Christianity Today

Sex and Sexuality

The first chapters of Scripture reveal a God who made sexuality core to the human experience—and indeed, the way that Adam and Eve would “fill the earth and subdue it.” Song of Solomon celebrates the sexual delight of lovers, while Paul taught that marital union represents the relationship between Christ and his church. Because of this, Christianity remains among the most “sex-positive” religions, even if segments of the church have on one hand, cloaked it in shame or, on the other, given it a mystical power bordering on idolatry. Today’s Christians face a culture that, through pornography, media, and advertising, idolizes sexual pleasure while debasing its unitive and procreative power by extracting it out of relationship. In this context, evangelicals struggle to teach and live out a biblical theology of sex that centers on the marital covenant between husband and wife, affirms the playful, non-procreative dimensions of sex, and welcomes the possibility of new life, even without a central teaching on birth control.