The Great Mystery – The Marriage Bed Undefiled

Transcript (edited for readability).

Now we come to the main point of this conference's presentation, and it's quite simply holy matrimony: the great mystery, the undefiled marriage bed.

Just three preliminary observations. Some years ago, I remember speaking to a young woman who was brought up as a Lutheran, went to a Lutheran school, and we were talking — I was mentioning the Ten Commandments, and she kind of glazed over, as if she'd never heard of them. And then the penny dropped and she says, "Oh, there's one about sex, isn't there?" And I said, "Yes, there's one about sex, but it's not the first one." And then I said, "Do you know what it says about sex?" "Oh, yes, I know what it says about sex. God disapproves of it." This from a Christian girl — God disapproves of sex. Can I put it to you quite plainly? God approves of sex. He made it. He redeems it. And it's an essential part of his will for us as human beings.

Secondly, about three weeks ago, I was at a conference where a young pastor surprised the audience by asking the question, "Do you approve of traditional marriage?" And everybody put up their hands. And he says, "I don't approve of traditional marriage. I approve of holy matrimony." And I agree with him. What I advocate is not traditional marriage in itself, although there's a lot that's good in it from a Christian point of view, but the church teaches holy matrimony, holy marriage.

Thirdly, in a rather perceptive essay, Naomi Wolf, who is a woman of Jewish background, a very prominent feminist of the first wave of feminism, writes a rather fascinating essay called "The Porn Myth," which is well worth reading. In it, she tackles the curse of pornography and the lie of explicit sexual portrayal — explicit sexual portrayal, you know, that's sexual intercourse of various kinds. And this is what she says: "The power and charge of sex, I maintain, only exists when there is some sacredness to it, when it is not on tap all the time." Sex loses its power, sex loses its charge, when there's no sacredness in it, when it's on tap, available all the time. And then she goes on to speak, rather interestingly, on the importance of modesty, a rather underrated virtue, sexual modesty. And I agree with her, but for different reasons.

The writer to the Hebrews, most likely writing to Christians in Rome, who lived in a pornographic society, where they were saturated with sexual depiction and sexuality, as our modern Western societies are, has this to say, rather simply. He says: "Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled, for God will judge fornicators and adulterers." I'm using the old-fashioned term "fornicators" quite deliberately.

The focus here, in this simple sentence, this simple instruction of the author of Hebrews, is on marriage. Marriage is God's good gift in the order of creation. God created marriage, and it's something to be prized as very valuable, and the source of blessing. It's to be held in honor — notice, not just by Christians, but by everybody. It's God's good gift to all human beings, and it is to be honored rather than dishonored by everybody.

Now, we have strange evidence of that coming from the homosexual community. It's rather strange that people involved in committed homosexual relationships, whether they're male or female, want to get married. It's, if you like, their homage to marriage. They want to get married so that they gain social approval of what they're doing, but they also copy, and need to copy, heterosexual relationships. Quite commonly — and I've noticed this increasingly recently — if I meet a homosexual couple, particularly males, they'll say, "Oh, meet my wife," and it's a guy. "Oh, this is my husband." So you get husband, wife, gender roles within a homosexual partnership. Now, you can pooh-pooh that and think that's rather perverse, but in a strange way, it bears witness to the will of God. It pays homage to marriage in a strange way. It's a paradoxical recognition, by people who are not in a heterosexual relationship, of the nature of marriage as being something bigger than just the relationship between two human beings.

And it's doubly precious, because it's something pure, something clean, for all married people, and it's something holy for Christians. Now, that's where my emphasis is going to be in this section, and the next section is on the fact that marriage is a holy state. People in marriage can be sanctified by the word of God and prayer. Not everybody who's married is in holy matrimony, but those whose marriages have been sanctified by the word of God and prayer are in a holy state. And that has amazing implications. It's sanctified by the word of God and prayer. Now, just keep that in mind — I'm going to come back to that in several ways.

And since it is a clean and holy state, something that God created, it can be polluted by fornication and adultery, which disorder and desecrate it. Notice that it says — the writer to the Hebrews says — God will judge all fornicators and adulterers. The basic thinking is that it's a clean state; it's made unclean, it's polluted by fornication and adultery. And for Christians, it is desecrated by fornication and adultery. These things damage not only the marriage, but they damage families, and communities, and congregations.

