Biblical teaching concerning the sinful tickling desires (epithumia, Greek; concupiscentia, Latin) cuts through the contemporary fog concerning self and sexuality. The collective fetish over idolizing our own identity—or better, our perception of identity—drives much contemporary moral discussion. This lust for self-determination takes on gospel-like scope and authority: “In the beginning was my desire. My desire was with me. My desire was me.” Abandoning the Creator for the created, contemporary views of ontology make human desires and our right to preserve them the final court of appeal. The gavel has come down: I am my desires. And I will always be who I am.

God’s speech carries final authority. That is only right. He is, after all, God. His gravitas weighs in every word on every page of his Word, where he calls us to lifelong response and faithful resolve. This embedded authority causes us to “treat Scripture with the same reverence that we do God, because it is from God alone, and unmixed with anything human.”[1]

His Word then requires comprehensive response–what we do (word/action), the goal for what we do (telos/end/purpose), and why we do it (motive/desire). The whole of life before the Author of life–such is the scope of biblical ethics, including our sexuality. Our lives and our sexuality speak antiphonally, making covenant reply to the God of heaven with our acts, our goals, and our desires.

Acts

In his word, God declares the norm for our behavior. What God demands, we must do. What he forbids, we must not. He speaks with no ambiguity as he lays down the divine boundaries for sexual activity, “You shall not commit adultery” (Ex. 20:14). Sexuality belongs in monogamous marriage, period. Any deviation from these divine boundaries is sin against him (cf. Psalm 51:4).

Goals

Some moral paradigms attempt to squeeze covenant life into bald duty, yet God’s demands can never rightly be reduced to the behavioral. Our Creator is concerned not just how we behave on the path we trod, but the destination charted in our hearts. Biblical ethics concern teleology not just deontology. To what end do we obey? What outcome do we seek? What is the highest good, the summum bonum of our actions?

These are critical questions. Actions are meaningful, in fact, because they have a purpose. As creatures living before the face of God, we receive that purpose, we do not define it. In terms of the seventh commandment, God is not concerned only with the boundaries for our bodies, but with our sexual ambitions. Like every other human activity, sexuality too possesses a telos; it concerns the heart’s hopes and its goals.

Multiple good goals surface, including procreation, intimacy, and pleasure. But there is more. The ultimate goal of sexuality is not merely offspring, increase of marital closeness, or attainment of personal (or even mutual) satisfaction. God has created marriage with a depth of significance that points beyond the human sphere; this deepest of human relationships in its covenantal and relational contours mirrors the Triune God, as we reflect his blessed mutuality, relationality, and dynamic communication. The institution of marriage makes the imago Dei sing; the symphony of interpersonal rhythms and harmonies resounds divine relations. Further, the Spirit draws upon the marriage relationship as a living metaphor of the consummate reality of Christ’s relationship with his Church (Eph. 5:18ff)—a meaning well beyond horizontal, human engagement (see, e.g., John Piper’s This Momentary Marriage).

Sexuality in marriage reveals no exception. Our sexual activity is a component of our covenant reply to God, and God defines the ultimate ends for it. In fact, marital nakedness which intends anything less than the glory of God as its ultimate end, fails holy prescription and whole delight. Contrary to pop narratives, God’s will for our sexuality does not rob us, but fuels joy at its highest. Moreover, divine goals for sex cohere with the divinely appointed goodness of sexual activity for procreation, for the genuine value of marital intimacy, or even for the thrill in sexual intimacy. In principle, no competition exists between these human joys and divine intention. The negativity about sexuality espoused by some Church Fathers lost touch with biblical exuberance about this divine gift.

Accordingly, divine ends for sexuality get drowned either by the millstone of artificial limits or the ball and chain of wanton license. When having children only to advance our own family name, to pursue satisfaction, or to ensure greater end of life comforts, procreative goals fall short of divine glory. When pursuing sexual intimacy with myopic mutuality, plans of the heart fall short of divine glory and short circuit the very intimacy we seek. Such self-absorption and short-sightedness expose spiritual cataracts. And when we fail to consider our sexuality for the glory of our Maker, such horizontalizing and silencing of divine ends is culpable; it is sin against the Lord.

[1]John Calvin, quoted in Readings in Christian Thought (edited by Hugh T. Kerr; Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1966), 163.

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