Dear friends,

As we continue to think about the creation of the man and the woman in the garden, we find marriage being introduced as the outcome of our sexual polarity. The woman is created to the joy of the man. Consequently, the man is to leave his parents to ‘cleave’ to his wife. The old-fashioned verb to cleave has been changed in most modern translations. But the concept of sex inside the marriage cannot be changed. So Peter and I wander into a discussion about sexual intimacy in and out of marriage.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Welcome again to Two Ways News.

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The last two episodes have been on Genesis 2 and man and woman in creation, which has led us to discuss marriage and parenting. When we think about marriage, Genesis 2 and Genesis 1 are foundational. Jesus is asked about marriage and divorce in Matthew 19. He discusses it not so much in the legislation that the Pharisees were disputing amongst themselves, but in the very foundation of marriage and family life by referring to Genesis 1 and 2. So, Peter, would you read Matthew 19:1-9, where Jesus speaks of marriage?

Peter Jensen:

Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

Phillip: Last time we were discussing this, we reached the point of the verse of Genesis 2:24 , “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." The older translations said ‘leave and cleave’. But of course, ‘cleave’ is a word that people don't use much these days. I think ‘cleaving’ has an opposite meaning these days in terms of separating when, in fact, the verb here is about uniting. The NIV has ‘is united to,’ but it's a verb. The ESV or Holman has ‘bonds with’ or the ESV has ‘holds with’. What's implied is that you cling to, remain close to, and hang on to, but it also has a sexual emphasis to it.

Peter: It's assumed that in marriage there will be a sexual part, and they become one flesh. A sexual encounter is not merely a physical thing; there's something deeply personal and relational in it. Every time you have sex with someone, you give something of yourself to the other person and receive something as well. And so the whole idea of having sex with many people is doing yourself great damage, because it's not merely some sort of physical exercise like going to the gym; it is deeply relational, and it fulfils the ‘one flesh’. In 1 Corinthians 6:16 , the Apostle speaks about having sex with a prostitute, and he describes that as becoming one flesh with her. The sexual act itself is profound and deeply relational. On the other side is adultery, and that is why adultery is so devastating for people. For a man or for a woman to commit adultery goes to the very heart of the relationship.

Phillip: It's got to do with our relationship with our own body. I am not separate from my body. There's a dualism within the scriptures, between our bodies and our spirit, that the Lord has breathed the breath of life into us. But on the other hand, I am never separate. My body is me, and I am my body. It's not a functional thing alone but is deeply personal. That's why people use expressions like ‘intimate relationship’ when they're trying to avoid saying ‘sex’. But they're reinforcing the very nature of what it is—something deeply and profoundly intimate. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul goes on to say it's the one sin where you're sinning against your own self, against your own body.

Peter: A fascinating thing to say. Why do you think he says it’s to sin against your own body? What is the profound truth that he's enunciating there?

Phillip: If I shoot my neighbour, I hurt my neighbour, but not myself. But I cannot have sex without using my body. And so I'm shooting myself because I can't disengage this activity from myself and my body like I can if I steal or if I bear false witness against another person. They're sins against other people. But when I have sex with another person, it's not just the other person I'm hurting. It's my very self.

Peter: You would damage the other person too.

Phillip: You damage them and all their sets of relationships. Adultery is a very serious immorality that our society has decided not to make illegal. But what is illegal is not as bad as what is immoral. We tend to use the word ‘criminal’ as if it is worse than immoral. But ‘criminal' just means ‘against what the government says’.

Immoral is that which is evil. There are certain acts, like adultery, that are much worse than a criminal act. In adultery, I not only hurt myself and the person with whom I commit adultery, but also her spouse, their children, their parents, my spouse, my children, my parents, my cousins, my sisters, my aunts, and my uncles. It rips apart that which should never be ripped apart: the family. Marriage unites families, and adultery divides families. Malachi 2:16 talks about it in terms of ‘violence’. It is a violent thing to commit adultery. People talk about domestic violence and the horror of that. I don't want to diminish the horror of that physical violence by increasing the language. But the language was there many years ago in Malachi 2. To commit adultery is to be violent in the relationships of the family.

Peter: We have spoken about adultery, but what about fornication? Because fornication is surely even more prevalent than adultery.

Phillip: Yes, fornication is having sex where neither party is married, whereas adultery is when at least one, if not both people, are married to somebody else. Fornication has the same kinds of problems. In some ways, it is not as bad, in that the relationships have informally been made between different families that are going to then be ripped apart, and it usually happens outside the context of having children, whereas adultery often happens within the context of children. So adultery causes more damage, but fornication is already damaging yourself and the other person before they're married, before they've united to one person, and you carry that into the next relationship. Several times I've dealt with young men and women for whom this has been a major problem.

Peter: To sum up, the casualization of sex is profoundly damaging.

Phillip: In Proverbs 6:31-32, you know you'll be forgiven if you steal a loaf of bread because you're hungry, but you will not be forgiven if you steal another man's wife.

Peter: Now, to change the focus, let’s go from marriage to weddings. Why do we begin a marriage by exchanging public promises?

Phillip: Firstly, you've got to understand it's a covenant, not just a contract. A contract sets out the agreement. Prenuptial agreements have built into them the assumption that it could go wrong. The covenant we're talking about is an intentional binding obligation and promise of what you are going to do for the rest of your life. And that's important. For better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, and in sickness and in health, I will do this by God's help. This is the intention of life. At one level, it's just consent. ‘Consent’ has become important lately. But if consent is the highest level of morality, the degenerates have won because consent is a basic assumption. The wedding allows everybody to see that the couple are each giving consent. She hasn't been kidnapped. This is her consent to enter into this sexual relationship, but it does much more than that. It articulates the nature of the relationship.

Here's one of the problems with the de facto relationships. People wander into these relationships assuming the other person has the same thoughts and intentions, which is rarely the case. I spoke to one couple and asked what their relationship was. She said it was for life; he said it was for the time they were at university. They had never discussed it. It was a horrible moment. Perhaps that's an extreme case, but it's in principle the case.

The wedding spells out the nature of this relationship. “For better or for worse, richer, poorer, in sickness and health till death us do part, staying only unto you.” It spells it out, and that means no one can be under a misapprehension as to what they are to expect. Weddings are more than just the couple; they're the family. With a marriage, two families are being united, not just the two individuals. And so, we have the consent of the families to this, es