Living Sexually as Lights in a Dark World

Transcript (edited for readability).

This last session, I want to speak to you about living sexually as lights in a dark world — perhaps not a dark world so much as a gray world. That's less dramatic. We live in gray times. And where things are gray, there's a lack of color and sparkle and interest and delight. A colorless world. And if there's one area in which we, particularly in the West, have lost the sense of the color of life, it is in the area of sex and marriage. It's not just that we are confused, but the color, the splendor, the glory has been lost.

My life spans the so-called sexual revolution. I was born in 1942, in the middle of the Second World War, and I'm part of that postwar generation. I went to college — that's our university — in the '60s, as the so-called sexual revolution was emerging, and at the same time as that Vietnam-generation protest generation. Part of that, there was a very important, unnoticed change that occurred in society, apart from the dramatic stuff out front. That was the popularization of contraception and the pill. And that, for the first time in human history, meant that sexual intercourse could be separated from procreation in a reliable kind of way. And this was greeted at the time with much delight. People were saying, well, since we can control conception, therefore we have been freed to enjoy sex in a new way. And so you had the so-called sexual revolution gathering steam. They were heady times, in many ways — times full of excitement and promise, but most of all a sense of excitement sexually. I think it was more so even in the USA than in Australia, coming out of a society which was basically Puritan and very straitlaced and tight-lipped about sexuality, to beginning to speak openly about sex, and being confronted with the possibility of enjoying sex in a new way. At least that was the promise of sexual liberation.

Now, I've lived long enough to see how much that was a lie. Instead of us being liberated sexually to enjoy sex, the opposite happened. And so we have all sorts of sexual disorders. And my feeling is that people are enjoying relationships with the opposite sex sexually far less now than my parents' generation ever did. Something's happened. Something's gone wrong. And yet the hope remains that somehow we will have full, untrammeled — originally it was just heterosexual enjoyment. Now we've gone and explored the whole spectrum of possible sexual combinations and delight. But the garden of delights has quickly turned into a garden of horrors.

Now, those of you who are pastors get to see some of the wreckage that this has produced in people's lives, in people's souls, in marriages, in families, and in community. It hasn't delivered what it promised. If I have any sense of where people are — I don't know here in the US, but in Australia — there's a pervasive kind of sexual frustration, and increasingly young people are switching off altogether. People have been desensitized in this area, and it's just not worth the bother. And you've got a whole new class of people who basically have very little interest in sex whatsoever. Now, they are rather silent. You won't hear about them. You won't hear them talk, because it's shameful not to have any interest in sex. Something's gone wrong. Frustration seems to be very, very common.

The so-called sexual liberation movement has resulted in an unfettered battle between the sexes. Initially, men had the advantage, and they took advantage of women and abused women left, right, and center — as far as this is my impression — in the '70s and '80s. And out of that came the pushback from women, and the power struggle then, sexually, between men and women. And in that kind of power struggle, nobody wins — everybody loses. The wreckage from that is the prevalence of divorce in our society, and broken marriages, broken families. The byproduct of that is sexual abuse. People who are frustrated, damaged, hurt, then lash back — men who have been abused, women who have been abused, sexually abused, actually. And we've had this torrent of sexual abuse. What's most public is the sexual abuse of women in our society, and we've been sensitized to that. And to some extent, the whole feminist movement bears testimony to what's happened in our society and has fueled the anger and energized the feminist movement. But what's not quite so public is the amount of corresponding abuse — not of the same kind, but of men by women. Believe you me, you women know, and if you don't know, well, too bad. Women can abuse men sexually, and far more subtly and less dramatically than men, and damage them permanently.

So we've had a whole lot of people who are damaged sexually, both men and women, so much so that from many points of view it almost looks as if they are permanently damaged in some way. But I'm not a psychologist, and I'm not a sociologist. I'm just giving you a picture of what I see happening in my own life. And coming out of this — first of all, the so-called sexual liberation, and then you had the battle between the sexes, and then you had the sexual abuse of people who are angry and hurt by each other — then you have growing sexual confusion. And sexual confusion is over many things, but particularly in the whole gender issue that I touched on in the first session. People are confused about what it means to be a man or a woman, what role they are to play, how they feel about themselves sexually, how they feel about other people sexually. And so you get increasing sexual confusion.

I read just recently of a pastor who was having trouble — this was over here in the US — with a class at a Lutheran high school, where the children were rather unresponsive until he raised the issue of being men or being women. The sexual confusion had reached right down to the age of seven or eight. And so he did some basic, simple teaching: that God made you boys and girls. He didn't confuse that. He made you a boy, He made you a girl, and it's good to be a boy, and it's good to be a girl, it's good to be a man, it's good to be a woman, and that's nothing to be ashamed of. And he wrote to me afterward, as a result of that, that it was as if a dark cloud had lifted from the class, and there was a sense of happiness that replaced this confusion.

