Marriage is the right setting for sexual love

The best way for most adults to practice sexual purity is to enter into marriage, one of the purposes of which is to provide a context—a holy context—for sexual love. Now, there is such a thing as the gift of singleness. The apostle Paul was a person who enjoyed it. He said it was a very good thing, and one thing that it involved was a more or less unusual absence of sexual desires. Now not many people have that gift. And so here is what Paul urges: If they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion (1 Corinthians 7:9). Paul says this a little earlier: Because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband (1 Corinthians 7:2–3). Now, that is not saying that marriage is only about gratifying sexual urges. What it does mean is that God’s provision for sexual desires is marriage. And the opposite is true: that sexual love is God’s provision for a close and joyful and healthy marriage.

Now that, of course, returns us to the alternative translation of 1 Thessalonians 4:4, which sees Paul saying that each Christian man ought to acquire his own wife. I do not know if that is the correct interpretation of that verse, but it is good and biblical counsel—and it is the very counsel Paul gives in 1 Corinthians 7:1–40. Now, we live in a society where so many young adults are seeking to do the very opposite. We live in a narcissistic society where young adults want to be as immature and irresponsible as long as they can be. And one effect of that is people getting married in their late twenties, early thirties, or even later. Now, I am not saying that if you are in those age ranges and you are not married, you are sinning—you probably are not. But we know this is a trend going on in our society, one of the inevitable results of which is sexual immorality. It can only be that way.

I always think of what God said with respect to Adam: It is not good that the man should be alone. That is true in so many ways. It is true in his décor. If you stick your head in his refrigerator, it is not good what he is doing alone in the fridge—and his whole life: his physical life, his emotional life, his sexual life as an adult—it is not good. This is the rule. There are exceptions, but the rule is that it is not good for him to be alone. Now, therefore, in raising our Christian children, our aim ought to be that our young men and women should be mature enough—spiritually and emotionally and in all ways—that as young adults ( probably in their early twenties), as the Lord provides and as the Lord leads, they would at least be able to enter into marriage. I confess that I love to marry Christians around late college age and in those years. Why? They are becoming young adults. It is not good for the man to be alone. Let them marry. That is the Bible’s teaching.

Now, I am not saying, Just recklessly marry. I am not saying that there is something wrong with you if you are not married. But our goal ought to be that our young people are mature enough. If God does not arrange for them to marry in young adulthood, let it not be because they grew up in this church and did not grow up to be strong Christians, that they are not responsible enough, and they do not know what love is, because they have not had good examples. Let us raise our children so that they would have God’s provision for sexual purity. In fact, sexual purity will help the marriage rate. It is designed by God to prompt and promote those sacrifices, those difficult advances in maturity that enable our young people to enter into marriage.¹

Richard D. Phillips