Hence the author says, "Let marriage be held in honor by all," and he's speaking to all members of the Christian community. And that's my appeal to you, brothers and sisters, whether you are single, or married, or widowed, or widowers — let marriage be held in honor by all, honoring God's gift of marriage.

Now, we know what adultery is — that's fairly straightforward. But fornication — what's fornication? Now, you see the problem in English translations. The word for fornication is usually translated, say in the NIV, as "sexual immorality." Okay, that's far too broad, I emphasize. It's not what the early church, and Jesus, was getting at. What's fornication? And I want to spend a bit of time on this, because it's very, very useful, and it helps us to understand both marriage and the Christian teaching on marriage.

Now, the word for fornication was originally a Greek word — and "pornography" comes from the same root. A pornos, or a pornē, is a male or female prostitute, so it has to do with prostitution — that's its original sense and meaning. As I say, modern translations have difficulty, because the old translation, which used to be "fornication" — but you use the word "fornication" now, and nobody knows what it means anymore.

And fornication is not just sex outside marriage, although it is that. Beginning with Jesus, and coming from the Old Testament, we have a new sense to what was meant by porneia, fornication. Pornē was a prostitute — okay, so it has something to do with prostitution. So it used to mean what a prostitute offered to male or female customers. So it used to be the selling of sex to somebody who paid to have it, or the offering of sex to somebody that you weren't married to. But in the Old Testament — and I can't tell the whole story, it'd be worth a whole session doing it — in the Old Testament, and then coming out of the Jewish context, it's turned around. It's not the offering of sex by a male or female prostitute, but the use of sex — the use of a prostitute, basically, buying it or taking it, by a man. Sometimes it could be a woman, but basically it's what men do when they consort with prostitutes. So it's sex with a prostitute.

But it's broader than that, because of the prevalence of slavery in the ancient world. So most of you — if you were, you know, adult men and women, if you were living in ancient Rome or other places in the ancient world — would own slaves, and you would own male and female slaves. And the slaves were your property, you owned them. And that meant that if you were a man, or a husband, or a young man, you had the right to sleep with the women that you owned, your servants. So it could be sex with a prostitute, but also sex with a slave girl.

Now, and then it has a deeper sense — it's not just specifically sexual intercourse with a prostitute or a slave girl, but it's the kind of sex that a man desired from a prostitute. So it's not so much straight sex, if I can use a modern term, but more kinky sex — to experiment, say, with kinky sex. And then it has the sense of pornographic lust, and pornographic desire. It's the desire for that kind of kinky sex, which human beings instinctively know is out of place in any good marriage, but which you want to buy, to take, from somebody that you own, a slave girl, or that you buy from a prostitute. You get the basic picture? So it's very closely related to what we now deem as pornography.

Now, Jesus in Mark 7 has some very important teaching on the nature of impurity. He says what makes you unclean is not what comes from outside you into you, but your impurity comes from where? Your heart. It's not the food you eat, or stuff that's done to you, but it's what comes from the heart — it's evil thoughts and desires. And in Mark 7:21, the first thing that Jesus mentions there is porneia, fornication. So Jesus says, "For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts and desires," and then he lists fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, etc. — he lists twelve of them, a whole handful of vices, or unclean acts. But they come from the heart, and they come from the thoughts, the desires, the fantasies of the heart. So behind fornication lies the fornicating heart — the heart that desires that kind of sexuality.

Now, what's interesting for me — and it's something I've only discovered very recently, because I thought I knew what was meant by fornication, and I took it to mean just basically sex outside of marriage — but it's far richer than that. Looking through the New Testament, and noting that twenty-eight times in all, the New Testament — Jesus and the apostles — warn against fornication. So obviously it was a problem in the early church, in ancient society, but obviously, on the other hand, there was something important at stake here, and uniquely Christian. Because no pagan person would have disapproved of fornication. It's as simple as that. Maybe if your daughters were involved in it — yeah, if your daughter had sex with a male prostitute, okay, you'd get a bit put out about it, because it decreased her value as a bride-to-be. And if your wife engaged in fornication, then you'd be a bit upset. But basically, fornication was approved as a healthy outlet for natural sexuality. Now, right from the beginning, Christians said no. No. No. That's out of the question.