The confusion is going all the way down to pre-puberty. There's always been some confusion sexually during puberty and after that, but now it's reaching up to pre-puberty, and already in pre-puberty young people experience a sense of sexual dysphoria — that's a disconnect between their biological sex and their sense of their sex. So there's sexual confusion, uncertainty. And for many people, the whole business of sex is not just messy, but is more painful than pleasurable. And the unintended consequence of all this is that people — and this is the sense that I get in Australia, and I'd be interested if it's so here — that people are becoming more and more switched off sexually. You know, if you're hurt, damaged emotionally, what you do is shut off emotionally. And initially people switch off emotionally, sexually, but you can't switch off one emotion without switching off all emotions. So you have that sexual desensitization emotionally leading to a general sense of being emotionally switched off and unengaged, particularly with the opposite sex, because it's just too difficult. It's too fraught.

I mean, just put yourself in the shoes of a young man dating these days. What constitutes consent and what doesn't constitute consent? You're hanging over the possibility that the girl you're dating will call you out for what you've done, even though you feel you've done nothing wrong. People will believe her rather than you, or the opposite way around. Now, for girls too — it's not a pretty picture. But, strangely — and this is the paradox — the more we have indulged sexual desire in this unfettered, so-called liberated way, the more sexual desire — good, healthy sexual desire — seems to have been diminished, lessened, and is less common. People are increasingly switched off, at least in our Western societies. We haven't seen the end of it, I don't think.

And one of the results of this, then, is you have people in serial relationships. But more and more, people in these relationships are pointing out a sense of loneliness. Now you have sexual connection, but in that sexual connection you become increasingly isolated, lonely. It's a lonely place. It doesn't lead anywhere. It doesn't really engage you in anything more than physical interaction with a person of the opposite sex or the same sex. So a pervasive sense of loneliness.

And then too, as always, in any revolutionary movement there are people who benefit from it and there are the victims of it. So if you're good-looking, young, attractive — okay, the field's open for you, particularly if you're a woman these days. But if you're not so good-looking, if you have no economic value, if you're not professional, don't have a good job, don't have high status — then, say, if you're male, women are not interested in you. And so recently social commentators have identified a new subgroup — they like identifying subgroups in society — whom they call the incels. Who's heard of the incels? Okay, so I'm not the only one that's heard of it. Now, incels are young males who presume that, as males, they have the right to sexual intercourse and sexual enjoyment, but they are incel — meaning involuntary celibate. They are involuntary celibate people, and they are deprived of sex. And the result is that they get very angry, and they're loose cannons sexually, resulting in sexual attacks on women, and also suicidal kind of behavior. Angry loose cannons.

So, despite that sort of negative picture — and there's always a danger for us Christians to focus on the darkness rather than on the light — we know from our Christian faith that the light shines where? In the darkness. And the darkness never overcomes it. In fact, the light shines most clearly in the darkness. And it's a time when there are new opportunities for us not just to present the Christian faith to people who are open to it — and I think the younger generation will be more and more open to it. There is a tabula rasa, a clean slate, and that longing for something — not only longing for Christian faith, but if I get a right sense of the so-called Z generation — now, sociologists like slotting everything, but that's young people basically below the age of 30 or 35 — that there is an openness and a longing for pure, wholesome sexual relationships. There's a longing for Christian teaching. They don't label it as Christian teaching, but when they see it being modeled, they say, yeah, that's it, that's what I'd like to have. When they see a good marriage — when they visit the home of a Christian friend of theirs and they see their parents and the joy that's in that marriage and the household, they say, this is good, I like being here. It could be as indeterminate as that. But there is a new opportunity here.

There's a longing for pure and ordered sexuality, for wholesome sexual relationships, for the wholesomeness of marriage. And I think also that we can misidentify, say, the whole business of same-sex marriage by just seeing it in negative terms — it bears witness partly to the desire for good, natural, sexual relationships. So in this kind of climate, Christian marriages and Christian single people are shining lights in what is an increasingly gray and drab world. And notice that I've said not just Christian marriages but also Christian single people. In the ancient world, as in our society, single people were treated with contempt as being somewhat inferior. You weren't a full human being unless you were sexually involved or engaged in marriage. And that, I think, is something of what's happening in our society. And sadly, also in the church, single people are not valued and prized as people, let alone as making a unique contribution to the life of the church. So I want to touch on that — I'll flag that and touch on it briefly a little bit later.

But the point I want to make initially is that there's a unique opportunity at the present in our society for us Christians to be shining lights in a gray, drab, sordid world. In a pornographic society, chased people are very attractive. Now, C.S. Lewis made the point about imagination. He says evil is attractive theoretically to our imagination. He points out how difficult it is in literature and art to depict anything that is virtuous and good — it's almost impossible. In our imagination, it's very easy for us to imagine evil, but very difficult for us to imagine something good. He also makes the point that in the imagination, particularly in the sexual area, what's attractive is what's wrong, and what's unattractive in the imagination is what is right and good and wholesome and God-ordained. He says that in theory, chastity is unattractive, but in practice, in reality, it is stunningly attractive and beautiful.

