In Theological Sexuality: Gender, Part 1, we saw that the male and female distinction has its foundation in the very nature of God. In Theological Sexuality: Gender, Part 2, we saw that the male and female distinction also has its foundation in the very nature of Christ and His church. In Theological Sexuality and the Sacraments, we saw that just as Christians demonstrate their covenant union with Christ through the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, so too humans demonstrate their covenant union with their spouses through sexuality. All of which leads to the question of what this teaches us deviances from Biblical sexuality.

The answers, once the above three foundations are understood, are quite simple. Biblical sexuality is two persons, one male and one female, united in covenant marital oneness, demonstrating that intrinsic covenantal oneness physically. It is quite easy then to address the deviances in our culture.

Homosexuality is out of accord with Biblical Sexuality because it involves two males or two females, destroying the foundation of God’s nature of plurality and the nature of Christ and the Church. It is not Christ in covenant with Christ or the Church in covenant with the Church, but Christ is covenant with the Church. God is not three sons, three fathers, or three Holy Spirits, but Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Thus, human sexuality reflects a unity of plurality.

Adultery is wrong because sexuality proclaims a covenant oneness between two individuals who are not covenantally one. Instead, these two individuals have broken their marriage covenants with their original spouses by declaring themselves one with someone else. Christ does not abandon the church to form a covenant with someone else. In the same way, not just anyone can participate in the covenant signs of baptism and the Lord’s supper. The covenant of grace is only between Christ and the Church.

Pornography is a lie, pure and simple. Those viewing pornography are enjoying the benefits of the covenant when in fact their is none. Pornography is nearly identical to prostitution in this regard. It is a sham of a covenant. Christ does not simply pretend to have a covenant relationship with the church or vice versa. To put it even more graphically, Christ does not simply look at pictures of the Church or fantasize about having a covenant relationship with the Church. There truly is a covenant which He died to create. Those engaged in sexual activity are declaring themselves covenantally one, but when pornography is involved, they are not actually one!

Auto-eroticism is wrong because Biblical sexuality is for husband and wife as a reflection of Christ and the church. The church does not participate in Baptism or the Lord’s Supper without Christ present! Christ does not engage the signs of the covenant without the church. It is not Christ by Himself or the church by itself, but Christ in covenant relation with the Church. Christ is a person of the Trinity, not one by Himself. Again, this deviance destroys the picture of plurality of Biblical Sexuality.

The list could go on and on, but the pattern is quite evident. Biblical sexuality is for two persons, one male and one female, in covenant union with one another, as a picture of Christ and the Church and the plurality of the Godhead. All else is a perversion and deviance from God’s created purpose.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and families of the recent bombing at the end of the Boston Marathon.

In a recent post, I began by unpacking the Apostle Paul’s idea from Ephesians 5 that human marriage is a ‘living parable’ of the spiritual marriage of Christ to His church. Paul argues there in Ephesians 5 that the ‘one flesh’ passage of Genesis 2:24 is primarily about Christ and His church. God created human marriage for humans to understand the Gospel relationship between Christ and those He came to save from their sins.

But what does this have to do with sexuality? The answer lies specifically in the theological doctrine of union with Christ. The Apostle Paul considers this concept of believers being united with Christ as fundamental to the truth of the Gospel. As Christ is crucified, my old sinful self is crucified; as Christ is raised, I am raised; as Christ is glorified, I too will be glorified. Christ’s righteousness is my righteousness because I have been united with Him. Believers in Jesus Christ are spiritually united with Him. We are spiritually one with Him, which is why Paul uses Genesis 2:24 to speak of this spiritual marriage or relationship. We have become “one flesh,” or “one body” with Christ.

But how do we demonstrate this mystical spiritual union with Christ? In the New Testament church we have two such ways that we refer to as sacraments or ordinances: the Lord’s Supper and Baptism. The Apostle Paul draws the connection between baptism and union with Christ in Romans 6:3-5: “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. ⁵For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Paul links the act of baptism with spiritual union. We were baptized into Christ.

The same is true of the Lord’s Supper. In John 6:33-26 Jesus says “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.⁵⁴ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.” Verse 56 is key as the eating of Christ’s body and drinking His blood is a clear reference to the Lord’s Supper, established later in Christ’s ministry. Christ Himself links the Lord’s Supper with spiritual union with Him, He remaining in us and we in Him. The Apostle Paul picks up this theme as well in 1 Corinthians 11, but there Paul gives a warning that is crucial to our discussion.