You see, one of the things that you need to understand is that Satan attacks us — most obviously, and most dramatically, sexually. He tempts us sexually, and he uses our sexuality against us. Sexuality is God's good gift to us. It's very powerful, it's very important — physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And so it's going to be the point of attack by the evil one. He is going to turn it against us and against God. So he attacks it, and he gets us to abuse it as God's good gift. Instead of using it the right way, he wants us to use it the wrong way, and he does this most of all by arousing, if you like, our pornographic imagination and our pornographic desire. Okay, that's the heart of the matter. Satan is the sexual killjoy. He wants to defile what is clean, pollute clean sex, and desecrate sex within holy matrimony. Now, you've all experienced it — you know it, it's been with you, consciously, since puberty.

The author to the Hebrews goes on to say, "For God will judge fornicators and adulterers." God not only gives marriage to us as a holy state for us to enjoy sexuality, but he also protects it with his law, and he judges every fornicator and adulterer. That's not the end of the story — he judges the sin in order to lead people to repentance, to lead them to repentance and to once again enjoy clean and holy sex, if I can use that term.

So what the New Testament teaches, by its prohibition of fornication and adultery — those are the two things on one side — and by its advocacy of sexual purity or chastity, is sex with a good conscience. Sex with a good conscience. Many of the more recent scholars who have looked at this point out that the Christian faith brought about a sexual revolution in Greco-Roman society. And it wasn't from the top down — not kings, emperors establishing new rules about marriage and sexuality — but it came from the bottom up, from the heart of ordinary Christians, and even from the heart of despised Christians, who were slaves, and therefore vulnerable to sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. So it was, if you like, the true sexual revolution that's occurred in human history, and it's the result of the Christian gospel. And it comes from God's purification of us sexually and the sanctification of marriage. It's God's sanctification of marriage that allows us to have sex with a good conscience — which is sex according, not to our will, not sex as I want it, not sex as my partner wants it, but sex as God wants it for me. Good sex, wholesome sex, productive sex, fruitful sex, holy sex, if I can put it that way.

Now, one of the most important teachings on sexual sanctification is found in Paul's letter to the Christians at Thessalonica. Here's what he has to say — it comes at the end of his instructions to the congregation there in Thessalonica. He says, "Finally, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as you received from us how you ought to walk" — that is, live a way of life — "and please God" — notice, please, underline that if you've got it there — "how you ought to please God in your behavior, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more." So he's not scolding them — I mean, he's not saying, "Okay, you're not on the right track." He says, "You are doing the right thing, but do so more and more."

Now, what are they to do more and more? The following three things. "For this is the will of God, your sanctification." What's the will of God? Your sanctification — sanctification means being made holy, sharing in God's own holiness. And how does that happen? Number one, "that you abstain from fornication." Number two, "that each of you know how to control his own body" — there's a euphemistic term here in Greek, "vessel," or "instrument," which means your sexual organs, your genitalia. It's a euphemism for genitalia — that each of you know how to control your genitalia, if I can be as explicit as possible, so that you're not controlled by your genitalia, but you control your genitalia, "in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God." And thirdly, "that no one transgress or greedily cheat his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity" — and he's thinking of sexual impurity — "but for holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this disregards not man, but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you."

Now, this is a passage that's well worth focusing on, meditating on, and I can only give you the bare gist of it — I could spend this whole hour just on this passage. But here is the main point. We have an instruction here from Paul on honorable, God-pleasing sexual behavior. Do you like my term, "sex with a good conscience"? What's the secret of sex with a good conscience for us as Christians?

