The Bible also tells us that:
4. Sex is an expression of love. Sexual intercourse can be the most intimate, physical, and expressive way of saying “I love you.” The Song of Songs describes passionate love and the expression of that love physically.
5. Sex is for pleasure. The author of Proverbs writes of the erotic zones of the female body and of being “intoxicated” with love (Proverbs 5:18-19).
6. Sex is to satisfy sexual needs. The Apostle Paul recognized sexual desire. He encouraged each man to “have his own wife and each woman her own husband” to guard against sexual immorality (1 Corinthians 7:2). He charged husbands and wives to “not deprive one another” of sexual intimacy, so that they would not be tempted (1 Corinthians 7:5).
7. Sex is to reflect, and to proclaim, the faithfulness of Christ to the church. The Apostle Paul compared the “one flesh” relationship of a husband and wife to the relationship of Christ to the church (Ephesians 5:31-32). When a man and a woman marry, unite sexually with each other, and remain faithful to each other, they are a picture to the world of Christ’s “nourishing and cherishing” the church, his bride. Sex before marriage and infidelity within marriage deprive the world of this witness.
What is sex for? The world gets some of it right: sex is to fulfill a natural God-given desire, to experience pleasure, and to express love. But what most people today get wrong is believing that you don’t have to be married to have sex. Sex outside marriage ignores the purposes for which God gave us this gift and says in effect “I’ll do it my way.”
Most people don’t know what the Bible says about sex. Make sure that your teens do. Help them to fill their minds with biblical teaching on intimate relationships.
