10 Uncomfortable Truths About Christian Sexual Ethics
Sexual Ethics
What the Bible has to say about sexual ethics is perhaps the most off-putting aspect of the Christian faith in today’s world. What makes a Christian sexual ethic so increasingly unpalatable is that it confronts and undermines core values in Western culture: autonomous identity, freedom, equality, authenticity. Challenging what one feels is true in the area of sexuality is to challenge one’s core identity and to impose unfair restrictions on one’s ability to love—or so the logic goes. To suggest that God places limits or boundaries on human sexuality for our benefit sounds ridiculous to many ears.
Christianity’s sexual ethic is actually pretty simple, summed up by Keller as, “Sex is for use within marriage between a man and woman.”1 It’s the implicit denials within this statement that prove distasteful. Like the “I am the only way” claim of Christ, the notion that sex can only look a certain way is offensive in its exclusivity.
Much has been made in the last decade of how young people are being turned away from Christianity in large part because of its “anti-gay” image.2 Most pastors and church leaders I have talked to agree that Christianity’s anti-homosexuality image is the biggest stumbling block for would-be converts. Tyler Braun, a pastor at New Harvest Church in Salem, Oregon, has said this:
People outside of the church automatically judge that we hate gays and are therefore discriminatory toward them. The offensive part of this, to them, is how can a supposedly loving God not accept people just the way they are? Why can’t people be who God made them to be? Or so they question.3
This issue is a particularly uncomfortable one for me. Like an increasing number of Christians in my generation, I have close friends, people whom I love dearly, who identify as gay. What does it look like for me to show love to my gay friends, even as I remain committed to the authority of Scripture on homosexuality? What does it mean that one of my gay friends is actively serving in his local church and seems to be bearing fruit for the kingdom? The questions are uncomfortable. The issue is difficult. But Scripture is unavoidable.
A biblical sexual ethic, however, goes far beyond forbidding homosexual practice. That’s a truth many Christians conveniently forget. The biblical witness on sexuality is all-encompassing and can be costly for all. The following are just some of the uncomfortable truths about sexuality that we must reckon with in a faithful pursuit of Christ.
Uncomfortable
Brett McCracken
Uncomfortable makes a compelling case that following Jesus calls us to embrace the more difficult aspects of Christianity in the context of the local church.
1. God created and celebrates sexual bodies and sexuality.
Contrary to Gnostic, body-shaming tendencies within some strands of Christianity, the human body and its sexual functions are neither dirty nor demeaning in God’s created order. As Keller says, “Biblical Christianity may be the most body-positive religion in the world.”4 God created male and female bodily differences and celebrates their goodness. He created sex as a gift and encourages it (see Prov. 5:19; 1 Cor. 7:3–5; and especially Song of Solomon). Structured as a chiasm with an orgasm at the center (“come to his garden,” Song 4:16; “I came to my garden,” Song 5:1), Song of Solomon is one big, beautiful celebration of heterosexual sex as a pleasurable gift. Uncomfortable truth indeed!
2. Christian sexual conduct should be noticeably different than the world’s.
This has been true since the earliest days of Christianity in the Roman world, where the prevailing sexual reality “was a total lack of sexual inhibition”5 and where most people took it for granted that the goal was to have “as much sex as they could get.”6 Early Christian converts came from this context, and many of them struggled with habituating away from old sexual habits. As McKnight points out, same-sex sexual relations “was the story of more than a few of Paul’s converts.”7 Yet early Christians were called to a new, different ethic of sexuality that was about something bigger than satisfying personal sexual appetites (see Romans 1; 1 Corinthians 6; Ephesians 5; etc.).
3. Sexuality is not a private matter.
The Bible knows nothing of Western culture’s idea that no one should tell anyone what he or she can and can’t do in the privacy of his or her bedroom. Paul’s position in the New Testament (see 1 Corinthians, for example) is that “everything that we do as Christians, including our sexual practices, affects the whole body of Christ.” 8
4. Sex outside of marriage is never OK.
In contemporary society sex is seen as a casual thing that can be part of dating or even noncommittal one-night stands between two or more consenting adults. But God created sex for the context of the covenantal union of one man and one woman (see Gen. 2:24; Matt. 19:3–6; 1 Cor. 7:2). As tempting as it may be to see premarital sex as a way to build deeper intimacy or to “test drive” a potential mate to determine compatibility, there is simply no biblical justification for it.
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5. Sexual immorality includes words and thoughts.