Number one, it's to know what God's will is for us. What does God want for us? He wants us to be married. He wants us to enjoy the gift of sex and our sexuality. But he wants this to be sanctified — not by us, but by him. So his will is to sanctify this area of our lives, including the whole of our lives. So that involves the fact that God has called us away from sexual impurity — all that porn stuff, and, you know it, all that's wrong sexually in our society — to sexual sanctification. And the flip side of that is that he offers us chastity, sexual purity, as a gift from him. None of us will be able to achieve sexual purity by ourselves. Sure, we can abstain from unclean acts — the wrong kind of sexual intercourse — but we can't change our hearts. And the kind of purity that God wants, that Jesus wants, from us, is clean hearts, pure hearts, in the matter of sexuality. So Christian sexual chastity is a matter, not just of behavior, but of the heart. And that comes as a result of baptism, and our participation in the divine service. In baptism, we were united bodily with Christ, and that means the whole of our bodies was cleansed from all impurity, including our sexual organs. In baptism, the whole of our body was made holy in the body of Christ, including our sexual organs.

Now, there are three aspects of sexuality that Paul touches on here, each one of which is just as relevant for us now as they were in the ancient Greco-Roman world.

First of all, he says, to all Christians: you abstain from fornication. So any kind of sex outside of marriage, for single as well as married men and women, is out of the question. So you abstain from fornication. And for Paul, that would mean not just abstaining from the act of fornication, but also everything that lies behind it, which is the whole pornographic mentality — because you know the damage that that does to sexual relations. If you want to ruin your marriage sexually, just try to impose your pornographic imagination on your partner in marriage. And psychologists point out just how much damage has been done to the enjoyment of sex in our society by pornography, and the fact that this has twisted our minds, our imagination, so that we're looking for something pornographic from our sexual partners. So abstain from it — it's out of the question.

Secondly, that as Christians we are called to exercise self-restraint — emotional self-restraint, that honors the spouse, your spouse, the person you're married to. And it means not being carried along by sexual lust and desire, so that you lose control of yourself sexually. So you are restrained — instead of sex controlling you, you control it, or better, it's governed by the needs and desires of your spouse. Sexual self-restraint. Now, this was quite contrary to Greek or Roman thinking, because for them, sex was a supernatural, divine force. They had Aphrodite, the goddess of love, Venus, the goddess of love, and they regarded sex as a spiritual, divine force, one that you would tap into and go along with by following your sexual desires. And so the loss of sexual inhibition, to use a modern term, being swept off your feet sexually, was not only an enjoyable thing, but it was a divine thing. You were connecting with Aphrodite, or Venus, or Cupid, or the other gods of love, and you would thereby be involved in supernatural, divine activity. So — being swept off your feet by sexual lust — do you get the basic thing? So you don't indulge in sex as a natural, divine, cosmic force, the way the Gentiles did.

And thirdly — to read once again — "that no one transgress or greedily cheat his brother and sister in this matter" — that anything to do with sex, you don't cheat. Notice, it's not cheating on your spouse, but cheating your brother, your sister, in this matter — "transgress or cheat his brother in this matter." Sexual abuse is not new, even though we have a new consciousness of it, and that's a very interesting social phenomenon, the whole #MeToo movement and our sensitization to sexual abuse. And I could speak at great length on it, but please be aware that it's not just men who abuse women sexually — it's women who abuse men sexually too. It goes both ways. So Paul says, you don't cross any sexual boundaries with a brother — that means a fellow Christian, in the church, where you have relationships. You observe the sexual boundaries, and you don't cross those sexual boundaries, and you don't take from any man or woman what belongs to their spouse rather than to you. And that's not just a matter of committing adultery, but it can be in rather harmless-seeming sexual innuendo and flirting and all that kind of stuff, which is as old as the hills.

And the reason for those three aspects of sexual behavior, Paul says, is that God is the judge of all, and the avenger of all sexually inappropriate activity. Now, if he's the judge, we only see that he punishes it, but that's not the word that Paul uses. He says he's the avenger, which means that he rights what is wrong, and that's his aim. So God, sure, lets people suffer the consequences of their sexual misbehavior, but he does this in order to bring them to their senses, and to right what is wrong, so that they will come to repentance. He rights what is wrong by punishing the abuser, bringing them to repentance, and by vindicating the abused person.

