Marital sex is not the solution to a sin problem. For the sake of your relationship with God first and foremost, and secondly your relationship with your spouse, you must address the problem of sexual temptation. Go to God in repentance. Seek council from your church elders. Leave all you know to be sinful and run to the cross of Christ. Only that can save you. Sex and marriage were never meant to be your saviour. 

Marriage will not fix your sexual sin problem. I’m stating that at the outset. Wherever we go from here you can return to this first sentence and be clear on what I am and I’m not saying. Let me repeat it: marriage will not fix your sexual sin problem.

Sexual Sin Distorts A Very Good Thing

In a previous article I encouraged young people to get married. In particular, I exhorted them against using education as an excuse for not getting married. This was in light of the sexual drive that God has built into each and every one of us. For this sexual drive has most young people burning with passion, choosing to exercise it everywhere but in God’s intended place: marriage.

At this point, I need to make a very important distinction, which might have been missed while reading my previous article. This distinction is between sexual temptation and sexual desire. The two are similar, even related. But they aren’t identical. Sexual desire is the natural drive that God put in the man and the woman for physical intimacy. It includes sex, but is about much more. Yet God provides one location for the expression of sexual desire: within marriage, between one man and one woman. 

Sexual temptation, on the other hand, seeks pleasure outside the bounds of God’s intended use and means for satisfying sexual desire. It is manifested in everything from lust, pornography, masturbation, and adultery, all the way to extremes such as homosexuality and bestiality.

God gave marriage as the proper context for expressing our sexual drives. In various forms, sexual temptation is for something other than what God gave.

What Does it Mean to Burn with Passion?

What I’m calling burning with passion is a distortion of sexual desire. Many people today desire the fulfilment of this desire for physical intimacy almost to the point of distraction. The imagery of a fire that is raging and needs to be controlled or appeased comes to mind. Because the desire is present, sexual temptation is never far behind.

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