And this is the opportunity, and it's a new opportunity — and we've been there before. That's the kind of society the church basically began in, in the first, second, and third centuries AD. Our situation is very similar to that in the early church. If you're interested in this, there's a number of excellent works, but the one that stands out most particularly is by Kyle Harper, "From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity." Now, I'm not sure whether this guy is Christian or not, but he's a good historian, and he maps out the revolution that occurred in the Roman Empire from the bottom up, and it was in the sexual area that transformed the whole of society. And he points out that — he doesn't do it explicitly, but you can read between the lines — that the situation in the early church was somewhat similar to ours.

What did the gospel bring? What did the teaching of Christ and the apostles bring sexually to a sexually disordered world — that's putting it as mildly as possible? Well, it brought about a new appreciation of sexuality, not as something in itself, but as part of God's good order for human life, and equally for men and women. A new appreciation — an appreciation that had never been before — of the beauty of marriage. That marriage itself was beautiful, and that married love between men and women, as well as the single life of Christians, was something beautiful.

Now, as I've already touched on in the previous session, Christianity, the Christian gospel, didn't just bring about a teaching on the danger of adultery, and you all know what adultery is. If I had time, I'd like to unpack what's unique about the early Christian teaching on adultery, but let's put that aside. It's not just that you had the teaching on the danger and peril of adultery, but the danger and peril of fornication, and the rejection of fornication. Now, this was particularly prevalent because, if there's one thing that was readily available in places like Rome or Corinth or Ephesus — any of the big cities in the ancient world, anything like Brookfield or Milwaukee or Chicago in the ancient world — it was that you had sex on tap. Brothels were at every street corner. In fact, in Rome, historians say that there were 600 brothels that were run by the government. It wasn't just private — and who knows how many private businesses there were — but there were 600 state-run brothels, a sexual outlet, and that was for both men and women.

And then on top of that you had, you know, private enterprises of the sex industry. But what pervaded ancient Rome was slaves. One in six — citizens in Rome, roughly speaking, it could have been more than that, but from the classical period, one in six members of Roman society were slaves. And many of them, in fact in the city most of them, were women, because they were valuable there in households — men were used in the country, in businesses. So in the city you had women who were slaves. Every household had its slaves if they were of any economic standing at all, and many would have owned a whole number of slaves. And this meant that for you as men, you had two sources of sexual outlet: you had your wife, by whom you wanted to have heirs and children, and then there were the slave girls in your employ. So they were readily available. It was a slave-driven society.

Now, the Christian faith then brought about a quiet revolution in this kind of society. First of all, it valued celibate single people. It regarded singlehood as a vocation, a Christian vocation. Now, God didn't call everybody to be married. He called some people to be single, celibate. And that didn't mean, as Roman society believed, that if you were celibate and sexually inactive, you were somehow inferior. In fact, you get the impression in reading early Christian literature — and maybe they're shouting too loudly — that being celibate and single and Christian was of a higher state than being married and sexually faithful. But whatever the case, being single was regarded as being of great spiritual value.

Listen to what Paul has to say about being single, in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 — let me get the reference — 7:32. "I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord."

What's the value of being single? I'll talk more about that — but at least, to some extent, what's the spiritual value of being married? Or just to repeat: being a person who is married, and Christian married, mirrors the relationship between Christ and the church. Being single mirrors, reflects, the relationship between Jesus and his heavenly Father. You see, Jesus never married. Jesus lived a single, celibate life, and because he lived a single, celibate life, he could be totally devoted to his heavenly Father. Now, some people are called to be single so that they can devote themselves, both spiritually and physically, to the service of the Lord, and in that way they mirror the relationship of Jesus with his heavenly Father — just as a married couple mirrors the relationship between Jesus and the church. Which is more important? Both are equally important. Which is more valuable? Both have a different value, a different importance.

We need, in the present climate, to reevaluate, in our congregations, the way we regard and treat single people. I'd imagine that in most of your congregations at least half of the people are unmarried, if you count children. Do we take that into account? Do we value that? We are single before we're married, and then usually we end up being single again when our spouse dies.

So the Christian faith brought about a new understanding and appreciation and evaluation of singlehood and celibacy within a single life — that it wasn't somehow inferior. You see, in the ancient world, and I think it's still mirrored now, the idea was that you weren't a real man or a real woman until you had engaged in sexual intercourse. And I think that's very common in our society — you only become somehow by having sexual intercourse. Teenagers around 20 then feel that they become a woman or become a man. Now, that's not Christian teaching. That comes from the devil.

So there is great value in being single. As well as that, the early church brought about a new understanding and appreciation of chastity, purity. The ancient world did a lot of teaching on chastity, but not the chastity of men — I mean, not the chastity of men, but the chastity of women, and not all women, but only women who were middle class and upper class. Upper-class women were expected to be chaste. Lower-class women — it didn't matter. But if you were upper class, then you were expected to be chaste. Now, being chaste meant, not to be the same as we'd say, but basically not to be involved in any form of sexual intercourse apart from with your husband. So chastity was connected with celibacy outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage. And then there was a special class of people in the ancient world — people who were priests or priestesses — who were expected to abstain from sex because that hampered their spirituality. I spoke about that earlier.