Now, one of the things that the modern church has been terribly good at is providing pastoral care for sexually abused people. Now, notice that that's very, very important, and it's a very important part of Christian ministry. For every case of an abuser, you have a case of somebody who is abused sexually. Your congregation, I think, probably has quite a number of people who have been sexually abused. And the church offers healing and cleansing — Christ does — from that too. But that's just a sideline. Better not — okay.

Most importantly, it's God's will to sanctify us, and that means to sanctify our marriages and sexual intercourse within marriage. And that occurs by the Holy Spirit. As Paul says, "Whoever disregards this disregards not man, but God, who gives the Holy Spirit to you." So the Holy Spirit is the Spirit that sanctifies you, that purifies you sexually, that makes you holy, and gives you a good conscience then, in your marriage.

Now, how does the Holy Spirit, how does God, sanctify marriage — holy matrimony? You don't hear that very much anymore, do you? Used to be very common, "holy matrimony" — it's still there in your marriage order, by the way. Listen to what Paul says about the sanctification of marriage in 1 Timothy chapter 4. He says: "Now the Spirit expressly says that in the latter times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences have been seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer."

It's become increasingly common in our society to pick up ancient teaching — and one of these is that the body is bad, and the way you become more spiritual is by not eating meat, not drinking alcohol, and avoiding any kind of sexual behavior. These things are carnal — if you want to become spiritual, you've got to abstain from these things. That's a very ancient teaching, and it's coming back everywhere, if you have eyes to see. So Paul says, no — this abstaining from these things is not a mark of a good conscience in the Holy Spirit, but comes because of consciences that are not only guilty and bad, but have been desensitized and seared. They think that they can get right with God by means of a spiritual ladder, which takes them out of their bodies into a higher spiritual realm, with a higher spiritual consciousness. And to achieve this higher spiritual consciousness, you have to abstain from marriage, and abstain from meat. This is a disembodied kind of spirituality.

Now, Paul turns that on its head and says this teaching is not just wrong, but it is plain demonic — it's Satan himself who teaches this. In contrast to that, sex and marriage are good gifts from God in creation that are under attack by demons and evil spirits in our society. And since they are good gifts from God, these good gifts need to be received as gifts and sanctified by the word of God and prayer. What makes your marriage, dear Christian brothers and sisters, holy matrimony, is the word of God and prayer. The word of God and prayer in your marriage ceremony. The word of God and prayer in the divine service. And most particularly, the word of God and prayer in your private prayer and daily devotions. Your devotions, your daily devotions, your participation in the divine service — this makes and keeps you holy, brings the Holy Spirit to you, but it also sanctifies your marriage, and everything that you do in your marriage. It means that your sexual intercourse is holy sexual intercourse. It transforms your marriage into holy matrimony — a holy state that is naturally good and spiritually blessed.

And tied with this — sanctified by the word of God and prayer — is particularly one kind of prayer. It's not just to pray for each other, and to pray for your marriage, and to pray for your life together, and pray for your needs, but to give thanks. It's thanksgiving that sanctifies your marriage. Thanksgiving to God for your spouse. Thanksgiving for what you receive in your sexual relationship with your spouse. But thanksgiving also — Paul keeps this open — to your spouse. Now, that's the opposite of the way we normally go — we usually complain to our spouse if we're not getting what we want from marriage. Okay, Paul says thanksgiving is important. Thanksgiving to God, and thanksgiving to your spouse, because it's when you thank God, not for the gift of marriage, but for the gift of that person who is your husband, your wife, that your eyes open to say: what is it that is good that God gives me in my spouse, that he couldn't give me in any other man or woman? Because your spouse is not just a generic person, with generic masculinity or femininity, but is a unique man, a unique woman. And what's given to you could only be given to you by that person — if you only had eyes to see, and a grateful heart to receive the gifts that God wants to give to you through your spouse. Thanksgiving.

So we receive God's gift in thanksgiving. And Paul emphasizes this, and he says that thanksgiving is the fruit of sexual sanctification. It's not only that it leads to living holy sexual lives, but it is the result of our sanctification. He says: "Therefore, but all fornication and impurity, or lust, must not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints, nor obscenity, nor foolish talk, nor coarse jesting, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving." So instead of fornication, instead of sexual lust, instead of sexual banter and joking — thanksgiving.

