God’s Design for Sexual Fulfillment: Conclusion
by Bill Blair on 02/10/08 at 7:32 am
Last week I explained the difference between a one-flesh relationship and a one-flesh union. This week I am going to wrap up this series with the following conclusion.
A key point to understand regarding sexual fulfillment is that “the emotional aspect of sex cannot be divorced from the physical dimension of the sex act.”(1) This point makes it clear that it is only within the confines of the one-flesh relationship of lifelong marriage that true lasting sexual fulfillment can be achieved. When a person engages in casual sex, they will be left feeling empty because they cannot separate emotion from sex, and they will be left needing more. It is only within a marriage that such emotions can be explored, cultivated, and enjoyed.
Last week I explained how all sex results in some type of one-flesh union, but it is only marriage that can establish a one-flesh relationship. God’s design for sexual fulfillment is that sexual intimacy be only one aspect of a whole one-flesh relationship that encompasses love in all areas of a couples lives. Those who engage in sex outside of God’s design will be left wanting more because the one-flesh unions they have established through illicit sex will fall short of the loving one-flesh relationship they need. Robertson McQuilkin explains this concept well:
The first positive element in oneness is not physical union, but the completing of another in a love relationship that embraces all of life. Even the oneness of bodies cannot be fulfilling in its most satisfying potential unless there is oneness to some degree in spirit as well, because sex is at root a psychological phenomenon. Heart unity provides the basis for releasing the ultimate in physical ecstasy, but it goes far beyond the momentary physical thrill to a total-life mutual satisfaction and fulfillment.(2)
True sexual fulfillment can only occur when people are able to commit to one another in the loving one-flesh relationship of marriage that allows them to grow in all aspects of the relationship. God’s design for sexual intimacy is the only means to achieve this; therefore, God’s design is the only true means for sexual fulfillment.
There is a country song out right now by Lady Antebellum that describes two people embracing the world’s view that a sexual “good time” can happen in one night. Check out the chorus below:
How bout baby
We make a promise
To not promise anything more than one night
Complicated situations
Only get worse in the morning light
Hey I’m just lookin’ for a good time(3)
The most telling words in this chorus are that “Complicated situations only get worse in the morning light.” I am not at all trying to say that people who engage in illicit sex don’t get satisfaction out of it because they clearly do, but it is the next day that such situations get complicated and get “worse in the morning light.” On one hand, the complications are a result of guilt that arises from the law written on our hearts knowing the actions are wrong and impure. On the other, it is just a result of taking what God created as pure and holy and twisting it. Such complications and guilt rob people of the pure enjoyment and fulfillment that God intended sex to include.
Sex is an incredibly intimate act. It involves the body, the mind, and the heart. One cannot be separated from the other which is why the only way to truly enjoy it is to keep it confined to the security of the one-flesh relationship of marriage. This is the way God designed it. He designed it this way for our benefit so we would all do well to embrace it. The truth is that we should embrace it because he is God and to not do so is a sin, but we should also embrace it because the way God designed is the way is the only way it can truly be enjoyed.
Tomorrow I will give a summary to this series as well as provide one crucial aspect to being able to enjoy sex as God intended it that I left out when I originally wrote this paper.
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(1) R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The Seduction of Pornography and the Integrity of Christian Marriage,” an address delivered to the men of Boyce College, 13 March 2004, [on-line] accessed 14 February 2008; available from http://www.sbts.edu/docs/Mohler/EyeCovenant.pdf.
(2) Robertson McQuilkin, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1995), 190.
(3) Lyrics copied from here.
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