Now, Christianity brings with it a new understanding of chastity as purity — not moral and spiritual purity as mere physical virginity or celibacy, but rather it understands chastity as the fruit of a good conscience before God, living before God with a good conscience. And there was a call, equally for both men and women, to lead chaste and decent lives. So the emphasis, if you look at the whole early church, beginning with the New Testament, was on men — you men need to lead, need to be chaste sexually. And that meant that you need to be faithful to your wives and not have sexual intercourse with your slave girls, concubines, prostitutes — really available, very cheap. It's said by Kyle Harper, the person I quoted, that sex was cheap in the ancient world, in any form, and the cost of hiring a prostitute — a fairly high-class prostitute — was about the same as a loaf of bread. So it was available, and men made use of it.

Now, the gospel came along and said to the men particularly, you are called to live lives of sexual purity — not as a matter of sexual inhibition or restriction, but of fidelity, which will lead then to the enjoyment of your marriages. So there was a call for sexual chastity for both men and women before marriage and in it, and the call for fidelity of both husbands and wives to each other in marriage. Now, that was just as countercultural in the ancient world — probably more countercultural in the ancient world than it is now.

Paul puts it this way. He says that Christians are called to live unblemished, blameless lives as innocent children of light in the midst of a crooked, twisted generation, among whom they shine as bearers of light in the world by holding fast to the life-giving word. The call for each one of you, for me, all of us Christians, is to be bearers of light in a gray world, to stand out sexually.

Now, the man who taught me church history, Hermann Sasse — how many of you know of him? Okay, great man, great teacher of the church. He surprised us early in a history class about the early church. He said it was very easy — anybody could tell in a Christian, in a village or town in the ancient world, who were Christians and who were not, not so much by, you know, the fact that they wore crosses or said that they were Christians, but by how they behaved sexually. Particularly, he said, the men — they were different, they behaved differently, they practiced chastity. And that was both the cause of wonderment and puzzlement. How could they do it? Why would they do it? How stupid can you be? After all, isn't sex natural? You need to have a natural sexual outlet for the sexual desires of all men, and particularly young men.

We are called to provide positive examples of chastity in our societies. It's not our job to engage in moral crusades against the immorality that surrounds us, or to act as moral policemen trying to straighten out people sexually. Usually people who do that themselves have a bad conscience sexually — we see our own faults, particularly sexual faults, most clearly in other people, and we avoid dealing with our problems in ourselves by trying to straighten out other people around us — usually our children.

Luther says, in his Large Catechism, where he writes rather positively about sex: "I say these things in order that our young people may be led to a love for the estate of marriage, and know that it is a blessed and God-pleasing estate." He doesn't go to the negative side of sexual misbehavior, but he focuses on the positive, and he focuses on chastity, and says this is the way you've got to win young people — by providing mentoring, by providing a good example of chaste living. You all know that Luther, in his Large Catechism and Small Catechism, treats the sixth commandment in a different way than all the other commandments. With the other commandments, he says, "We should fear and love God that we do not do this, but we do do that." When it comes to the sixth commandment, he avoids the "don't," and he only goes with the "do." "We should fear and love God that we lead a chaste and decent life in word and deed, and each love and honor his spouse." It's a positive emphasis. We don't need to hammer, preach, focus on sexual misbehavior. In fact, people who do that — it's usually a sign that they are uneasy about it and they have a bad conscience about it. What we need to do is to light a lamp rather than curse the darkness, and most of all in our own families.

One of the most memorable of many memorable experiences that I've had in my life was on a plane trip from Adelaide to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. I happened to grab a window seat, which I prefer to do, so that I'm not hemmed in by obese people. So I grabbed a window seat on a plane — I think there were two seats, might have been three. In any case, I was in the window seat, and I just settled in, and this very attractive young woman came and took the seat next to me. I couldn't place her because she had some Indian features, Chinese features, Malay features — dark, beautiful young woman. She sat down and introduced herself to me straight away. She says, "I'm so-and-so." And I said, "I'm John Kleinig." Now, usually I don't introduce myself by saying "pastor," because that's the end of any relationship or discussion, or "I'm Father Kleinig," or "I'm a priest," or something like that, because it's as if you've got AIDS — people want to have nothing to do with you. In any case, I said, "John Kleinig." And she looked at me, lifted up her finger, and said, "Tim Kleinig." And I said, "Yes, that's my son." And she said, "You're a priest?" And I said, "Yes, I'm a Lutheran priest, I call myself a pastor." And she said, "Tim's your son, is he?" And I said, "Yes." And she said that she was doing — my son was doing medicine at that time, he was a year above her, but they had some classes in common — and he had caught her eye, and then there was a talk, and she found out that his father was a minister of religion, a priest, and so on. And that's all she knew basically about him — she'd never spoken to him.