The clearest evidence of the problem that we have with sexuality is the way we speak about it. Have you ever noticed that the most obvious insults you can issue against a person of the opposite sex, or the same sex, are crude sexual terms? And so in our — no, word, we have music to accompany this speech — people are, even most of all, those people who most indulge in the wrong kind of sex, have an ambiguous attitude about sex. They are disgusted by it, just as much as they are fascinated by it and desire it. And that shows, then, in the language we use, and the insults we use, and the jokes that we make about sex. It's a sign of our bad conscience sexually. Now, the wrong kind of sexual talk is inappropriate for holy people, because it rejects sex as a good gift from God.

I've never had this before — yes, the fan? Yes. Oh, that's — the Holy Spirit, Claire. My wife said this was the song we sang at our wedding. So our marriage has been sanctified by this. It's come — a heavenly benediction on all of you.

We have no right to sexual intercourse. Sex is a gift to us — in marriage, it's a gift from God, but more importantly, it's a gift from our spouse. That's the one thing that's very important. It's a gift, and therefore it is to be received with thanksgiving, in gratitude. And the more we look for what is good in our marriage, the more we will see what's good in our marriage, and the more we will enjoy our marriage, and the less we will be disgusted.

You see, there's a funny borderline phenomenon — have you noticed how quickly sexual delight can tip over into disgust? And once you go into disgust, then it's very hard for you to enjoy sex. And there's a whole group of people in our society who are basically chronically disgusted with sex, and they can only enjoy disgusting sex — it gets quite perverted. Disgusting sex turns them on — they don't enjoy it, but they get captivated by it. So what God calls us to is to replace our disappointment in sex, our dissatisfaction with what we think we should be enjoying in sex, with thanksgiving to God and our spouse. It's the best antidote that I know to the ravages of sexual lust.

Now, lastly — how am I going? — the mystery of holy matrimony, as a reflection of Christ's bodily union with the church. Now, the starting point for this is a little verb that's quite often overlooked in the story of God's creation of Eve from Adam. God took the rib cage, formed Eve from Adam, and then he brought her — he presented her to Adam as his spouse, his wife, his partner, his body, his mate. He brought her there. Now, anybody in the ancient world would know that the language there is the language of marriage. He is not just the matchmaker, but he is the marriage celebrant. So God is the marriage celebrant in your marriage, my marriage — not just in Christian marriages, but in every marriage. And he doesn't just join us together in matrimony, but he joins us together in holy matrimony. His aim is to sanctify our relationships.

Now, Paul picks up this business about God presenting Eve to Adam in his wonderful teaching on marriage and sexuality in Ephesians chapter 5. And he has this to say to husbands: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her," to do what? "To sanctify her," to make her holy, "having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word" — baptism. So he cleansed her first of all, and then he sanctified her, "so that he might present the church to himself in splendor," or glory, "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing" — oh, I'd like that — "that she might be holy and blameless."

Now, the result of the fall is that each one of us feels bad about our bodies. We feel a sense of shame, because, for some reason, we don't regard ourselves as presentable, acceptable, to other people, to God, but also even to the person that we're married to. And that's not a bad thing — that's a very normal human thing since the fall. That sense of shame — but its positive side is a sense of modesty, which is, we reserve ourselves and visual intimacy only for sexual intercourse.

Now, Paul has a wonderful picture here of what Christ does for us in our marriages. Now, normally in the ancient world, marriages involved a very complicated period of preparation, and particularly the focus was on the preparation of the bride for the wedding. She prepared herself days beforehand, but on the day of her marriage, she would do the following things — and you'll get the basic picture, and then you'll see how this is turned upside down by Paul. She would bathe her whole body with perfumed water. She would be clothed with her bridal gown, a beautiful dress that nobody had ever worn before. Her bridesmaids would apply makeup to cover her spots and wrinkles and blemishes, so it would all be covered up, so she would be spot-free. The most expensive perfume that the family could afford would be splashed all over her. She would be decorated with jewelry, and in some parts, particularly the Semitic parts of the Greco-Roman world, she'd wear her whole dowry as jewelry on her — and you can still see it in some Arab weddings to the present day, the dowry that she brings to her marriage would be worn by her, put on various parts of her body. And then she would be presented to her husband as his lovely bride.

