Heaven and Sex

Pray like this:  ‘Our Father in Heaven . . . . ’    Matthew 6:9
   
“It's resurrection, resurrection, always resurrection, (being clothed with renewed body) that undergirds what I do and say, the way I live. If there's no resurrection, "We eat, we drink, the next day we die," and that's all there is to it." I Corinthians 15:32(MSG)
 
“You know the old saying, 'First you eat to live, and then you live to eat?' Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing, but that's no excuse for stuffing your body with food, or indulging it with sex. Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body! 

God honored the Master's body by raising it from the grave. He'll treat yours with the same resurrection power. Until that time, remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master's body. You wouldn't take the Master's body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not.  

There's more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, "The two become one."   Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never "become one." 

There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for "becoming one" with another. Or didn't you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don't you see that you can't live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you."

"God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body."
I Corinthians 6:13-20(MSG)  
 
Reflection
 
Heaven, God’s space which currently surrounds us, will be the temporary resting place of the “you” that lives after your physical body dies (John 14:1-4 where “rooms” means temporary housing). However when God rejoins heaven and earth each of us will be reclothed with renewed bodies. Compared to them our current bodies are as the root is to the flower.

As the scriptures above indicate, there is an implied sense in which our future bodies depend on our care and respect for our current bodies. One area of care which is dismissed as irrelevant to belief these days is sex. Very few people can see what sex has to do with faith in Jesus Christ and God. But the exact opposite is true.

God loves mergers. One day He will re-merge heaven and earth. Every believer enjoys the re-merger of his/her spirit with the Holy Spirit. The re-created earth and my re-created self are both permanent re-creations permanent new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17 and Ephesians 5:21-32), never again to be separated.

Do you remember what happened when heaven and earth broke apart? Start reading in Genesis 3:14 and keep reading. It’s not a pretty picture. Do you know what happens when a believer chooses disbelieve, thus breaking a permanent bond with God? Read Hebrews 4:4-8. It’s not a pretty picture. Nor is the picture of those who “become one” sexually and then move on to someone else: heartache, fatherless pregnancy and ensuing poverty, venereal disease, children of divorce, a financially burdened and emotionally scared society, women who are used and men who avoid responsibility.

Does it matter if you have sex (the merger of your spirit body and soul and if you are Christian Christ’s Spirit in you) with another spirit, body, soul? Of course it matters. Sex is made for permanency. Every single time you engage in sex outside of marriage, you have violated you body and dishonored the body of the one you claim to love. At the same you are both desensitizing yourself to God and building a groundwork that is incompatible with a new body in the New Creation.

Prayer

“Our Father in Heaven. Thank you for this reminder. I repent of the ways that I have been misusing my body, be it in the use of pornography, sex outside of marriage, a lustful thought life, objectifying the opposite sex, or treating sex in my marriage as an issue of needs and wants instead of as an issue of oneness and a picture of God’s permanent new creation of us as a married couple. Amen”