This was a talk I gave for a Logos School Assembly – Life Between the Sexes 2023
Introduction
This is a Christian school, which means that we seek to honor Christ and one another as we study and learn and grow up. This may seem obvious, but it bears stating that apart from knowing Christ, the ways we are trying to honor Christ and one another won’t make sense. So when we have these talks, one foundational question to ask yourself is: do these talks resonate with you? Do you generally want to listen and learn or do they seem like someone speaking a different language, or maybe worse, do they seem offensive or repulsive to you? It says in 2 Cor. 2:16 that the gospel smells like death to those who are dead, but it smells like life to those who are being saved.
The talk today is about life between the sexes, and I want to hit several practical recommendations, but I want to ground it all in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:18-20).
You could summarize the Christian teaching on life between the sexes as that first command from the Apostle Paul: Flee fornication. Flee sexual sin. Notice that he doesn’t say, avoid or keep an eye out for. He says “flee.” Flee means to run away, to rush, and generally the word means to run away from danger and to make haste toward a place of safety.
God Bought Your Body
I want to come back to this in a minute, but first the reasons for running away from the danger of sexual sin. There are two reasons: 1. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in You from God and 2. You are not your own because you were bought with a price. This is why I wanted to begin with the foundation for how we seek to pursue our life together as men and women, male and female.
Paul says that we must flee fornication because our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and they do not belong to us because Christ bought them with His blood. It’s interesting that God bought our bodies. Often we talk about how God saved our souls. That’s certainly true, but this text says that God bought our bodies and fills our bodies with His Spirit. His Spirit is not just in our hearts, not just in our souls, not just in our minds, but also in our material, physical bodies.
But if the Holy Spirit is not in you, and if you don’t know if your body was bought with a price, then the command to flee fornication will seem strange, maybe even repulsive. The world is shouting at you all day long that your body belongs to you. You can do whatever you want with your body, and that if you don’t let your body and its passions rule you, you will be sad, hurt, and unfulfilled. That’s why you have do whatever “feels good.” And some Christians even partially give in to this by imagining that God really only cares about your heart or soul, but not so much about our bodies: why’d you get that tattoo, why’d you dye your hair blue? “I just like it.” Man looks at the appearance, but God looks at the heart, we say, misapplying the verse.
But God created our bodies. He created us body and soul to image Him, male and female in His image, to display His glory. And when we scorned Him, He sent His Son to pay the penalty for our rebellion and His Spirit to fill and sanctify our bodies, so that we can please Him and glorify Him with our bodies.
Part of the effects of the Fall is the awkwardness and shame we can feel in our bodies. Sometimes there are also various forms of ingratitude or resentment about our bodies and envy or covetousness of others. Rosaria Butterfield has pointed out that transgenderism is fundamentally a radical envy of a completely different body than the one God gave you. For Christians, not only did God give you your body and your neighbor their body, but He also sent His Son to redeem our bodies, to make them holy. This means that they can be used to glorify Him now through obedience (offering our bodies as living sacrifices), and in the resurrection, our bodies will glorify Him perfectly forever. Our obedience is our sacrifice of praise.
How To Flee Fornication
1. “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Heb. 13:4). The whole point of courtship is to find a spouse in a way that honors God, marriage, and one another. But treating courtship and the bodies God has given us and our interactions together casually is to dishonor the marriage bed and dishonor Christ. Imagine walking into the White House to meet the president in shorts and flipflops or showing up to a fancy dinner in your sweatpants and an old t-shirt. There’s a kind of thoughtlessness that simply is dishonoring. It’s the same with how you interact with one another. Be thoughtful. Hookup/dating culture is also practicing for fornication and adultery, not fleeing from it. If you’re just flirting, talking about who likes who, who has a crush on who, and serially giving yourself to various people (even just emotionally), you’re playing games with emotions that are meant to be ruled carefully until you’re ready to find a spouse. But revving up those emotions before you’re ready is a great way to practice infidelity. This includes the cheap emotional thrill of gossiping about other people or spreading rumors.
2. Treat one another as brothers and sisters. Of course there is a difference between your actual brothers and sisters and everyone else, but the point is to be kind, courteous, respectful, but not intimate. You shouldn’t be close with anyone of the opposite sex who isn’t actually family. And be really careful about pretending that you can (e.g. “They’re practically like family!”) It would be incredibly awkward and weird to have romantic thoughts about a brother or sister, and while you’re in junior high and high school, you aren’t ready to get married yet, so don’t pretend you are. Don’t day dream that you are. Don’t imagine that you are. Don’t talk like you are. Don’t spend a lot of time together, don’t privately message one another. Gents, hold doors, seat the ladies, look out for their needs; gals, thank the guys and cheer them on.
3. “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Eph. 5:4). Crude jokes about body parts or sexual functions are dishonoring to the marriage bed, dishonoring the way God made our bodies, and frequently tend toward being unguarded against sexual temptations. When you make light of the way God made us, instead of being thankful, you’re practicing to be thoughtless, rude, and lustful. Of course, God made our bodies and they are funny in some ways, but if you wouldn’t tell that joke in front of your mom, don’t tell it in front of your friends or on a text thread. This also means not listening to music or watching shows that are full of filthiness.
4. Lastly, flee fornication and honor the marriage bed by prepare for marriage and family. Work hard at your studies, grow in personal disciplines of holiness and self-control and purity. Read your Bible regularly. Pray regularly. Grow into a mature man or woman of God. Maturity means taking responsibility for yourself and then beginning to serve others. What can you do for yourself and how can you help others? Can you pick up a job? Can you volunteer? Do you see things that need to be done and do them without being told or do you only do those things that are asked of you? Seeing what needs to be done and doing it on your own is maturity, and maturity is thoughtfulness and shows honor and is preparing for marriage.
So flee fornication because Christ is worthy. He has purchased us with His blood and filled us with His Spirit, so that we may glorify God in our bodies.
Photo by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash
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