Sexual Insanity II

Fellow meredevotion.com writer, JoyIndescribable, wrote this month about Sexual Insanity as a gritty reminder of the way that "living" by the world's standards of living is a lot like a slow, inner death.

To the best of my knowledge this was the first time on meredevotion.com that someone has ventured to write about sexuality, but the topic has been on my heart for some time. I find sexuality (particularly the opposite sex) to be very mysterious and wonderful ... but ... even more than that, I find the things the Bible says about sexuality to be far more mysterious and wonderful.

Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself.
1 Corinthians 6:18

Does the world admit that certain acts of sexuality are wrong? Many people in the world do, although it is quickly becoming the case that only the more perverse of sins are being acknowledged as wrong. And some are openly valued as 'alternative lifestyles'.

Although the world may identify some acts of sexuality as wrong, it never agrees with the Scriptures about what makes it wrong. In fact, it recoils in horror at the way the Scriptures identify evil.

The world may say that fornication is prone to diseases ... which can be solved with contraception, science, etc. Or it may say that prostitution is a "selfish" practice that people use to take advantage of others. Or it may say that adultery is wrong because it is a kind of "cheating" where one spouse gets an advantage the other does not have.

Certainly the Bible condemns the practices of fornication, prostitution, and adultery, but it does so from such a completely opposite direction that men in the error of their thinking would have never guessed there was such a direction. And when they hear it, they recoil in offense.

The Bible says that when a person sins sexually that they are sinning against their own body, that they are not sinning against their neighbor, nor their community, nor their "society" or "the Public" (whatever that could mean, I do not know). The implications of this claim are highly offensive.

When a person is raped, who is the person who was wronged? An immediate answer might be: 'Obviously, the person who was raped'. People who are raped often have heavy emotional burdens that they carry, and they usually struggle with self-confidence issues for the rest of their lives. How can it be any other way?

The Bible tells us it is the other way around, that the person who is truly wronged is the one who committed the rape. That person has -according to the Bible- done himself 'no good'. This is disturbing and politically incorrect in the eyes of the world.

Consider the question put this way: "Is it better to be a person who perpetrates rape or a person who is raped?". Clearly, it would be far better to suffer in neither way.

The Bible takes a clear answer on this question. It says those who commit sexual sins are the ones to be pitied! How atrocious this claim is to the world which only considers the appearance of things and maintaining facades.

The person who sins sexually carries an enormous weight on his or her shoulders. The world in its wickedness supposed though, that they get some kind of 'unfair advantage'. The claim of the Bible is that nothing could be further from the truth.

Another aspect of sexual sin is the duplicity of it. And this is the insane element. Erotic love always posits that its ways are spontaneous, and it almost always posits that its ways are wrong.

Like the proverb says, stolen water is sweeter than wine.

At the same time that the soul of the sexual sinner says, 'This is totally wrong ...' Their flesh is saying, 'This is totally great ...'. Their flesh and soul are unified in the sense that the soul is driving away in one direction and the flesh is driving away in the other direction, which is to say they are not unified.

As long as the person is going a hundred miles an hour in two opposite directions, there can be no relation between the two parts, and the person fails to speak their choices with a single voice.

How can God relate to such a person? To a person whose only law (and they understand it as a law, for they are indeed slaves to it) is lawlessness? How can God relate to a person who seeks to find their happiness in true despair? How can God reveal light to those whose light is darkness?

Is it impossible for God to relate to such a person? Yes, it is impossible, but praise God because through Christ he has accomplished the impossible. He did this by making Christ -who knew no sin- to become sin for us so that in Him we might have the righteousness of God.

Not only does the person who accepts Christ find reconciliation with God, but his soul becomes reconciled with his body. This is what Christ meant when he said,

Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
Matthew 11:28-29

Everyone who has been redeemed by the work of Jesus is given the task of taking their two most opposing parts (their soul and their flesh) and unifying them in the task of righteous living. This miracle is an act of God, and He entrusts his children with the task of living out this change He has made in them.