wife by saying, “Your two breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies.” When it’s her turn, she says, “I am my beloved’s and he is mine,” then borrows his metaphor and makes him the gazelle: “he browses among the lilies.” Why? The marital covenant is designed to be initiated, sealed and celebrated by sexual love. For more on the imagery in Song of Solomon, “The Hunt” is a decent introduction to the language of Song of Solomon (http://www.christdeaf.org/bible/TheHunt.html.) See also, “What’s The Difference Between Erotica And The Song Of Solomon?” (thegospelcoaltion.org)