And then she opened up and said, "Okay, you're a Christian?" I said, "Look, I'm a Christian." "And you're a priest, yes. Do you mind if we have a discussion?" And I said, "Sure, sure." And she said, "Look, I can't talk about Christianity back in Australia, because in most cases there'll be some other people from home there, and they'll see me speaking with a priest, and that'll create problems for me with my own family. And once we get to Malaysia, I can't speak to you, because that's forbidden for me as a Muslim." I found out — I wanted to know a bit more about her — and she was the daughter of the chief minister, that's the governor of one of the northern states of Malaysia. So she's right up there at the top of society.

Now, her parents had deliberately decided to be monogamous. They were mixed — there was Chinese, Malay, and Indian, but they were all Muslims, both sides. But both sides — her mother's side and father's side of the family, as is quite often the case with wealthy Muslims — were polygamous. So she said on one side of the family her grandfather had three wives, the other one had four wives. And then, well, there were some that were divorced, and it was all messy. But both her parents had grown up with the mess of polygamy, and so they determined to practice monogamy.

And then we went around all over the place, but there were two things that she kept coming back to that she wanted to talk about — two things she'd noticed. She's a very perceptive young woman, very intelligent, as well as good-looking, but we won't dwell on that. She said, "One thing that strikes me is that in Australia you can upset somebody, you can insult somebody, and you won't automatically incur revenge." It struck her that you could hurt somebody, but they tended to shrug it off, didn't obviously take revenge. She said, "At home, if you hurt somebody, if you damage somebody, you can be sure that that person's going to take revenge on you." And she wanted to know whether that had something to do with the influence of Christianity. Right there, that opened the door to the difference between Islam, with its emphasis on law and judgment, and Christianity, with its offer of forgiveness and pardon. And she just lapped it up — loved everything I said, asked lots of questions, and we explained the atonement and lots of things. She asked question after question.

The other leading question, which is even more telling — she said, "Yes, something else that I've noticed, and that's this: that the relationship between men and women is different." And she said, "It's not just the fact that at home, you know, you have polygamy — it's even, I can see it in my own parents' marriage, there's something different, I can't quite put my finger on it, there's a different feel about it, there's a different something there that works." It wasn't just equality, but a different way of relating to each other — that by and large men tended to treat women better than in her society, and on the other hand women seemed to be much happier with their husbands. Whereas in her society, she said, the norm was that women were rather frustrated with their husbands. And she wanted to know whether that had something to do with Christianity. And that was the lead-in for me to give her the teaching of Christian marriage, and how Christian marriage mirrors the relationship between Christ and the church, and the importance then of the husband loving the wife as Christ loved the church, giving himself up for her to make her holy. So I explained that to her, and the whole teaching on Christian marriage, and she just lapped it up — she loved every bit of it. There were lots of other questions, but that was what touched her most of all — the quality of marriage.

And then I explained finally that ultimately we Christians believe that marriage is holy, and Christians are called to live holy lives sexually within marriage. Now, being a Muslim, she knows about holiness and righteousness, and that really astonished her — okay, holy matrimony, living within holy matrimony, and chastity, not as the means by which we become holy, but because we are holy, we are called to live a chaste and decent life. There's the call to chastity — that's probably the least loved and most unfashionable of all Christian virtues in the present age, but not just in the present age. It was so in the early church. It's been so with all people in all generations.

I still remember, as a young man, there was lots of stuff that made sense to me about the Christian faith, but I couldn't get excited about chastity. That was one thing that didn't really turn me on, at least theoretically. But the funny thing about it was that the girls, the women that I was most drawn to, were the ones that were chaste. There were the exciting girls, and then there were — well, it wasn't "good girls," because sometimes the good girls weren't merely prim and proper so-and-so's — but there were the chaste girls. I was drawn to them, and I married one of them. That's how sexual chastity, not in theory but in practice, is immensely attractive. And it's a beauty that's more than just physical beauty — it goes far deeper than that. It's the beauty of a whole person, and the beauty of the person's heart.

I don't know if you've ever noticed what Peter says about Christian wives in 1 Peter chapter 3. He says, "Let your adorning, let your jewelry, be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." The imperishable beauty of a gentle, quiet spirit — the hidden beauty, the imperishable hidden beauty of the heart. And Peter's saying here something quite remarkable: there is a beauty which isn't just physical, although there's evidence of it physically — it's the beauty of the heart, and it is imperishable. Now, what's Peter getting at? He says that beauty becomes more and more evident the older the person gets, because physical beauty, as you all know, is lost all too quickly — it's perishable. But the hidden beauty of the heart, the beauty of chastity, purity, becomes more and more evident the older you get. And so, just speaking as men, some of the most beautiful women I know are not the youngest women, but the older women. So, the beauty of chastity.

