Purpose of Sex

Answering the question “Why is there sex?” the Bible tells us six things that are enough to start a social revolution, enough to leave us ashamed that we were ever ashamed of our sexuality.

Because we crave relationship.

God has designed us to move beyond ourselves. The word sex comes from the Latin secare, which literally means “something has been cut apart that longs to be reunited.” In Genesis 2:18 God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” Adam discovered soon enough that he needed another like himself—but different. So the male by himself cannot be fully in the image of God, nor can the female. The biblical phrase the image of God presupposes the idea of relationship. God is a Trinity, humankind a duality, of relationships. So part of our spiritual pilgrimage is to relate healthily to the opposite sex. The Roman Catholic writer Richard Rohr explains it this way:

God seemingly had to take all kinds of risks in order that we would not miss the one thing necessary: we are called and even driven out of ourselves by an almost insatiable appetite so that we could never presume that we were self-sufficient. It is so important that we know that we are incomplete, needy, and essentially social that God had to create a life-force within us that would not be silenced!

To consummate covenant.

In the Old Testament covenants were sealed and renewed by significant rituals and signs. This signing of the covenant emphasizes that it is not an idle promise but a solemn act with serious consequences. In the New Testament the Lord’s Supper becomes the ritual of the covenant for those who belong to Jesus Christ. These rituals are like any sacraments: God communicates a spiritual grace through a material reality. Sexual intercourse is the consummation and the ritual of the marriage covenant. Just as the bread and the wine offer us spiritual nourishment, so in marriage “sexual intercourse is the primary (though certainly not the only) ritual. It is an extension and fulfillment of the partners’ ministry to each other begun during the public statement of vows” Intercourse is to the covenant what the Lord’s Supper is to salvation. It expresses and renews the heart covenant. If the symbol is not backed by a full covenant, it is merely a powerless, graceless act.

To keep us distinct in unity.

At the candle-lighting portion of awedding ceremony the bride and groom, hands trembling, take the two lighted candles representing themselves and, with great solemnity, light a single central candle representing their marriage. But then they stoop down and blow out the two candles. Do they really mean to blow themselves out? Tragically, some do. One wag, hearing the familiar line “Two have become one,” asked, “Which one?” In some cases that is a rather penetrating question. Community is com-unity. The word is made up of two parts. Com means “with” or “together.” With unity, it means “unity alongside another.” It is not the oneness of a drop of water returning to the sea: sexuality is not the urge to merge. Sexuality is the urge to be part of a community of two, symbolized by the act of intercourse: one person moves in and out of another. The differences and the uniqueness of both people are celebrated at the very moment of oneness and unity. God is the ultimate mystery of covenant unity. And every family in heaven and on earth is named (or derives its origin and meaning) from the Father (Ephes. 3:14-15). Reverently we may speak of the mystery of one God in three persons; we know they are not merged. Nor do we merge in the human covenant. Partners should find, not lose, their identity.

Because male and female are complements.

In a covenant marriage, each calls forth the sexuality of the other. Eve called forth the sexuality of Adam. Until she is created, the man is just “the human” (ha-adam). Only after the woman is created is he “the man” (male person, ha-ish). His special identity emerges in the context of needing a suitable helper. Adam saw Eve as one called forth. His cry “At last!” (Genesis 2:23 RSV) is an expression of relational joy. Now he has found a partner as his opposite, by his side, equal but different, his other half. C. S. Lewis compared our sexual unity to that of a violin bow and string. Both are needed, and neither can be fulfilled without the other. Speaking about the cellist Pierre Fournier, it was said that his “left hand [on the string] plays the notes and interprets the musical symbols of the score, but his right hand [on the bow] speaks, puts the emphasis, and is responsible for the interpretation” (Vancouver Symphony Orchestra). In our marriage I play the notes on the score, reading them sometimes very mechanically, while my wife, Gail, puts the emphasis, interpreting the notes. It may be different for another couple. All that matters is that bow and string together create one sound without trying to make each conform to the other.

It is important to note here that the Bible does not give us two parallel lists of qualities, one male and one female. That should be reason enough not to generalize on male and female stereotypes. The sexual act suggests that men and women are different in their sexuality. In intercourse woman receives the man, letting him come inside her. In this act she makes herself extremely vulnerable. The man, on the other hand, is directed outward. While the woman receives something, the man relieves himself of something. It means something different to the man. Perhaps it is less total for him (Thielicke, pp. 45-60). A woman needs to be psychologically prepared for this self-abandonment, not only by the public commitment of her husband to lifelong troth but also by her husband’s ongoing nurture of the love relationship. This difference in sexual identity may also be the reason behind the common male complaint that their wives do not understand their need for sexual release and expression. It is a gross but instructive overstatement to say that men must have sex to reach fullness of love while women must have love to reach fullness of sex.

To create children.

Most people today do not find this a convincing argument. But face-to-face intimacy, which in intercourse only humans enjoy, is very suggestive of the nature of the relationship. Similarly, natural sex gives the procreative process its own way (which adulterers are always determined to interrupt) and is a powerful statement of why we have this appetite. Lewis Smedes says that “sex and conception are the means God normally uses to continue his family through history until the kingdom comes on earth in the form of a new society where justice dwells” (1983, p. 168). It would be wrong to say that every act of intercourse must have procreation as its end. In the Genesis narrative the man and woman were in the image of God and enjoyed profound companionship before there were children. But to cut the tie between sex and children is to reduce sexuality. A childless marriage can be a godly community on earth. But a marriage that refuses procreation for reasons of self-centeredness is something less than the God-imaging community, male and female, that was called to “be fruitful and increase in number” (Genesis 1:28). Our society treats babies as an inconvenience, an interruption to a blissful married life or a challenging career. But the Bible says that babies are an awesome wonder. Even if the birth was unexpected and unplanned for—or perhaps even, humanly speaking, unwanted—it is the work of God, a lovely mystery. Healthy sexuality makes marriage the beginning of family

Because it incarnates the covenant.

God wants us to have an earthly spirituality. These are carefully chosen words. Faith has to be fleshed out to be real. The Christian message is that God became a man. God didn’t become just another spirit. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). Spirit became body. In marriage, too, spirit must become body. Love must become incarnate. If in the church there are Word and sacrament, in a marriage there needs to be words and touch. Our society secularizes sex. It treats it as pure body, pure flesh—nothing more. There are no sins and no sexual perversions. The converse, just as wrong although sometimes thought to be Christian, is the problem of hyperspirituality. These Christians talk about God but either live uneasily with the physical or live a double life. Flesh (in the sense of the physical) and spirit have never been reconciled. Sex is looked down upon, almost as a necessary evil. Karl Barth once said that “sex without marriage is demonic.” Now we must say that marriage without sex is demonic too. In contrast to the sacralizing and the secularizing of sex, the Bible sacramentalizes sex. It does this by putting it in its rightful place: in the covenant. That does not mean that single people cannot be whole without sexual intercourse. As Smedes puts it, “Although virgins do not experience the climax of sexual existence, they can experience personal wholeness by giving themselves to other persons without physical sex. Through a life of self-giving—which is the heart of sexual union—they become whole persons. They capture the essence without the usual form”