The sacraments/ordinances instituted by Christ are only for those who are indeed one with Him. Paul makes this explicit in 1 Corinthians 11 when he states that there is a judgment that comes from eating and drinking in the Lord’s Supper without discerning what the Lord’s Supper symbolizes. The Lord’s Supper is a symbol of oneness, of communion with Christ in His death on the cross, and is therefore only for those who are indeed one with Christ and actually in spiritual union with Him. Paul even states that members of the Corinthian church died for taking the Lord’s Supper improperly. There is a judgment for those who come to the Lord’s Table and proclaim that they are one with Christ when indeed they are not. In essence, they are abusing the communal supper of God’s people by pretending to be one when they are outside of fellowship with Christ. They participate in the sign, but miss that which is signifies.

In marriage, we see this same idea of mystical union of two people into one. As two individuals come together, with the husband and wife leaving their parents and ‘cleaving’ to each other, they become one through a marriage covenant. They then demonstrate this mystical covenant oneness physical into the act of sexuality. Just as we demonstrate our oneness as believers with Christ through the physical acts of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, we demonstrate our oneness with our marriage partners through the physical act of sexuality. As our human marriages find their source in the spiritual image of Christ, in many ways, our physical demonstrations of that oneness find their source in the physical demonstrations of our oneness with Christ. Just as the Lord’s Supper is very much a covenant renewal ceremony, in many ways the act of sexuality is renewal of the marriage covenant.

The issue in today’s world is that we have divided the act of sexuality from what is signifies. This is not a new problem. Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 6:16 “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” When we engage in extra-marital sexual activity, we are lying to ourselves, our sexual partner, or whoever else may know. We are participating in an act that declares oneness where there is none!

If human marriage and gender find their origin in the relationship between Christ and the Church, and the act of sexuality is the physical demonstration of that marital oneness, then sexuality itself is linked with the relationship between Christ and the Church. Just as the church physically demonstrates its union with Christ, and must do so properly and truthfully discerning the body and death of Christ, so too sexuality demonstrates union with our spouse, and we must do so properly within that covenant relationship or find ourselves in opposition to the created order of God and justly deserving His displeasure.

In an earlier article, Gender: Part 1, I sought to explain how gender flows from the nature of God. As explained in the creation passages of Genesis 1 and 2, the plurality of personhood in the unity of God’s being is reflected in the plurality of genders in the unity of the human species. But the Genesis explanation is not finished, as the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5:31-32 quotes from and further explains Genesis 2:24. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

The Apostle Paul explains the existence of two human genders, and not three or four, as reflective of the gospel relationship between Christ and the Church. Throughout Ephesians 5, Paul argues that men are to be reflective of Christ in the marriage relationship as women are reflective of the Church. What must be further acknowledged from this passage in Ephesians is that the human marriage relationship is not simply Paul’s creative analogy for the relationship between Christ and the Church. Instead, Paul is arguing that the marriage relationship was created in order to express the relationship between Christ and the Church.

This can be seen in Paul’s explanation of Genesis 2:24. The original occurrence of Genesis 2:24 seems to refer to Adam and Eve’s marriage in Genesis 2:22-23  as it establishes a pattern for all future marriages based upon that first human marriage. One textual problem with this interpretation is that Adam had no parents, even though Genesis 2:24 clearly references the leaving of parents. Paul, however, in Ephesians 5, removes this difficulty by arguing that the marriage pattern of Genesis 2:24 began not with Adam and Eve but with Christ and the Church. Christ would leave his Father in heaven to come and victoriously win the church, redeeming her from sin by dying and rising again for her. For Paul, the human marriage of Adam and Eve is reflective of the spiritual union of Christ and the church, not the other way around! For Paul, gender and sexuality have their foundation in the Gospel!

In the teachings of Paul in Ephesians 5, one can see that Paul views the one flesh union of men and women as being reflective of the one flesh spiritual union between Christ and the church. From before the foundation of the world, as Paul argues in Ephesians 1, the Triune God had determined to send God the Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem the church. As the repetitive theme of Ephesians is our being “in Christ,” so God in His wisdom created marriage and the physical union of sexuality to be a ‘living parable’ of that spiritual mystical union between Christ and His Church. To pervert human sexuality, is to pervert the reflection of the union of Christ and the Church.  Thus, the goal of Christians is not simply to protect marriage for tradition sake. Instead, stemming from a correct understand of Ephesians 5, Christians should desire to preserve the testimony of the gospel relationship between Christ and His church which is reflected in human marriage.