Now, the marriage ceremony itself was totally different to ours — this is the preparation. So the marriage would be a two-way procession. Her bridegroom would come from his parents' house, in procession with his groomsmen, to the house of his wife-to-be. And when he'd come to the front door, they'd open it up, and then the father of the bride would present the bride to him, decked out in all her beauty and her splendor — so she would be presented to her husband. And then she would go in procession, with her bridesmaids and members of her family and train, to the house of her husband-to-be, where she would again be presented to the husband. They would face each other for the first time, and the veil would be lifted, and he would see her face, as a prelude to seeing the whole of her, seeing her face. And then the husband would present her to his father and family. Now, that's the normal marriage ceremonial.

Now, Jesus does something like this to each one of us — but it's back to front. Instead of us preparing ourselves bodily for our union with him, he does everything for us. He prepares us as his bride, like Cinderella, for union with him — in baptism he transforms us, he makes us over, he makes us lovely despite our unlovely appearance. And he does it in three ways. He washes our bodies with the water of baptism to cleanse us from sin. He clothes us with his purity and righteousness. He adorns us with his holiness and glory. He gives us a complete makeover, so that we are unblemished and holy, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing — holy and without blemish. He makes us clean. He makes us holy. We don't do it ourselves.

And the purpose, then, of his presentation of us to himself, is to show that he approves — he accepts us and approves of us. He appreciates and admires us. He thinks we're just lovely. And he demonstrates his love and regard for us as his bride, demonstrating his appreciation and approval of us, as is found in the Song of Songs. If you haven't read the Song of Songs, read it — it's very important for the Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality. The main character in the Song of Songs is not the man, but the woman, the bride. And the bridegroom has three lovely poems, in which he expresses admiration for every part of her, every part of her nude body. So it is his admiration, his approval of her, his delight in her.

So the result of baptism is that we have a vision of how God sees us. When God looks at you, each one of you here, he doesn't see the ugly you, the you deformed by sin, or even sexual misdemeanors and sexual abuse, but he sees you as without spot or wrinkle or any blemish. He sees you as holy, just as holy as Jesus. He sees you perfect in his eyes. And Christ then, once he has transformed us, brings us to his heavenly Father, and he presents us to his heavenly Father. This is the way Paul puts it in Colossians chapter 1, verses 21 and 22: "And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he" — Jesus — "has now reconciled in his body of death, by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight." Jesus presents you to his heavenly Father bodily — holy, blameless, nothing that's wrong with you, and above reproach. Just imagine — if there was nothing that anybody could criticize you for, or you could even criticize yourself for, without any reproach, just perfect, everything's right — that's how Jesus presents you to his heavenly Father, as a result of his sacrificial death for you, as a result of his redemption of you, with your body, by his death and resurrection. His ascension — now, as ascended Lord, he brings you to his heavenly Father, and he presents you perfectly to him.

Now, you can look at yourself and say, "Oh, okay, that's a bit far-fetched — look at me, I'm getting old and wrinkly, and I'm fat, and I've got this dodgy knee and all the other things that are wrong with me." No — that's the way we see ourselves. That's the way other people see us. But that's not the way God sees you and your body. How does God see you, and your body, your sexual body? Wholly perfect, without blemish, nothing to reproach you for. Now, if that's not wonderful, I don't know what is wonderful. If that's not encouraging, and if that doesn't make your heart sing and fill you with joy, then you're beyond hope.

Let me finish with a quotation from C.S. Lewis, who writes, in his wonderful little book called Mere Christianity, a wonderful section on chastity, which, he says, is the least appreciated Christian virtue there is. And if you're interested in this topic further, just get hold of Mere Christianity and read that chapter. But it culminates in this lovely paragraph. He says:

"If we let him — for we can't prevent him, if we choose — he will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright, stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly, though of course on a smaller scale, his boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long, and in some parts painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what he said."

And he refers here to Jesus' statement, "You will be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." So — you're perfect.