Now, the opposite of chastity is unchastity, or sexual impurity, and that's the result of sexual disorder. And it's not just the result of sexual misbehavior, but it comes from the heart — it's the disorder of the heart. The pornographic imagination, the lustful heart, the wrong desire of the heart, the impurity of the heart, which then leads to sexual impurity. So the cause of sexual impurity is the disordered heart. Jesus says, from the heart, from the thoughts, the fantasies, the imaginations of the heart, all other kinds of impurity result. They are the fruit of the disordered heart, the unclean heart. And what happens then with sexual lust is that it comes from the heart and it pollutes — it defiles the whole person, it makes you totally unclean. You not only feel dirty, but you are dirty, you are covered with filth. And that shows itself in a bad conscience and a sense of shame in matters sexual.

And that disordered, sexually disordered heart does damage to the God-given natural ecology. I find it very helpful to think not just of biology, the natural world, in ecological terms. You all know what ecology is — the order, the natural order of balance within the natural world. But there is an ecology in society too — a social ecology, a good order which promotes human life, the life of human beings in communities. But Genesis, in the passage we had a look at, says that there's such a thing — part of the natural order that God's created — not only the social order, but the sexual order. So there is a sexual ecology. Now, the sexual ecology that God's established promotes life and blessing for human beings, in marriage. So marriage is part of that natural order, that sexual ecology. It's the order by which God delivers his life, his blessing, from him to human beings here on earth.

Now, what lust does, what sexual impurity does, is that it disorders this natural ecology. And instead of resulting in good behavior, it leads to addictive behavior. You're probably all aware that one of the newly identified psychological maladies — and you can ask about it more — is the whole phenomenon of sexual addiction. Sexual addiction is a funny thing, because it's the compulsive urge to engage in sexual activity, but the funny thing about it is that it delivers no enjoyment whatsoever. It's the urge to have sex even though it's without any enjoyment. And it is addictive — the more you indulge it, the more you have to indulge it, and it's a kind of itch that you try to get rid of, but all it does is lessen the itch temporarily. It's addictive and it's destructive — sexual addiction is so destructive at every level, from the spiritual through to the physical. It's addictive, it's destructive, it diminishes life rather than enhancing life. But the greatest damage that it does is that it depersonalizes you and desensitizes you. So that kind of addictive sexual behavior — you treat the other person as if they were only a thing, a body, without realizing that by doing that you turn yourself into a thing rather than a person. You lose your sense of personhood. You become depersonalized. It becomes a mechanical activity rather than a personal interaction. And instead of enhancing and increasing sexual sensitivity, it desensitizes you sexually.

So you get a whole class of — well, "class of people" is probably the wrong term — you get people who are sex addicts, who are involved basically in sex, and the reason they do that is to get a kick, a charge, so that they feel alive — not that they feel sexual satisfaction or enjoyment, but they feel alive, because apart from that they feel dead. It's merely just to feel alive. And the more they do it, the more it deadens them, and the more they have to do it to get that kick, that charge, that sense of "I'm alive." It's a bit like cutting — you know, the phenomenon of cutting. You cut yourself because you don't feel anything, but at least you can have the sense that you feel pain, even if you don't feel anything else. You cut yourself to prove to yourself that you're still alive and feeling something. It's somewhat the same. That's a very crude diagnosis — you'll have to straighten me out on that.

Okay, now, sexual unchastity or impurity is rejected by the New Testament, by Paul, as one of the works of the flesh that's improper for God's holy people. It's the result of sin and our fallen nature, the result of the old self, and it's one of its prime manifestations, and it's not appropriate for God's holy people. It's connected with idolatry. Now, it was quite literally so in the ancient world, because the common form of prostitution was sacred prostitution — you worshiped, say, Venus or Aphrodite, the sex gods, by having sexual intercourse with a male or female priest or priestess who was a prostitute. So you had idolatry and prostitution going together. And in the Old Testament that's a figure for Israel's unfaithfulness — described as prostitution, having sex with other gods. But at a deeper level, fornication and unchastity is idolatry. You make sex, you make the human sexual body, your idol, your god, and you want to have blessing or life or enjoyment from your idol. It promises life, it promises enjoyment, but what it does, like all idols, is rob you of life. It destroys your enjoyment. That's the nature of idolatry.

I'm getting round to wrapping up, aren't I? Okay. Now, Paul says that unchastity disqualifies us from the kingdom of heaven. It's incompatible with being in God's kingdom, incompatible with the Christian life. But you'd think, okay, that's the end of the story — if I become involved in fornication or sexual impurity, that means I'm doomed. No — it disqualifies you from the kingdom of heaven, but that's not the end of the story, because God teaches us that we need to be cleansed from impurity. And there is the offer of cleansing from sexual impurity, unchastity. We need to repent of it and receive cleansing from Jesus.

So one of the most remarkable passages dealing with sexual impurity of various kinds and other forms of impurity is from 1 Corinthians chapter 6, where Paul has this to say: "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?" Okay — people who have broken God's law won't inherit the kingdom of God. Okay, you think, full stop, that's the end of the story. "Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral" — that's fornicators — "nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality" — now, that's a very euphemistic modern way of putting it, because the two terms that are used there for homosexual intercourse are the active partner, the so-called sodomite, and the catamite. If you think in terms of anal intercourse, there's the male who penetrates and the male who is penetrated. Sorry to go into graphic detail, but you need to know what these terms mean. So Paul says both kinds of parties in anal intercourse disqualify you from the kingdom of heaven — the two sides of the picture. And he lists some other things as well: "nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you." And then you have the wonderful "but" — "But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God."

