The Thing About Sexual Intimacy

Did you ever stop and think about how God made Eve? He didn’t speak her into existence. He didn’t create her from the earth. He didn’t create her alone, but God used Man to create Woman. He took something away from Adam in order to create for him the perfect partner.

Let your mind roll that thought around for a while.

“But for Adam, no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out for the man, and he brought her to the man.”

In His mercy, God used divine anesthesia so that Adam was unable to protest or decide for himself if this was a good idea. If God had held a meeting and told Adam the plan, I am fairly certain that Adam, being completely oblivious to what life would be like with a helper that would complete him and a partner that would share a form of intimacy with him that he had yet to witness, would have said, “Wait… you want to open up my flesh, remove a bone, turn that bone into something else for me to manage??? No, really… I’m good. I think I have this dominion thing down. I will just keep all my parts!”

But God knew that there was something better, and He was about to show Adam. He was about to create for man someone who would love and respect and honor him in a manner that no other creature could. This woman would know how to be the fulfilment of a need that Adam didn’t even know he had. She was created by God with the DNA of her man. His needs and his passions; his hopes and his dreams; his joys and his sorrows; his strengths and his weaknesses; all these things were alive inside of her. She knew him and that is exactly as God planned it to be. Together they would form an inseparable union that would be the model of all couples throughout history.

That all occurred on the other side of sin. When the decision was made to challenge the authority of God, the perfect intimacy they once shared became a rivalry. Where once they knew each other completely without any shame, sin caused them to use what they knew as a weapon to blame and strike out in anger. Where sexual intimacy had been a beautiful gift from God, it became a tool for manipulation and gateway to lust and immorality. Where there was perfect unity of man and wife, sin drove a wedge and thousands of years later, we still struggle to sort out how to live in purity and wholeness, whether we are single or married.

We live in a culture where Biblical morality is either ignored or interpreted in a manner that meets our particular belief system. So did Paul, a first century follower of Jesus who wrote many of the books of the New Testament. It was so bad in the city of Corinth that he told them that it would be best for people who were single, to remain that way. It doesn’t tell us why, but comparing it to our promiscuous culture, I would venture a guess that sexually transmitted disease was rampant and the only solution was abstinence.

Jesus reminded the crowds of God’s original plan for marriage. “A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one.” (Matthew 19:5-6) This means a life-long commitment to love and honor one another, as if their desires and needs were our own. Living with that deep intimacy is God’s plan for marriage. It requires an openness and honesty and vulnerability that was never intended to be experienced outside of an eternal commitment, blessed by God. It requires us to be opened up and have something of ourselves removed. It requires us to allow God to create us to with the needs of our spouse living in us so that we alone can restore their emptiness and meet a deep need.

Sexual purity is God’s desire for us because He knows us. He made us and He made our desire for sexual intimacy, but He made it to accompany a commitment to our spouse; to honor them, their needs, their body, their desires. All of that requires a deep knowledge of that person and that does not come without losing something of ourselves and gaining a desire to meet a need. It takes time… for some, maybe a life time. But it is the design of God for us to let down our guard, tear down the walls, look far beyond ourselves and learn to live in the beauty of the passion He created for husband and wife.

In our current society, as in first century Corinth, sexual promiscuity is the norm and self-gratification, via any means available, is simply accepted. In our society, as in Corinth, there is hopelessness, disillusionment, and broken hearts. It has become evident that seeking to have our need for intimacy or sexual gratification met in some manner other than the way God designed, opens up the door to a vast emptiness that we will forever try to fill. It doesn’t bring joy and fulfillment, because the One who created sexual intimacy, created it for us to find in our marriage commitment. Perhaps the greatest thing God ever created was marital intimacy, where two people become one, united in hopes and dreams and desires and passion. For it is in our ability to lose ourselves in an intimate encounter with the one that will be by our side, ‘til death do us part, that we discover how very much God cares for us.

If you are not married, God wants you to keep yourself pure for the one person to whom you will pledge your lifelong devotion.

If you are married, take a look at how you treat your husband or wife. Are you sharing the intimacy that God designed for marriage? Are you learning to know him or her? Can you allow God to open your heart and remove what He wants in order to create something better than you can imagine? We tend to live with the expectation that our needs must be met by the one who loves us, but forget that we were created to give; to make a sacrifice; to love and honor each other above ourselves.

Living the life He designed for you may require some major… or minor alterations. But when you allow God to transform you into that person He made you to be, and commit to saving sexual intimacy for marriage, and truly living out love and submission to one another in the intimacy of marriage, you will find something so beautiful and fulfilling that it defies description.