Recent theological arguments in areas of sexuality have fallen flat in secular culture. But the church is the one place that the connection between theology and sexuality must be proclaimed the loudest! As one of my esteemed professors in seminary, Dr. Willem Van Gemeren said, the problem is not that we are failing to teach our teenagers about sex. The problem is we are not teaching them wisdom! We give them laws without explaining how those laws flow from the nature of God. My goal in this next series of posts is to address what exactly we should teaching about theology so that those in the church understand how theology connects to sexuality, beginning first with the issue of gender.

The connection between theology and gender can be found in Genesis 1:26-27. “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness,…. ²⁷So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” It never ceases to amaze me that ‘in His own image God created mankind (singular), in the image of God He created them (plural). He created two in one. One species, two genders. It would make logical sense for the one God to create one species with only one gender, like the all-female whiptail lizards. Instead, the God who is one created a species that is two!

Compare this also with Genesis 2:18 “It is not good for the man to be alone, I will have a helper suitable for him.” Notice that God does create for man another man. Instead, he creates a woman, “suitable for him,” literally “fit for him.” Again, we see the God of creation emphasizing a plurality and distinctness within the human species. After Eve is brought to Adam, in Genesis 2:28, Adam recognizes her ‘sameness.’ “This is now bone of my bone flesh of my flesh.” But Adam also recognizes her differentness. “She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man.” There is both a similarity and a disparity. Both human but different genders.

And human sexuality continues to emphasize this difference. In Genesis 2:29 we read “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Distinctness: man and wife, but becoming same: “one flesh.” Sexuality is an act which emphasizes unity in diversity, of the ‘fitness’ between the two genders. And we are told, all the way at the beginning, in Genesis 1:26-27, that this was so that they could be made in God’s image. Genesis 1:26-27 make it explicit that this singularity in diversity was found in the nature of God, which is odd, considering God always refers to Himself usually masculine terminology. Paul even says in Ephesians 3 that all fathers/families in heaven and on earth get such a name from God the Father. So why did a God who identifies Himself with masculine terminology choose to create a species with a female gender rather than all males?

Again, the answer lies in Genesis 1:26. “God said let us make man in our image.” God did not say “my image” but our image. Who was God talking with to be able to say “our”? The answer is progressively revealed throughout the rest of Scripture. God is Himself unity in diversity, which he reveals to us as He reveals His Triune nature. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19), three distinct persons, equal in power, might, and glory, but one God (Deuteronomy 6:4). Scripture continually emphasizes the plurality and differentness of the persons of the Godhead. And yet, likewise, Scripture emphasizes the unity and sameness of the divinity of the Godhead. Three persons, One God. A true mystery.

Yet, while it is certainly a mystery, we have a reflection of the image of the Trinity within our own species as we see two genders. On the one hand, men and women are separately made in the image of God so that any one person can claim to be an image bearer of God. On the other hand, men and women are not made in such a way that they are exclusively made in the image of God. Rather, they are both made in the image of God. Men and Women are made in the image of God but are also together the image of God as a species.In a very real way, men and women are incomplete as a species without each other. If all the men in the world died so that only women were left, the image of God in the human race would not be complete. We would most likely be unable to point to exactly what is missing other than to say that the plurality of our species is gone, and with it the reflection of the Triune God. Both genders, individually bearing the image of God, are needed to truly bear the complete image of God.

As Dr. Jonathan Lunde at Biola put it, the existence of gender is itself a ‘living parable,’ pointing to the image of God. Sex too, as he explained it from Genesis 1 and 2, is also a ‘living parable.” The distinctness of our gender is self-evident. In human sexuality, though, we have a reminder and picture of our unity, that men and women were made fit for each other as they come together to reflect the image of our Triune God.

Gender and theology cannot be separated. To deny the importance of gender in sexuality is to deny the nature of God, who is Himself a being of unity in plurality.

Then why not make three genders? For that we turn to Gender, part 2.