Lest we think we are living according to God’s plan simply by not having sex outside of marriage, Scripture is clear that sexual immorality includes things like lusting (Matt. 5:28), causing others to lust (see Prov. 5:1–23; 7:1–27; 1 Tim. 2:9–10), and talking luridly about sexual immorality (Eph. 5:3–4).
6. Being “born this way” doesn’t excuse sexual immorality.
Everyone is born with bents toward certain sins, including sexual sins. Whether this is nature or nurture, it matters not. “Just because we have that bent doesn’t mean we must act upon it,” says David Platt. “We live in a culture that assumes a natural explanation implies a moral obligation. If you were born with a desire, it’s essential to your nature to carry it out.”9 That Scripture calls us away from this logic is very uncomfortable indeed.
7. Both the Old and New Testaments consistently forbid homosexual practice.
Any time homosexuality is mentioned in the Old Testament, it is condemned (e.g., Genesis 19; Lev. 18:22; 20:13). The Torah that Jesus and Paul would have grown up studying was uniform in its disapproval of homoerotic behavior. And contrary to the assertions of some critics, “the earliest Christians did, in fact, consistently adopt the Old Testament’s teaching on matters of sexual morality, including homosexual acts.”10 Though only a handful of New Testament texts (Romans 1; 1 Cor. 6:9–11; 1 Tim. 1:8–11) address homoerotic activity, “all that do mention it express unqualified disapproval,” argues Duke Divinity scholar Richard Hays. The New Testament paradigm for homosexual behavior is “emphatically negative,” argues Hays, and “offers no accounts of homosexual Christians, tells no stories of same-sex lovers, ventures no metaphors that place a positive construal on homosexual relations.”11
8. Paul singles out homosexuality as an illustration of the root problem of sin.
In Romans 1, Paul discusses man’s rebellion against God by highlighting homosexuality as a particularly vivid example of humans rejecting God’s sovereignty and refusing to honor his created order. Paul singles out homosexual intercourse in such a theological context, Hays notes, because when human beings exchange their created roles (man and woman for each other, to be fruitful and multiply) for homosexual intercourse, “they embody the spiritual condition of those who have ‘exchanged the truth about God for a lie.’”12
9. Churches should value singles and the vocation of singleness.
Whether for the sake of same-sex attracted Christians for whom marriage will never be an option, or for heterosexual singles who may never marry, churches must do a better job articulating a compelling vision of singleness and celibacy as callings that can be as satisfying and impactful for the kingdom as any other. Jesus, “the most fully human person who ever lived,” never married.13 Neither did Paul, who commended singleness as a worthy vocation for some (1 Cor. 7:8–9, 25–40). Churches must consider singles as “full members” of the people of God, including them in leadership teams and welcoming them at the tables and in the rhythms of church life.
10. Churches must commit to loving and walking alongside same-sex-attracted people.
Heterosexual Christians must recognize and respond to the burden of their same-sex-attracted Christian brothers and sisters whose commitment to celibacy may lead them to feel hopelessly confined to a life of loneliness and suppressed libido. As Scott Sauls points out, straight Christians must do more than preach about the boundaries of “no sex outside of male-female marriage!” Rather, “we must ask the radical question of what it will take to ensure that every unmarried person has access to friendships as deep and lasting as marriage and as meaningful as sex.”14 A community like that may be awkward and messy and, yes, uncomfortable, but it beautifully pictures Christ’s sacrificial love.
Notes:
- Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (New York: Dutton, 2011), 221.
- In 2007, for example, the Barna Group found that 91 percent of nonChristian and 80 percent of churchgoing young people saw Christianity as anti-gay. See David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007).
- Tyler Braun, email interview with author, January 29, 2016. Used with permission.
- Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, 221.
- Scot McKnight, A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God’s Design for Life Together (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015), 127.
- N. T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 250.
- McKnight, A Fellowship of Differents, 128.
- Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testmament Ethics (New York: HarperOne, 1996), 392.
- David Platt, Counter Culture: Following Christ in an Anti-Christian Age (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2015), 166.
- Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament., 382.
- Ibid., 389, 395.
- Ibid., 388.
- John Piper, “For Single Men and Women (and the Rest of Us),” Desiring God, July 1, 1991, http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/for-single-men -and-women-and-the-rest-of-us.
- Scott Sauls, Jesus Outside the Lines (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2015), 145.
This article is adapted from Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community by Brett McCracken.
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