What the Bible Says About Gender, Marriage, Fornication, Adultery, Rape, Incest, Homosexuality, Bestiality, and Prostitution

God Created Gender, Marriage, and Sex

The way gender, marriage, and sex ought to be is found in the first two chapters of Genesis. There we find the world as God made it, before sin corrupted it, including the first people in history: a male named Adam and a female named Eve. God created marriage as a covenant for them and that covenant was consummated sexually. Moses records this,[3] Jesus repeats it,[4] and Paul echoes it.[5] According to the Bible, marriage was created by God long before there were any governments. He established the family unit as the first building block for cultures and nations. One scholar writes:

In the Bible, the appropriate locus of sexuality is the monogamous nuclear family, the ideal human relationship. The creation account of Genesis 2 emphasizes the fundamental nature of such marriage, for God created woman to be the suitable companion to man. The message is reinforced by an interruption in the narrative, a direct aside to the reader: “therefore a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). . . . The Bible considers a strong marital unit essential to societal well-being, with sex cementing the marital bond. The societal interest in conjugal sex is reflected in Deuteronomy’s provision that new bridegrooms be exempt from military campaigns for a year in order to cause the wives to rejoice (Deut 20:7; 24:5). Intact families demand sexual fidelity, and the best way to ensure this is to find sexual satisfaction in marriage: “find joy in the wife of your youth . . . let her breasts satisfy you at all times, be infatuated with love of her always” (Prov 5:18-19).[6]

Thus, from the biblical perspective, the proper context for sex is the “permanent, monogamous relationship called marriage. This perspective is the basic teaching of the Bible in both Old and New Testaments.”[7] Simply stated, the fires of passion are to be contained in the hearth of marriage. At the same time, there is much more in the Bible regarding sex.