Baptism cleansed people who got themselves into a sexual mess, whether it was adultery or fornication or homosexual intercourse, and it looked like the end of the story for them. They were cleansed, and not only cleansed from their impurity, but they were sanctified, made holy, in the name of the Lord Jesus and the Spirit of our God. So there's cleansing from sexual impurity through Christ. And that was one of the things that attracted so many people in the early church — that the church gave them the possibility of a new start. A new start, not just generally spiritually, but a new start, a new beginning sexually.

Just imagine yourself for a moment as a slave girl who probably had been abused sexually already before puberty, and abused sexually by all her masters and the men in the household. Can you imagine what kind of a mess you'd be in — sexually, physically, psychologically, let alone spiritually? Now came the message of the gospel. What does Jesus offer? Cleansing, purification from this — a new start, a new slate, sexually, as well as in every other possible way. "Such were some of you, but you were cleansed."

Now, there's one big difference between unchastity, sexual impurity, and virginity. Once you've lost virginity, you can't regain virginity — it's a "one strike and you're out." Virginity, once lost, can never be regained. But chastity, once lost, can be regained. And that is the wonderful message of the Christian church to people in the ancient world that really resonated, and you can pick it up all over the place. And I feel we are in a situation now where it can possibly resonate — maybe not in a dramatic way, but beginning to resonate more and more — in a society like yours and ours, where people feel that they have been defiled, contaminated, polluted beyond measure, and with no hope of ever getting back straight again — the possibility of a new start, a cleansing.

So chastity is sexual purity rather than virginity. Some years ago, in certain evangelical circles, chastity pledges became quite popular. Do you remember them? You'd wear these armbands and pledge to remain a virgin until you got married. Now, the studies done on that — mainly it was girls who took it up, as far as I can gather; I don't know if any of you know anyone who did that — but the studies on that show that most of them didn't last the distance, and that's fairly predictable. So, chastity is sexual purity rather than just mere physical virginity.

We Christians are called to lead a chaste and decent life, not only before marriage, but even more importantly, within marriage. Luther, again and again, emphasizes that marriage is the school for chastity — it's also the school for sanctification and holiness, he says, the school for chastity. He says this: "For marital chastity, it is above all things essential that husband and wife live together in love and harmony, cherishing each other wholeheartedly and with perfect fidelity. This is one of the chief ways to make chastity attractive and desirable."

Now, the impression that I got as a young person was that chastity was merely a matter of being sexually inhibited and laced up, and therefore a denial or repression of sexuality. In fact, chastity is the opposite — it's an affirmation, not a denial, of sexuality. It enhances sexual fulfillment, it doesn't diminish sexual fulfillment or sexual enjoyment. That's its function. It's both physical and mental, personal and spiritual. It's the condition for life-enhancing sexual enjoyment. And if you think it through, it's quite obvious — you can see it most of all for those of you who are married. If you lead chaste lives and act with sexual purity with each other, that means that not only will your marriage be strong, but it will create the condition for growing sexual enjoyment with each other, which doesn't come all at once, but requires a lifetime of living together to really get comfortable with each other sexually. Chastity is a condition for sexual enjoyment. It enhances the operation of marriage. It's an aspect of sexual ecology, as I've spoken about. It works — sex works best when it's done with the right person, at the right time, in the right place, and in the right way. That's the same with all matters biological and ecological.

Okay, there are three dimensions to sexual chastity. First of all, there's the physical level — that if possible you remain celibate apart from marriage and until marriage, and once you are married, it means that you're faithful to your spouse in it. So it's physical faithfulness. It's also a moral matter, that you reserve yourself sexually for another person — your spouse-to-be, or the spouse that you have in marriage — and that you give yourself totally to him or her, because sex is merely one dimension of total self-giving, the giving of yourself, body, soul, and spirit, to another person. So if you have given yourself to everybody, you don't have yourself to give sexually to anybody — it's given away, you've squandered yourself. God's plan is for you to reserve yourself sexually for one person, so that you can give yourself totally, wholeheartedly, happily, without complications, to another person — the person that you marry. And that requires a lifetime — it doesn't just happen on the night of your marriage or in the honeymoon. It takes a lifetime for you to give yourself in that kind of a way to another person and to remain given to them.

And it's also spiritual, because it has to do with living with a good conscience before God, according to his law, according to his will, doing what is pleasing in God's sight within marriage and apart from marriage. And that means that you avoid sexual defilement or pollution, because it desecrates both your body and your soul. Your body and soul are not only cleansed by Jesus, but they are holy shrines, and sexual impurity defiles you and desecrates your holiness. It's a kind of sacrilege, and it brings with it the wrath of God upon you for what you've done. So the Christian teaching is to avoid sexual defilement as desecration of body and soul, as well as desecration of holy matrimony.

