Pastor warns: sex is not love

Pastor Timothy V Shockley Sr of the Midwestern Bible Institute has a site with good advice about the Christian life.

I wanted to share two of his recent posts with you. The first is entitled ‘Sex is not love’, particularly pertinent since most of us have grown up with an onslaught, if not overdose, of what used to be known as ‘free love’ 40-odd years ago.

Excerpts follow (emphases mine):

How often do we encounter this scenario in books or on film: A man meets a woman and they hit it off “well. The next thing we know, they are in bed together. This is our “tip off” that they are “in love.” They must be in love; they’re having sex, aren’t they? It may be an adulterous relationship with one or both of them married to someone else, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that they are in love. They go to bed, have their fling, get up the next morning, and everything is fine.

That’s the picture the world paints. What these books and films rarely if ever reveal is the negative side to these kinds of encounters. In real life, sexual liaisons of this type produce in most people feelings of guilt, shame, and a sense of being dirty, not to mention a deep absence of fulfillment. It may be “fun” for a moment, but it leaves them feeling empty, and often they don’t know why.

The idea of sex as love is one of the biggest lies with which the world has perverted God’s original design for sexual expression, enjoyment, and fulfillment. Love—true love—is spiritual in nature. Sex is not. Sex is 100 percent physical and chemical. That is why we run into problems whenever we try to equate love with sex. Love is a spiritual union between two people—a joining of spirit to spirit. Sex is a physical coupling of two people—a joining of flesh to flesh. In its proper use, sex is a beautiful and fulfilling physical expression of the spiritual joining that is true love. Understanding this distinction will help us guard against falling prey to a lot of the weird ideas floating around out there that try to convince us that sex is (or can be) some fantastic kind of “spiritual bonding” or getting in touch with the spiritual realities of life. It is nothing of the sort. Sex is an exhilarating physical experience, but in and of itself there is nothing spiritual about it. Sexual activity never bonds us spirit to spirit with another person. Nowhere does the Bible teach that a sexual experience will cause us to see God or be brought close to Him. Sex is a product of the human part of our makeup and has nothing to do with our spirit.

Tomorrow: ‘A Happy Marriage Is No Accident’