Sex for Christians: Self-Giving and Sanctifying

Sex, in other words, wasn't only something for some believers to renounce. It was also something that others could embrace as part and parcel of their discipleship. To be sure, there was plenty of it that the early Christians forbade full stop: No sex outside marriage, no sex between family members or members of the same sex or with prostitutes or in secret liaisons. But the positive far outweighed the negative in importance: Sex, within marriage, could be received as a gift that pointed couples to the heart of their faith. It could be enjoyed as a witness to Christ's promise to love and cherish his bride, the church. And it could lead to the gift of children, new citizens of the coming new Jerusalem.

It's easy, then, to see why the heart of any Christian view of sex is, at the end of the day, love. Sex, for Christians, is—or should be—about self-giving, about withholding nothing of yourself from your spouse. It's about vulnerably offering yourself—jagged toenails, stretch marks, bleary, baggy eyes and all—to one who has promised to offer him- or herself in return.

But because Christians believe that we are all naturally selfish, congenitally hardwired to put our own pleasure and preferences ahead of others', Christian sex is also about sanctification. It's about the lifelong process of beginning to unlearn some of your ingrained habits of putting yourself first, of arranging the perfect sexual fantasies in your head in which you always get what you want. It's about learning instead to seek someone else's happiness before your own.

And we often fail miserably, using sex to manipulate each other or worse. Which is why so many marital spats crop up around sex. And which is also why, second perhaps only to love, forgiveness is the grace that Christians who have sex rely on the most.

So, what is a Christian spirituality of sex? In four pithy sentences, it might go something like this: Sex is unnecessary. Sex is impermanent. Sex is divinely ordered. And sex is (or can be) transformative. Above all, sex is about Jesus Christ. Whether by giving it up in celibacy or by enjoying it in marriage, Christians want their sex to be a sort of pointer or window onto the lavish, rapturous, closer-than-kissing love that God has for humanity, the love that God showed when he gave up his body and his life for us on the cross.