Well ladies and gents let’s just call a spade a spade and
say that today’s reading is difficult to traverse and remain “PC”. If you
haven’t already read the daily readings for yesterday and today stop now and go
and read 1 Corinthians 7:1-16 so you will have an idea of what I am talking
about. Paul says if you are a Christian and you are not already married and not
overcome by sexual desires it would be better for you to remain unmarried.
Anyone who is married would surely agree with his logic – being single you only
need to worry about yourself and your relationship with God, you are free to do
whatever you feel God calling you to do without consulting anyone else.
However, the vast majority of us are not meant for celibacy – our sex obsessed
culture is proof of that fact – and so from here on out I am going to assume
that everyone reading is either married or would like to be.
Married ladies, 1
Corinthians 7:3-5 is probably a passage of scripture your husband would like to
have memorized, if he doesn’t already. Though we live in a sex obsessed culture
we as Christians also have a sub-culture and strangely in that sub-culture it
seems Christian women are not allowed to have sexual desires and if they do
they certainly cannot talk about them. Christians have been taught to repress
sexuality as a form of being “in the world but not of the world” and I think it
has been to our huge determent not only to us personally but also for our
marriages (if you are interested in hearing what a much more highly acclaimed
Christian speaker/author has to say check out Rob Bell’s book ‘Sex God’). Sex
is not a game or a favor or a reward we give our husbands when they do
something right – it is a gift from God and a form of intimacy we are created
to share with our spouse. It’s plain as day if you read verses 3-5 that our
bodies are not our own – at least that is how we should think about them – and
we should submit and give in to the needs of our husbands because like it or
not they are real needs for both of us. So much about the gift of sex has been
broken and tarnished by our culture and we must be sensitive to the hurts and
past brokenness experienced by our spouses and not just demand sex without any
thought to emotion – sorry to all you husbands out there but your wife cannot
separate sex and emotions so you will have to be sensitive to her.
These passages in 1 Corinthians 7 echo the statements Paul
makes to the Ephesian church about marriage. Ephesians 5:22-28 tells wives to
submit to their husbands and for husbands to love their wives like Christ loved
the church – these verses are about mutual submission, about you taking care of
each other’s needs, about each of you as spouses considering the other better
than yourself and looking to their interests before your own. Sex is meant to
be a beautiful thing – a feeling of intimacy and closeness shared with only the
two of you – it can still be this way – in Christ you are a new creation and
this part of us can be healed too. Nothing is too far gone for the Lord
Almighty – He alone can make things right and bring healing into our marriages
– let’s invite Him to do that, let’s ask Him to come in and bring “sexy” back
the right way.
- Vicki Sommerwerck
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