The God sex guide

What is the Christian understanding of human sexuality, and how does this affect the ‘debate’ over same-sex relationships? I offer the following as a brief summary of what I think the Bible shows us. This was meant especially for Sunniva, but others may find it of benefit.

Early in the Bible we read that God made man “in his image”. Ancient Near Eastern culture would have understood this instantly to mean that man is the earthly representation of God and the physical ‘embodiment’ of his presence. The same passage, however, adds that man (adam) is “male and female”, but it doesn’t explain how this works.

Genesis 2 then describes in detail the interrelationship between the first ‘male and female’ culminating in two observations —first, that this is a pattern for all such relationships (“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, etc”, 2:24), and secondly, that this is an ‘unspoilt’ relationship (“The man and his wife were both naked, etc”, 2:25).

The events of Genesis 3 (the Fall) strike at the heart of this inter-human relationship (esp 3:16b), as well as at the vertical relationship with God and the horizontal relationship with the rest of creation.

From here on, things go down hill, so that by Genesis 4 we have polygamy, tinged with violence, bullying and aggression. By the end of Genesis, we can add to that incest with one’s own children (Lot’s family), social rape (Sodom and Gomorrah) and prostitution. By Exodus and the giving of the Law we can add to the list of observable behaviours bestiality, homosexuality, the sexualization of worship and so on. Polygamy and concubinage are commonplace.

In short, human behaviour has moved from an original ‘binary’ model (male and female, made for each other), connected with the image of God, to a ‘polysexual’ pattern of diversity. We might diagram this as follows:

Image (male and female) < diversity and perversity

The Law provides some prohibitions and some accommodations. Thus various forms of sexual activity are prohibited and worship is never sexualized, but divorce is only slightly moderated and polygamy is still tolerated. In simple (simplistic?) terms:

The Law ≠ all perversity outside the Genesis paradigm

The Law = some diversity outside the Genesis paradigm

The impact of this, however, is a biblical trajectory which returns towards the original model. It is not absolute, nor is it complete, but it is there. During the Old Testament era, we also have a developing theme of God as the Bridegroom of Israel (Hosea, bits of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel), whereas unfaithfulness to God is pictured as ‘whoredom’.

By the time we reach the New Testament era, Jewish society is monogamous, with some debate about the grounds on which divorce can take place. Moreover, it is separated from the surrounding Gentile world by its strict standards of sexual morality generally. The ‘accommodation’ of the Law, however, is still very real.

The arrival of Jesus brings the trajectory to its culmination and yet also challenges the framework of the Law. Jesus describes himself as the bridegroom, and the same description of him is used by John the Baptist, thus placing himself in the same relationship with Israel as was God. At the same time, though, he confronts head-on the limited scope of the Law, insisting that Genesis 1-2 provides the model for understanding sexuality. Just as in the Sermon on the Mount, the Law is presented as being limited to human capacity: “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard, but it was not this way from the beginning” (Matt 19:8).

The culmination of this is a new understanding of Christ in relation to the people of God, based in the Genesis account, which sets human sexuality back within this framework.

In Ephesians we see the theological implications spelled out for us. Specifically, Genesis 2:24 is applied to Christ and the Church, hence “husband is to wife” as “Jesus is to Church”. Thus we also understand Genesis 1:27 to mean that the male-female relationship of husband and wife ‘images’ the ‘Creator-Creation’ relationship of God to his redeemed people. This may be presented in diagramatic form thus:

Law-based accommodation gives way to Gospel standard >Christ and the Church = God’s ‘image’ in human sexuality

Putting the whole thing together, then, the biblical picture is thus:

Human Sexuality
OT Image (m/f) { divergence - Law - convergence } NT Image (Xt/Church)

This has profound significance for our understanding of salvation, as the ‘union’ of marriage represents the union of Christ with the believer, through which what is his becomes ours - “If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with” (Rom 6:5-6, see also 7:4, 1 Cor 6:16-17). But it also has implications for our present understanding and practice of human sexuality.

John P Richardson
30 May 2009

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