At the deepest level, chastity reflects the one-flesh union of Jesus with his bride, the church. Just as Jesus doesn't have many brides but only one bride, so we, in our marriage, have only one spouse, and our one-flesh union is meant to reflect the one-flesh union of Jesus with us in marriage. And for single people, their chastity is meant to reflect, and it does reflect, the devotion of Jesus to his heavenly Father — the single, undivided, wholehearted, complete, lifelong devotion of Jesus to his heavenly Father. As far as we know, Jesus never engaged in sexual intercourse — well, I'm not… in fact, he didn't, because that's the final thing.

Chastity ultimately has to do with the resurrection of the body. Why is your body, and your whole sexuality, so important for you as Christians? Because Jesus not only took on a human body, he didn't just redeem a human body from sin and guilt and death, but his purpose is to raise us up bodily for eternal life with him and God the Father in heaven. So sexual chastity and sexual holiness is preparation for, and a foretaste of, and a sign of, the resurrection. How do you live resurrected lives already now, physically? By leading sexually chaste and decent lives, whether you're single or whether you're married. It's a witness to our society, which tends to oscillate between one of two extremes — either it idolizes the body, or it despises the body. It's a witness to the hope of the resurrection of the body. That's its purpose, its ultimate purpose.

And lastly, then, I reiterate that as virginity can't be restored, sexual impurity can be dealt with through the blood of Jesus. No matter what you've done sexually, or what's been done to you, the blood of Jesus can cleanse you, body, soul, and spirit, from any sexual sin and any sexual abuse. That is the great promise, that's the great gift of Jesus to you.

So what is it that Jesus offers to our sexually confused, decadent world? In one word, he offers us sex with a good conscience. What does that entail? Well, it means that no matter how much we've sinned sexually, we can repent of it and receive absolution, forgiveness. No matter how badly we have been polluted — whether others have polluted us sexually, or we have polluted ourselves — the blood of Jesus cleanses us and brings us that cleansing every Sunday when we come to Holy Communion. So we come to Holy Communion so that we can lead chaste and holy lives, in all areas, but also in the sexual area of our life.

Thirdly, God's law doesn't prescribe what we do sexually — there are no prescriptions for what you're meant to do or not do in marriage, sexually — but the sixth commandment, which has to do with adultery, protects your marriage and the marriage of other people. It's a wall to make marriage possible.

Fourthly, we have a wonderful resource, an underutilized resource, in the Bible: the Song of Songs, which is a love song, and frankly it's about as sexual as you can get. But it's not sexually explicit — it's implicit. It's full of pictures and imagery. The main character is a woman — the woman who admires her man, and a man who admires his woman, his wife. And what that teaches the church is the importance of affirming each other sexually. Love and the affirmation of sexuality in marriage belong together. You see, one of the funny things about us human beings is that if something goes wrong, and if we're disappointed, we're always very ready to criticize people. But when things go right, and when things are good, we take it for granted as our right. And if there's one area where our tendency to be critical does great damage, it's in the area of marriage and sexuality. There's nothing that withers sexual enjoyment so much as criticism of your spouse. But flip that around — there's nothing that enhances a marriage quite so much as appreciation of the spouse, bodily and sexually. So, sexual appreciation in marriage, sexual thanksgiving in marriage.

Listen to the wonderful way that Luther puts it — sometimes he really nails it. He says: "When a husband looks at his wife as if she were the only woman on earth, or when a woman looks at her husband as if he were the only man on earth — yes, if no king or queen, not even the sun itself, sparkles more brightly and lights up your eyes than your husband or wife — then right there you are face to face with God speaking. God actually gives your spouse to you and says, 'The man shall be yours, the woman shall be yours, I'm pleased beyond measure' — creatures heavenly and earthly are jumping for joy." It is God speaking to you through the face of that other person, and God giving you your spouse.

Now, what Luther alludes to here is Genesis chapter 2, where God brings Eve to Adam and gives her to Adam for his appreciation. And remember what Adam says — that this is flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones, she shall be called woman because she was taken from man — "this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." Oh, this is just wonderful. God gives Eve to Adam for his enjoyment, for his admiration. He says, "This man is for you. This woman is for you." And the converse is also true — no other man, no one else quite like her or him, is for you. Enjoy what you have, rather than what you don't have or imagine you'd like to have. There's great wisdom in that.

The final word, then, on this presentation — I've got a disc, just about coming in on time. As usual, C.S. Lewis hits the nail on the head, as well as Luther, and maybe even in this case a little bit better. Here's what he has to say: "The old Christian teachers said that if man had never fallen, sexual pleasure, instead of being less than it is now, would actually have been greater. I know that some muddleheaded Christians have talked as if Christianity thought that sex, or the body, or pleasure, were bad in themselves, but they are wrong. Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions that thoroughly approves of the body — that believes that matter is good, that God himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in heaven, and that it's going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty, and our energy."

My dear fellow saints, it's better to light one candle than curse the darkness.