God’s Design for Sex

NHoustonLoveAndSex

Author Nancy Houston says our sexuality is a window into our Creator.

God designed us as sexual creatures with a purpose in mind. He meant it for good: as a way to know Him more fully. Our sexuality is a window into our Creator; He loves passionately, He designed us to be His beloved bride, and He wanted a way for humans to reproduce and to express their love for the one they have committed their lives to in a unique and special way.

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Love & Sex COVERGod wanted married love to have a sexual expression, which separates it from all other love. He designed our bodies with hormones and a sexual nervous system with sexual body parts. He decided to give men a body part to fit within the female body and a female organ that has the capacity to not only give birth to another human being but to receive a man with pleasure. Attraction, sexual urges, and desire are all part of our wiring. When you really think about how our bodies fit together and are drawn toward one another, it is some sort of miracle. Only God could have come up with this master plan. We learn of God’s wondrous story in Genesis 2:

God formed man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The man came alive— a living soul! Then God planted a garden in Eden, in the east He put the Man he had just made in it. God made all kinds of trees grow from the ground, trees beautiful to look at and good to eat. The Tree-of-Life was in the middle of the garden, also the Tree-of- Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil (Gen. 2:7–9).

God took the Man and set him down in the Garden of Eden to work the ground and keep it in order. God commanded the Man, “You can eat from any tree in the garden, except from the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good- and-Evil. Don’t eat from it. The moment you eat from that tree, you’re dead” (Gen. 2:15–17).

God said, “It’s not good for the Man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion” (Gen. 2:18). In other texts it says God will make him a helpmeet, God uses this term several times to describe a woman and many more times to describe Himself. God calls Himself our Help Meet. This shows the female is not less than male, but equal to and different from the male.

So God formed from the dirt of the ground all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to Man to see what he would name them. (God empowered Man to influence, name, create and act.

Whatever the Man called each living creature, that was its name. The Man named the cattle, named the birds of the air, named the wild animals; but he didn’t find a suitable companion (Gen. 2:19–20).

What a task God gave to Adam! I believe part of what God was doing here was to help Man develop an awareness of his aloneness. I imagine as Man named the animals, he must have noticed there were two of the same kind—one with male parts and the other with female parts. I also imagine he watched them frolic and mate and wondered where his playmate and partner was. We humans often don’t notice a need until we become aware. God didn’t assign a random task to Adam, but created a life changing event for the dawning of awareness of Man’s desire for a complementary counterpart.

God loves to meet our needs, so He proceeds to put Man into a semi-coma. “God put the Man into a deep sleep. As he slept he removed one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh. God then used the rib that he had taken from the Man to make Woman and presented her to the Man” (Gen 2:21–22).

I can only imagine Man’s thrill at God’s presentation. As a matter of fact, he exclaims, “Finally! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh! Name her Woman for she was made from Man” (Gen. 2:23–24). Can you hear his joy? At last, finally, he has someone like himself!

He then prophesies, “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). He recalls the animals and how they are partnered with one like themselves, but slightly different from each other.

He must have envied how they had one another, a companion, a sexual partner who brought not only pleasure, but offspring. Now God has made him one of these. He is delighted and can instantly imagine how this partner will cause him to change his priorities to make room for her in his life. Then Scripture tells us, “The two of them, the Man and his Wife, were naked, but they felt no shame” (Gen. 2:25).

Click to read more on God’s design for intimacy in Love and Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy by Nancy Houston.

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